My last post discussed how I and my team were using a transformation participation engine to provide our change team with metrics necessary to support validated learning for our change effort. Aside from enabling a Lean Startup approach for our change effort, we also plan to use the data set captured within our engine to Gamify our transformation.
Depending on success, we also plan to prototype some character sheets, periodically updated manually by our team.
If Gamification proves to be a hit than we will figure out how to automate all this stuff ...
Different transformation campaigns (eg Kanban, Agile, Dedicated Quality Office, etc) have been broken into explicit learning tracks. Each learning track has been further refined into specific skills that we hope our clients acquire as part of the transformation. We are tracking our progress (note NOT progress of folks who are learning) as the number of staff and managers who acquire specific skills.
In order to add an element of Gamification to the transformation, we plan to introduce the notion of behavior / change points. Skills are acquired through completion of explicit behaviors. Each behavior when exhibited provides a specified amount of points.
The gamification aspect comes in because behaviors can only be acquired from folks who have
A) already acquired the skill that the behavior belongs to
B) have a point reservoir equal to the behaviour being acquired.
Behaviors are acquired by "transferring points" from on person to another. This has some interesting implications.
1) you must find a mentor to acquire a skill, it's not up to the change team or managers to validate your progress, it's a pure peer system
2) you can only give your points away once, after that the pupil must become a teacher or the system dies
3) giving someone credit prematurely is limited because both you and your mentor will look foolish if you are called out.
Our first Minimum Viable Change using this approach will be to setup a manual Leaderboard outside of a Kanban based standup, and measure wether there is desired change in behavior. Or wether people throw eggs at us...
I don't think that 'automation' is the relevant focus here. Automation is simply the delivery mechanism for...making things observable -- moving them from implicit to explicit (I've been engaged in many conversations over the term "observable work", directly tied to collaboration -- related collection http://delicious.com/iknovate/ObservableWork).
ReplyDeleteWhat purpose is at play here? Shared meaning. These are the mechanisms/practices for supporting shared meaning. It is only through shared meaning that we can effectively collaborate.