As you might have read
earlier in this blog, I think that we can learn a lot from games and
gaming about how to be productive in our work life. So I have been
reading a lot about games, gaming (and gamification lately, and it
has truck me that what characterizes a good game is also what
characterizes good leadership.
It was while reading
Jane McGonical's book “Reality is Broken” that it started
to fall into place for me. She defines a game as sharing
4 common traits - a goal, rules, a feedback system and voluntary
participation. Playing a game is fun, because as we try to reach the
goal, certain constraints apply (the rules) offering resistance to
reaching the goal, we gain feedback along the way on whether or not
we have reached the goal, and since it is a game, nobody is forcing
you to do this.
Ideally that is how good leadership should be as well – the goal is set
either by the leader or the team as a whole and in come cases by
outside forces. Certain constraints apply such as time, materials,
and resources available. And while we work to reach the goal feedback
should be coming back to us in a multitude of forms from our
leadership, from customers and vendors, and other parties involved in
the business. It is also a voluntary commitment, because we can in
most cases quit the job, if we do not like it.
The problem
is off course that things are seldom ideal and hence work is often
not as fun as it could be. What is strange is off course that there
is really nothing stopping us from trying to reach an ideal state. We
have control of almost all the parameters and the ones we do not have
control over, we can get feedback on and adjust to. Let look at the 4
traits one at a time.
A game has a clearly
defined goal. In in reality projects often have vague goals or
conflicting goals from stakeholder to stakeholder. But it does not
have to be that way. Practically all books I have read about
leadership and management states that having a clear and measurable
goal is paramount if you want to succeed. So if we want to make work
more fun by making them more like games we need to focus on making
good goals – which is something we can do something about.
A game has clearly defined
rules - reality do not. However the constraints of a project act
somewhat like rules. Things like we cant go over budget, we cant get
more members on the team, and we need to finish by a certain deadline
can all be considered the rule of the project – the constraints we
have to act within. These are usually the things that are hardest to
change and hence we feel blocked by them. But if we accept them just
as we accept rule sin a game, we can enable faster and easier
decision making. Its all about focusing on the goal and how to reach
it within the constraints instead of focusing on the constraints and
how to get around them.
Feedback is easier if we
have clearly defined goals. But we have already established that if
we do not feel that the goals are clear we should start by clarifying
them. However even when we have good goals to measure against good
feedback does not automatically follow. Good feedback requires rules
and methods and diligence to achieve it. Most agile methods have lots
of feedback procedures in the form of burn down charts, sprint
demo's, code reviews and sprint reviews. For some reason I have often
experienced, that the first things that are sacrificed when time are
about to run out are the feedback routines because the do not seem to
add value in themselves. But they are essential as they are what
allows us to measure the value of the work we do against the goals.
Voluntary
participation might seem something that only really applies to games
and not work. Because realistically how many of us wants to quit our
job because of one bad project. But this is where the leadership part
really should shine. I think this quote from Dwight D. Eisenhower put
that very well in perspective: “
Leadership
is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done
because he wants to do it.". And I think that if you focus on
getting the first 3 thngs right (goals, rules, feedback) then you are
much more likely to get people to want to work for you and having
more fun doing so.
