Can Gamifying Business Credibility Be A Game Changer?🏆
In this technology-enabled and social business world, there is one area that has a wide variance. This area has yet to be completely analyzed, quantified, systematized or commoditized. One that, in many respects cannot be commoditized or copied: the realm of human behavior. This provides a rare opportunity for business organizations and their people to build credibility through the 4 Pillars of Gamification.
Now, how we behave has always mattered. But today, how we behave, build trust in our relationships, and communicate to others matters more than ever.
Defining Gamification
“I am going to say a great deal about what gamification is. But, first I want to say a little about what gamification is not. There is a tremendous amount of confusion about just what gamification means, how it relates to different other game-related concepts and so it’s important to clear that up and put gamification in context before we move forward. First point, gamification is not turning everything into a game. I hear this a lot, oh, so you’re saying we’re all going to be playing World of Warcraft at work.
Or, we’ll all be in some virtual environment like Second Life on the job. No, in fact, gamification, in many ways, is the opposite. Gamification says you’re still in the real world, you’re still at your normal job, you’re still on a website because you want to buy a product.
Gamification says, let’s make that experience better, learn from games. Find elements from games, that can enhance the experience that you’re having. Find the meaningful core of those experiences and make them more rewarding, create greater motivation, but not pull you out of the real world.” (Source: Kevin Werbach, Wharton School Gamification Class)
Mobile devices are powering the world today, which unites and reveals us in ways that we only are beginning to understand. The technology has connected our global business teams together faster than our ability to create humanistic frameworks to understand and trust each other. As a result, many of the proven ways of working together and making progress no longer relate. Gamification can help transform a business culture.
Creating Sustainable Advantage With Culture And People
Business Leaders have been challenged in leveraging their organizational culture for marketplace success. Peter Drucker once remarked: “Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast”. Culture is an outgrowth of leadership and can be changed to meet organizational goals. This dynamic interplay between leadership and culture is critical if even the most brilliant of strategy is to be effectively implemented.
The competition moves faster than it used to. Rita Gunther McGrath wrote in the Harvard Business Review; “Having the best product or service or making the perfect strategic move doesn’t buy much time for the CEO at the top. The landscape has shifted from looking for that long-term sustainable competitive advantage to managing a portfolio of transient advantages, moving from one short-lived advantage to the next.”
Rebuilding Employee Engagement and Culture Is Key Element To Success
A 2013 Booz & Company study, “Culture’s Role in Enabling Organizational Change” by DeAnne Aguirre, Rutger von Post, and Micah Alpern analyzes the results of a survey of 2,200 executives, managers, and employees from a broad range of companies across the world. This research sheds light on current perceptions of organizational culture.
This study shows a widespread belief that organizational culture is a key element of company success. For example, as the authors report, Eighty-six percent of C-level executives and 84 percent of all managers and employees say culture is critical to their organizations’ success, and 60 percent see it as a bigger success factor than either their strategy or their operating model.
However, this is contrasted with the astonishing statistics about the need for cultural change: A full 96 percent of respondents say some change to their culture is needed, and 51 percent think their culture requires a major overhaul. About 75% of the respondents believe their company needs significant culture restoration, which tracks closely to the proportion of people disengaged at work. The goal of the study wasn’t primarily to measure the need for cultural change. The survey did not ask what types of cultural change was needed or desired.
This study suggests that the great majority of companies have cultures that reflect the contemporary models of the late industrial era of business, where the unraveling of social trust between employer and employee has only accelerated in the past few years, and where work stress levels are at a historical high.
Peter Drucker’s Famous Quote
The real goal of the study was to explore the role that organizational culture plays in business transformation efforts. Projects to enact enterprise change usually are the result of the perceived requirement to adapt to a changing market environment. Relative to that goal, the survey results are more like a criticism of management than any guarantee of the success of change efforts in general, and more precisely, the author states that “only 24 percent said their companies used the existing culture as a source of energy and influence during the change effort.”
Enabling A Standard Of Trust Organizational Community
To realize a higher performing culture of relationship capital, you need to focus on improving cooperation as well as individual performance with your employees. First, you already have high performing people in your business. These are your relationship capital star-performers. By focusing the right attention and analysis with your relationship capital leadership stars, you not only will capture value by understanding the mindsets and behaviors that drive their high performance, you will be able to share those insights with the other employees to inspire and motivate higher performance from them.
The 4 Pillars of Enterprise Gamification
The following 4 pillars of gamification refer to the motivators of performance.
• “Achievement: I work to attain an objective. This category calls on the desire many of us for mastery. To be well-versed and proficient in something. There is a sort of competition, based on standard, a benchmark. Not other people.
• Recognition: My contribution is acknowledged. Recognition is a form of feedback, an affirmation of one’s capabilities or position and a manifestation of status among peers. Recognition strikes me as the most powerful form of motivation.
- Competition: I compete for a limited number of awards. These gamification techniques appeal to the desire to compete. They can elevate people to moments of excellence in their participation (think of sports you’ve participated in previously). Powerful when used in an appropriate context. But it’s a category that needs to be treated with care. Clumsy implementation of competition gamification can poison an initiative.
• Valuables: I want to secure something of value. Valuables can address avoiding the loss of something or gain something new. Valuables include the things you might expect: points-based rewards systems. But they can include countdowns to do something (I need to do something before I lose the opportunity), or competition to win funding for an idea, for example. Very useful, but Valuables need to be handled with care to avoid unintended consequences (e.g. high volumes of low-value contributions; a mindset that participation only happens when there’s a reward).”
Imagine, if all your employees wanted to secure relationship capital from their peers? You would have realized a high performing organizational culture that is truly a Standard of Trust.
A Standard Of Trust Organization Is A More Open Enterprise and Community
A Standard of Trust enterprise and its extended community is noted for its openness and high trust. The “gates” or doors in this community of stakeholders are not locked or do not exist at all. It has a do-the-right-thing purpose and is self-governing. It is like having an all-access pass to the information, experts, and support needed to get things done to meet business goals. The high trust benefits earned:
- BENEFIT #1 — SUPER-CHARGED INNOVATION — Trust is bedrock.
- BENEFIT #2 — VALUE CREATION (Customer Value and Shareholder Value)
- BENEFIT #3 — FASTER REVENUE GROWTH Customers/Clients will not only buy more but refer those companies they trust.
- BENEFIT #4 — HIGHER PERFORMING COLLABORATION is a must in today’s global economy, and Relationship Capital (RC) trust is the foundation.
- BENEFIT #5 — INTERLOCKED PARTNERING is a result of high trust and earned Relationship Capital (RC).
- BENEFIT #6 — EFFECTIVE EXECUTION — is a result of a high-trust organization.
- BENEFIT #7 — ENHANCED LOYALTY can be achieved because of high trust which reduces turnover, gains repeat customers/clients, and builds long-term relationships with distributors, suppliers, and investors.
Conclusion
Rebuilding trust through greater employee engagement is critical to effectively competing in a world of accelerating change. Leaders and organizations that fail to meet this challenge are already losing ground. Those moving ahead understand that the most enduring track to achievement and consequence in this radically new environment now lies in getting our standard of trust leadership and culture right over time. As more and more leaders of both small business and large influence and shape their business cultures to adopt higher standards of purpose, mastery, and relationship capital trust, standing still will no longer be an option for the laggards.
Standard of Trust leadership and Standard of Trust business cultures already flourish in their respective industries, the expectations and demands from stakeholders will continue to rise. There is no end game, just a continuous journey of distinction through purpose, mastery and relationship capital. The business benefits to leveraging the intrinsic motivator of relationship capital through gamification is a game changer for business. It enables a business culture of high trust and credibility that creates breakthrough innovations that result in high performance and sustainable advantage.
www.StandardofTrust.com
Sources:
- https://www.amazon.com/Standard-Trust-Leadership-Transforming-Relationship/dp/0692206965/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1472295015&sr=8-1&keywords=standard+of+trust+leadership
- Originally Published on October 17th, 2016 on Pulse
- http://customerthink.com/four-categories-of-enterprise-gamification/
- Coursera Online Course: “Gamification by Kevin Werbach of the Wharton School”
