The Role of Gamification in Rapid Culture Change

Organizational culture change is believed to take years to achieve… and that used to be True, but not anymore! And if traditional Top-Down culture change methods are attempted, the initiative is DOOMED to FAIL!

Speed is the Key

The measurement of social approval has always been the foundation of a personal sense of value, and in this PFB (Post Facebook) era, it has been digitized and supercharged. Everyone now has Power and a Voice and due to its “instant” access and instant messaging, people have become less patient. In a culture change initiative, it means if people don’t see some visible results in a short time, the motivation to follow through with opportunities to personally impact the organization and be more “valuable”, is replaced by the motivation to maintain the stuss quo of the value they are already adding. And while there may be some who remain excited, the majority ultimately get “busy” and little changes…?

It’s not that people don’t act on trying to add as much value as possible, in fact they usually do at the beginning of a job, it’s that eventually people get sucked into a culture where they feel that their efforts to be more valuable, more innovative, even more productive, are diminished or even prevented by the work environment…?

But fast change is possible when there is a speedy and easy way for people to see progress in making a difference that they feel will help them personally succeed in their jobs.

And according to 7 years of research applying the Culture Evolution Process, the faster the culture change initiative is, the more chances of success it has. But there are some hurdles that must be overcome.

1.?Senior management must be involved but not in control

????????????a.??????This is sometimes difficult since often, senior management feels they know better than the lower-level staff.

????????????b.??????To succeed, the people must own the initiative and the culture… a Bottom Up process is pre-defined to fit in guidelines senior management has defined, but the initiative is run and implemented for and by the people.

2.?Performance Measurement needs to be redefined

????????????a.??????Gamification is essentially fun and fast performance measurement. The key word here is “fast”, using simple, and relevant measurements that can be applied daily.

3.?Because speed is essential for success, it will usually create some business disruption for about 2 weeks.

????????????a.??????This is because any Bottom-Up process requires everyone to be involved at some level for the initial “culture creation”?

If these hurdles can be overcome, the outcome is a fast culture change initiative manifesting a sustainable culture where people support each other and have fun achieving more personal success through achieving organizational objectives. But the other side of the equation is Fun, how can we sustain motivation to perpetuate the effect and even evolve the culture further.

The Role of Gamification

I define Work Gamification as: “The Systematic facilitation of helping team members combine measurement, motivational psychology, and basic fun in existing or improved Work Processes or Activities with an objective of fostering desired behaviors and results through human focused game design”. While gamification is not about technology, technology can support it.

But most organizations, are not set up for speed or gamification… and speed is the prerequisite for effective gamification.

Why?

Because of the instinctual human need to feel valuable. This is also often misinterpreted as “Recognition”. But if everyone is recognized equally, then the recognition becomes meaningless. Plus, while recognition is important, it’s not the only emotion that needs to be filled for a personal sense of value.

There are 6 elements that will not only ensure success, but to maintain a sustainable thriving culture that continues to evolve.

1.?Reverse engineering of objectives into behaviors

????????????a.??????Because Speed is the key to success, waiting for objectives or KPIs to be completed is a recipe for failure. By reverse engineering the KPIs and objectives into behaviors that ultimately achieve them, we can measure every day with quick simple feedback that can keep people on the right track daily.

????????????b.??????Negative feedback is generally more prominent than positive feedback because it’s easier to notice small negatives than small positives… but if we set a time (about 5 to 10 minutes daily) to think about specific behaviors that support or counter our objectives, we can provide fun and productive insights to over deliver on objectives. The Squadli behavior gamification app can gamify a behavior in 20 seconds.

2.?Bottom up game/culture design

????????????a.??????The people who do the work are the best qualified to create the gamified structure, they just need some guidelines and game processes

3.?Creating a Gamified work Theme

????????????a.??????A key element in fun, is diversity, by creating a Theme to a gamified process, you are adding fantasy to work and elevating it to something more!

4.?Having a Unified Identity

????????????a.??????Connecting everyone as part of the “Club” of pioneers who are making things happen (being valuable) has a huge impact on sustainability and implementation because the “Members” are in charge, they Own the results, the processes, and the purpose behind the fun.

5.?There must be a “resurrection" period

????????????a.??????The biggest mistake in gamification is that people who do not make the “leader board” or main list, end up falling behind and losing motivation to continue. By creating a resurrection period (an amount of time to Re-Start everything), people can learn from experience and start over to move up in the next “Resurrection Epoch” …and as long as there is hope, to achieve and show value, there is motivation to improve.

????????????b.??????By adding top lists for each of the desired behaviors, people also have a chance to Win in at least one area which will motivate to try for the main list. There is a real win, even though it may not be the biggest one.

6.?There must be 3 levels of measurement

????????????a.??????To maximize “win state” for the majority so that more people have the opportunity to feel their efforts are adding value, gamified measurement must be at:

??????????????????????????????????i.?????The individual level

?????????????????????????????????ii.?????The team level

????????????????????????????????iii.?????The organization level

????????????b.??????Combining the behavior gamification app with the culture assessment app is an easy way to achieve this in minimal time and visible feedback.

But before you start, do the “WHAT IS YOUR IDEAL WORK ENVIRONMENT” exercise with your people. Because if they own the culture, they will make it happen and sustain it. This requires a “Greater Purpose” that most people can align with.

Fortunately we have researched this question and surprisingly there is an answer that applies to everyone. In 53 different countries to over 80,000 people, different education levels and cultures, positions from CEO to Janitor, we have asked one question: “What is your Ideal Working Environment?” This question has yielded 5 primary factors that most everyone can agree with. These Ideal Working Environment Factors are as follows:

• Teamwork?– people working together on the same team and helping each other to achieve team goals.
• Supportive environment?– beyond teamwork there are other departments and managers that often get in each other’s way and may create silos. People want to be able to work across departments without agendas stopping the greater success of the bigger objectives.
• Clarity?– whether they use the words, transparency, vision, direction… people want to have an idea of what they need to do to be successful (and be recognized for that success) in the organization.
• Trust?– both sides of trust appear in words like innovation, autonomy, transparency, accountability… where people feel that they are trusted to do what is required, and managers feel they can trust their people to be accountable.
• Fun?– self-explanatory, fun is the absence of Boring!

?If we connect the Greater Purpose of “Creating the Ideal Working Environment”, we have an active vision that will serve both Organization and Employee. So gamifying behavior that the “people” deem as supporting the creation of this Ideal Working Environment, will ultimately manifest a higher performance and more engaged culture.

I personally recommend 8 to 10 behaviors that can be attributed to the culture you are trying to create including the ideal work environment. And if the organization’s values are connected to the achievement of objectives and KPIs, some of the behaviors can simply be related to those values.

The daily gamified measurement gives positive and fun negative feedback so the clarity of how to succeed is not left till the annual review and people have a chance to adjust their actions to support their own success and the collective success of the organization, which, influences culture in weeks, not months.

And, when the culture itself is measured as part of the gamification everyone feels the wins. We use the OCEAN Culture assessment tool which defines the 5 levels of culture evolution and makes it easy benchmark the starting point (need to know where you start before you can see any progress) and the shows progress of culture evolution attributed to the people and their improved behaviors and attitudes.

The best part is that the more progress that is measured and gamified at all levels of individual, team and organization, the more sustainable it is because people can visibly see their efforts are making an impact which in turn motivates and inspires new ways to add value.

But you are a senior manager, you will need to let go, trust that your people realy do want to do a great job and really want to have an environment that will help them enjoy work while making a big impact for the success of the company.