Done this level

Posted on | July 16, 2009 | No Comments

Should we get video game designers to shape the organizations of the future? I think our businesses might be more effective and robust if we did.

This is not so crazy as it sounds, professional games designers know how to plan a resilient environment and define suitable roles. They also know a lot about sustaining player engagement, which is an eternal problem for most organizations – in the form of employee motivation.

I began thinking seriously about this idea after speaking with a fellow delegate at a conference last week. He described a phenomenon whereby younger staff members carry forward their game player generation attitude into the workplace. More specifically, that they look at their career as a game and seek advancement whenever they feel that they have ‘done this level.’ Such an attitude is understandable but not always compatible with the way that the world of work is currently organized.

But that’s what got me thinking about changing the way that we build the enterprise, rather than simply expecting the next generation to change their mindset; which was the old way of building command and control organizations.

If we design our enterprise as if it is a multi-user game with open interfaces to other similar games, we will take a major step towards properly joined-up management for a joined-up world.

http://www.colin-beveridge.com/index.php/done-this-level/

Comments