Tales from the Casbah

Gamification for Youth

2011-12-19T10:14:00.001+11:00

We're about to present to the Foundation for Young Australians this afternoon, to highlight the ways in which gamification can improve program design, structure and delivery. The Foundation is a very innovative organisation here in Australia that has been in operation for 30 years and is continually looking for new and different ways to engage youth.

The presentation below highlights how gamification can be used, drawing examples from many projects around that world that have used gamification in association with interesting multi-platform delivery and more deeper engagement strategies that use more complex game dynamics rather than the run of the mill mechanics of badges and leaderboards.

More on this topic later, but for now enjoy the presentation below :)

Gamification: Foundation for Young Australians

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Gamification for Brands & Marketing

2011-11-02T15:12:00.000+11:00

Brand managers and marketers are starting to take an active interest in games and gamification and the first significant public conversation in Melbourne is taking place tonight at the Social Media Club. I'm on a panel discussion with Daniel Ferguson from Spiral Media (representing Zynga and Pop Cap), Harry Ravenswood, Multiplatform TV at ABC and Gavin Heron, Creative Director from Visual Jazz.

I've prepared some notes which I've provided below. I'll post a more significant piece later in the week after the conversations tonight :)

Gamification for brands

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Gamification Flame Wars

2011-09-26T08:56:00.000+10:00

Like most practitioners of gamification I have been dismayed at the recent flame wars about the relevance and applicability of gamification outside of games, and in particular, as a tool to be used in the enterprise. From my perspective gamification is a key tool that can assist in resolving the malaise affecting enterprises around the world. But that doesn't mean that I have given my wholesale support to gamification. There are some key limitations that I have already written about here however I believe that as an industry we can work through this so we can unleash its positive and much needed potential. The flame wars have become personal, unprofessional and destructive and it leaves me wondering whose vested interests this is all serving?

Why I have given my constructive support to gamification: In my work as a management consultant it was becoming clear over the last 10 years that traditional business tools were becoming less and less effective as these static tools were not keeping up with the systemic changes taking place in enterprises and our communities in general.

The situation is now so desperate that enterprises can barely crack a 30% success rate in change and project management initiatives. On top of this (and most likely, related to it) international research shows that only 20% of the corporate workforce is engaged on the job. This is a significant problem and it's costing the corporate sector hundreds of millions of dollars each year.

At the heart of the solutions to these problems is for enterprises to better engage with their staff and their stakeholders. Practitioners like myself have been using a combination of approaches imbedded in systems thinking, organisational learning, role playing games and positive psychology for several years. Gamification adds to the richness of these tools to facilitate positive outcomes for both the enterprise, for staff and their stakeholders.

While I understand the concerns of the detractors, I believe they are largely overstated. The main reason is that when you look closely at their arguments they assume that business leaders are manipulative and that staff are gullible. Not only is this wrong, it is incredibly naive.

While there are always exceptions, most enterprises work towards producing positive, sustainable organizations to produce the innovation and productivity that is critical to their long term survival. My work is therefore focussed on using tools which include gamification to assist organizations to do just that.

The City that Never Sleeps

2011-09-24T17:18:00.000+10:00

While in the middle of writing a post on my key insights from the recent Gamification Summit I felt the urge to express my love for the Summit's host city, New York. But as I write, I start to think about the reasons behind this massive projection I've bestowed onto the city.

If love is just an encounter with our unconscious (blame Jung for my tiresome over analysis of my relationships) it occurred to me that the city represents three of the most important drivers in my life - freedom, awesomeness and honesty.

Projection 1: The freedom to create and recreate yourself and to not be bound by the past or the expectations of others. I love the rebelliousness in this and the hunger for adventure.

Projection 2: The blatant in your face cry for totally amazing and awesome experiences, relationships and achievements without the burden of guilt or shame.

Projection 3: The need to be totally honest and authentic with who you are, and for others to be that with you.

Whether New York is any of those things is immaterial (this is a projection remember!) The reality is that every person and every city can all be free, awesome and honest, but sadly this is not always the case. We have a choice: we can chose the safety of a shadow dance or embrace the real magic we carry within ourselves.

So now I'm left wondering why I need a projection the size of New York City? I think it's time to finish that post on the gamification summit :)

Gamification for StartUps

2011-07-29T10:24:00.003+10:00

Just a quick post before I dash off to Sydney for the Start-Up Weekend to present on gamification for start ups. I'll provide a more detailed post tonight, but here is the deck for now. Enjoy!

Gamification for start ups copy

View more presentations from Marigo Raftopoulos.

Fun or Not? The Gamification of the Enterprise

2011-07-03T17:02:00.007+10:00

The gamification of the enterprise is now in the early stages of development and most progressive organisations are experimenting with what gamification can deliver. In a global business environment where the average success rate in change management, project management and systems implementations is sitting around 25-30%, even a 1% improvement will yield the average enterprise of a savings of several millions of dollars. And that is just the low hanging fruit.

So how do we gamify the enterprise? Let's start with your current business pitch of how you define and focus your business, and we'll compare that to how a game designer would pitch their game to a potential player or an investor.

This will be a little different to the annual strategic planning exercise of developing the enterprise mission statement and goals. That exercise is now past its use-by date and it tends fills the average worker's heart with dread because the process has become mechanical and it rarely results in meaningful or inspirational outcomes.

The first step in gamifying an enterprise goes like this: If you were to reinvent your current business as a game, what would you do differently to engage your staff to play and be creative, inspire your customers to go on an adventure with you and create an awesome experience for all your stakeholders?

Before we start the exercise, complete (or dig out) the mission statement and goals for your current business as the "before" example.

All done? Now let's build a new 'gamified' one:

My Game Pitch*

1. The name of our game is... [redefine your mission as the epic name of the game]

2. Our story is about...[every great game has a great story - what is yours?]

3. Our target players are...[who are your players? Build profiles, make them human, make them real. Which of Bartle's player types are they?]

4. We will be solving the problem of...[this is why enterprises are here, to solve real social needs and real problems]

5. The key fun factor in this is...[what fun, challenges and adventures will you take us on in this game?]

Now have a look at the before and after, The Business Pitch and The Game Pitch. Which is fun and which is not?

The magic of this exercise is that by simply changing the language and the framework, we start to view the world differently through a new paradigm of possibilities. The old language of the enterprise is carrying the baggage of a command/control era. The new language of the enterprise is a gameful one because our number one priority is now the same as that of a game designer - engagement.

Our next posts will dive into internal enterprise systems and processes.

(*adapted from Amy Jo Kim's awesome masterclass which I attended at the Gamification Summit in San Francisco January 2011)

What kind of player are you?

2011-05-29T13:48:00.008+10:00

So, you want to gamify your business? Excellent, but let's start with you, the gamification strategy designer. You must first know thyself before we can launch into designing gamified strategies for business. I've run a series of workshops over the last few weeks and one of the key exercise that seems to resonate with everyone is Bartle's player types.

For those unfamiliar with Bartle, his legendary work is used by game designers to target specific player types in their games. There are four basic types - Killers, Acheivers, Explorers and Socialisers, although in a more complex and not often quoted piece of work, Bartle has an excellent 3D model of 8 types of players which we won't explore here today.

Now before you read beyond the pic below, follow this link to the GamerDNA.com site so we can determine what kind of player you are before we launch into the business of gamification - see you on the other side.

I'm a hardcore Explorer tragic [Explorer 93% Socializer 53% Achiever 40% Killer 13%] and the reason that it's important for me to know this is that I need to put my own biases to one side when I'm designing for a target audience that aren't Explorers. As an Explorer, I find that if you don't have enough meaning, challenges, mysteries and puzzles built into your game, I'm quickly bored. And if you keep throwing meaningless points, badges and leaderboards at me, you're going to irritate me.

However if I am designing for Achiever and Killer types, as an Explorer I need to understand that these types of players need something different and I really need to connect with what makes them tick when designing gamification strategies that resonates with them. What we must remember is that all four types are within in us, and despite having a dominant or preferred style, we will play differently depending on the game and the situation.

I need to point out that Bartle's work was not intended to be used outside MMORPG gaming environments. However given the limited amount of material that an industry as new as gamification has to work with, Bartle's types have been used as a broad conceptual framework to help guide target market analysis and gamification strategy design in non-gaming environments. For a bit of balance, see Bartle's own view on the state of play with gamification here.

This is the first part of a series of posts on gamifying your business. Next week we'll look at defining your business, identifying your players and designing the core customer experience.

Until then, play nice!

Game On! Designing for a Playful Future

2011-05-04T10:21:00.003+10:00

I had the pleasure of presenting to the Creative Performance Exchange in Melbourne yesterday on applying the best of game awesomness to build greater levels of engagement, capability development and innovation in organisations.

I just love running these sessions with amazing, creative and connected people. I know my work is done when I see business executives wearing facepaint, a mask and standing on a chair singing, then leave the session energised as they are ready to take on the world. FTW!

The slidedeck I prepared is provided below and if you'd like to view the twitter conversations you can find them here.

Game on! Designing for a Playful Future

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Gamification Yin & Yang

2011-04-24T19:41:00.005+10:00

I'm loving the global conversations that are taking place around gamification, however much of the hype is still centered around extrinsic motivators that come with entry level game mechanics. But I'm not going there in this post as I've already ranted about this here and here. What I do want to share with you is the focus of the recent conversations that I've been having with my colleagues about the balance of the light and dark side of gamification - the yin and the yang.

There are two contrary forces in gamification that are interconnected and interdependent. The first is the 'light' side or the power of game dynamics to tap into our intrinsic motivators. When workplace, service or experience design is crafted around engagement, we are designing things that bring the best out of people.

Dan Pink in his well known TED talk draws on 30 years of cognitive research that shows the superior results we can attain in higher order functions or activities when we tap into intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivators. Borrowing from Csikszentmihalyi, Dan Pink summarises our key intrinsic motivators as autonomy, mastery and purpose - key elements of superior game design.

On the flip side, we have the darker side of gamification - or the yang.

As humans we have severe cognitive and visual limitations and we operate under an illusion of control. What this means is that we have less control over decision making in our lives than what we like to think. Behavioural economists have been onto this for a long time - we are irrational, illusory and our instinctual drivers boosted by chemicals in the brain such as dopamine, testosterone and cortisol drive much of what we do, and our logical or rational brain tends to rationalize or justify what we have done, after we have acted not before. Another great TED talk that touches on this is presented by Dan Ariely below:

So who uses this information? Marketers, advertisers and game designers for starters. So while gamification can bring out the best in people, it can also mislead and manipulate. Of course, as in yan and yang, there is an interconnection between the two. On the side on yin, educationalists, health care practitioners and community leaders are using game dynamics for the greater good. And then of course, there are marketers that are focussed on selling more stuff, real or virtual, whether you need it or not.

The future of money - Gamify it!

2011-02-17T23:02:00.005+11:00

Umair Haque's work is inspirational and his post on the future of money is challenging us for new ways of thinking on how we can rebuild our current monetary system to be more resilient and more sustainable. As an advocate of Edward Castronova's belief that economic policy should be designed to produce fun, I believe that the future of money should be gamified. Forget the IMF - let's call on Blizzard or Zynga for their advice.

Currency systems within games can be as complex as the real world (games are, after all, a microcosm of our social reality) however at their core, they reflect a lot of what Umair proposes as a three-tiered system of (a) a stock of value, (b) day to day transactions and (c) a real time unit of account, that are generally independent from each other.

A typical currency system in a game can also be divided into three broad categories - let's use World of Warcraft as an example:

Money: copper, silver and gold coins, obtained in quests, looting, selling, trading, that only have a numeric value.
Points: earned for achievements, honors and conquests that can be exchanged for items as a reward.
Tokens: badges, gear, artifacts earned for participating in quests and raids that you can sell or trade.

These three forms of game currency are similar to what Umair describes as having different volatilities and trajectories, as each has very different levels of supply and demand which are independent from one another, but interdependent on real wealth, long run productivity.

The future of money is already here. Perfected over many decades by millions of players around the world working collaboratively on a system that is fair, resilient, and above all, FUN.

Gamification ABC

2011-02-12T12:47:00.007+11:00

Last month's Gamification summit in San Francisco has inspired zillions of ideas, projects and connections. Bare with me as I process through them all as some awesome material is being developed as we play :)

One thing I can share with you now is an interview I did this week with Lin Jie Kong a producer of the ABC Television show GoodGame who are looking to do a segment on gamification. Here is outline of some of the material I shared with her on the basics of this emerging industry. I'll keep you posted when the segment will go to air!

What is the effect of gamification on everyday activities?

Gamification is all about engagement and improving user experience with a product or service. Even banal everyday activities which can be low on engagement and experience such as going to school, exercising, taking your medicine and doing housework has recently been gamified.

What are the pros and cons of Gamification?

Pros: introducing fun and playfulness of course! And what this focus actually does is put the person (user, gamer, consumer) first and foremost in product or service design.

We all know there are good games and bad games out there. Similarly, there are good gamification strategies and bad ones. It's all about awesome design. Pouring game sugar over a poorly desired product or service is not going to make it a winner.

You'll find that there are many game designers who are very critical of gamification because they believe that gamification is over focusing on the least important elements of a game - points, badges and leader boards. Without the deeper elements of engagement that are offered in real games, such as achievement, skill development, personal mastery, etc. people will get quickly bored with basic gamification tactics.

Where is the industry at the moment?

The industry is still new and emerging. A lot of research is currently been invested in what we can learn from games, particularly MMOGs, as well as research on what benefits can be measured from examples of gamification projects. All this 'evidence' on return on investment is important for the future development of gamification to industries and organizations unfamiliar with games.

Gamification platform developers and designers are forming partnerships with organisations to better understand business needs in designing games as a service. I’ve spent a fair bit of time talking to vendors such as BigDoor, Bunchbal, Badgeville and iActionable and it’s obvious that these guys are investing in the long term.

Where it can go?

Anywhere and everywhere. As a society we are now becoming more aware of the importance of meaningful engagement. Game designers have always known this and now businesses, government, not-for-profit organizations are trying to catch up.

Play With Me

2011-01-10T00:53:00.005+11:00

Just a short post before I head off to San Francisco at the end of the week for the Gamification Summit. I'm thrilled to announce a research project that I'm working on with Gabe Zichermann and his crew on games in the health and wellness industry.

We can't provide any more details as yet, however if you have any experience on how games have been used in this sector we'd love to hear from you. You can contact me through Gabe's company at: marigo@gamification.co or my usual email address.

But wait, there's more!

If you're in the Sydney area on March 9th, I'm running a gamification workshop that I've called "Games and the Human Mind". It will be run as part of the Brain Art Exhibition and Unconference and all proceeds will go to support young artists. You can book here however if you're quick, I have a few free tickets left for readers of this blog. Contact me at marigo@strategicgameslab.com asap.

The event has been organized by the inspiring Silvia Damiano, an international speaker and expert on neuroscience, CEO of About My Brain and author of Engage Me. She has organised an impressive group of speakers and facilitators that will run over 30 different sessions between 3-12 March on a variety of topics on how we can better understand neuroscience and how we can harness the power of our brains to gain better control over our lives. We hope to see you there!

Take me to your GameMaster

2010-12-21T11:19:00.004+11:00

I'm seeing less alternate reality and pervasive games lately and I've been curious as to why. However with the great progress being made by the functionality and affordability of augmented reality games and applications, it could mean a comeback for what I think are the most powerful of all strategy games - driven not by AI but by the most elusive gamemaster of all - the human mind, and in the most challenging setting - the real world.

My experiences with alternate reality games (which can also known as role playing and pervasive games) has been fantastic. They are fast paced, ambiguous, complex and you need to be "all in" in a physical, sensual, mental and psychological space. Online games don't even come close to this. However the advantage that on-line and augmented games have is their psychological safety.

Why do I say this? Because I've had some bad experiences with gamemasters who have not been up to the job and this has been the key failing of this genre. The game is only as good as the gamemaster and if the gamemaster is inexperienced, or even worse, a sicko, the game can be frightening. One of my worst experiences was watching a fragile individual break down, unable to process the unexpected emotions pouring out after the debrief and the look on the gamemaster's face when he knew he wasn't able to pull this individual together.

Trust is such an important issue in human-run games. New gaming technology and third party augmented reality platforms can now remove this layer of "human failing or error" but have santised the full potential of the mind games than can only be unleashed by other people rather than AI. But these are early days. In the not too distant future playing such games will become a discerning activity, similar to how we like to know the author of a book we are thinking about reading, the director and actors of a film we are going to watch. We are going to want to know who the game designer and the game master is of an alternate reality game we are going to play. Game designers and gamemasters will be the artists and heroes of tomorrow.

This post was inspired by a recent conversation with a brilliant young mind and designer Saul Goldman and friend and pervasive gamemaster and simulation designer Janine Cahil . Where would be be without all these amazing people who inspire me :)

Gamification: Wanting Isn't Liking

2010-12-14T09:28:00.006+11:00

The human brain is complex and understanding the underlying physiological and cognitive drivers enables game designers, web developers, organisational and instructional designers to develop sustained engagement and motivation.

Our brains make a critical distinction between wanting and liking. Wanting is associated with dopamine release as part of the neurological reward system in the mid-brain region that affects our motivation and drive to seek and acquire pleasure such as food, sex and gambling. Liking however is neurologically disassociated from wanting, as the hedonistic enjoyment of pleasure itself takes place elsewhere in the brain and within the central nervous system. The implications for gamification are important for sustained people engagement.

Entry level gamification elements tend to focus on stimulating hits of dopamine for which humans are wired to seek. These include winning points, acquiring badges, adding friends etc. The dopamine release is then complicated by other things happening at the hormonal level with the release of testosterone and cortisol as we are engaged in periods of concentration and competition. At this level, gaming elements have only engaged players with sectors of their brain that have no interest or connection with purchasing a product, using a web service or learning an e-lesson.

The transition of the player from the 'addictive' elements of gamification into a purchase or learning outcome is tenuous and requires a different set of design skills to entice the player to engage with the prefrontal cortex, where key cognitive decisions are made on what you like and what you will act on. This requires a more immersive experience.

The transition from the neurological wanting of a dopamine hit to the cognitive decision of liking and acting requires gamification elements that take into account a multiple of different perspectives that enrich human experiences. The elements of Csikszentmihalyi's 'flow' are central to this. A list of 10 key game dynamic elements that will induce a more immersive experience are as follows:

Psychological hook and buy-in
Personalisation and customisation
Searching and collecting
Status and competition
Feedback and improving
Dynamic challenge
Autonomy and control
Create and build
Surprise and discovery
Randomness and luck

A creative combination of these elements into a holistic experience will engage people beyond initial excitement into a more meaningful engagement with your game, product or service.

Creativity SOS

2010-12-12T16:47:00.008+11:00

I find it fascinating when working with business executives on a problem we are grappling with as they are all so quick to offer an opinion, analysis or judgement. However ask the same group to offer a creative solution to a complex problem and they either recoil in horror or politely decline in favour of a more traditional or measured approach.

Legendary researcher into workplace creativity, Teresa Amabile whose work I've been following since my undergrad days, recently wrote in the HBR on the Three Threats to Creativity . Her view is that creativity is under threat as people in the workforce are ill-equipped and their work environments are creatively sterile. Creative organisations need to have an abundance of three key ingredients:

smart people who think differently
passionate engagement of people with their work
a creative atmosphere that inspires and enriches

Now that's a list rich in intrinsic motivators and elements of flow!

I was fortunate to attend a couple of workshops recently in creative thinking run by the wonderful Don Miller at the Melbourne Hub and his view is the same as Teresa Amabile's - individuals, business and governments are losing their capacity for curiosity, imagination and creative thinking - the very ingredients we need to rethink our problems and develop sustainable solutions to complex problems.

In an attempt to introduce my 14yo son to amazing independent and creative thinkers (yep, had to get him away from school and his teachers to do that) I took him along to one of Don Miller's creative thinking workshops and the experience just blew him away. The combination of Don's expert facilitation and wisdom and engaging with a like minded and supportive group, had all of us operating outside of our comfort zones and producing unexpected results. At the end of the session, my son was the first to stand up to offer his feedback on the course. 'It was just awesome', he said shaking his head. 'What aren't we doing this stuff in school?' Why indeed.

If you haven't seen this inspiring and entertaining TED Talk with Ken Robinson, please take the time to do so as it puts into perspective how our school system kills off creativity in our kids. So by the time these kids grow to become business executives, what chance do they have when someone challenges them to develop a creative solution to a complex problem?

Gamification: Beyond Badges & Leaderboards

2010-11-20T13:10:00.005+11:00

The world is suddenly abuzz with "gamification" a new word that has been created to describe the use of game dynamics to boost customer engagement and loyalty. But on closer examination of of how "gamification"is currently being practised, it's pretty clear that its evangelists have missed the point about what games and game dynamics are all about.

Gamification as it's currently practised mainly uses points, badges and leaderboards as a means to engage consumers with products, services, applications or websites. The heart of the problem here is that points and badges are being used as if this is the stuff that engages and absorbs people with games. They're not. They are only the tools that are used to represent the final outcome of a quest, mission or adventure that a gamer has had to work hard to earn.

Games have inbuilt fail conditions that add value and meaning to the win conditions within a narrative that is designed to provide the player with an emotional experience. Slapping game mechanics onto a poorly designed product or service is not going to make it a winner. Understanding the human conditions of motivation and the neuroscience of engagement creates a meaningful user experience and customer loyalty - not marketing junk.

Points and badges on their own are shallow and a cheap trick. Over time, consumers will tire of them as what may start off to be fun will quickly become boring, especially to a generation who have been weaned on games and have developed higher expectations from online user experiences. However if you have desiged a product or service that rocks your customers world, chances are that you will not need any 'gamification' tactics to make your business a winner.

That being said, it's still early days and the art of gamification can only get better from here. As I have blogged many times before, game dynamics holds the key to reshaping human engagement and experiences for both work and leisure. Part of the reason I have eased off on the blogging in this space is that my time has been channeled into developing a book, games and courses - but more news on this early next year :-))

I will be attending the Gamification Summit in San Francisco in January next year. A few of the world's most awesomest game designers will be there - Gabe Zichermann, Amy Jo Kim and Jane McGonigal. Yeah! I will also be going some other techy stuff while I'm there, so let me know if you're in the area late Jan :)

Idea Vs Passion

2010-11-13T07:31:00.002+11:00

This week's highlight was news that a good friend and colleague earned first round VC funding for his tech start-up. Despite the fantastic news he was a little jaded after an altercation with another friend of his who wanted some rights or compensation because he had "given him an idea". My friend asked me an interesting question: You gave me more ideas than he did, why does he want some rights over my business?

All entrepreneurs and venture capitalists know that there is no shortage of great ideas, and on their own ideas are worth very little. It takes a special person to turn an idea into an awesome business and at the end of the day, it is the person behind the idea that is the star of the show.

A VC or any other professional investor will ask you for a 2 minute pitch before deciding to take you to the next level. In those two minutes they will know whether you and your idea have what it takes to (potentially) be awesome. The two minute pitch comprises of three equally important elements:

The Problem-Solution Equation:

Have you tapped into a real world problem and have you designed an innovative solution to that problem for your customers? Does it have a WOW factor?

YOU and your Team

What are your motivations? What are your passions? What is it that drives you? Do you have what it takes to go the distance? What is the quality and contribution of each individual member of your team?

Expertise and Experience

Have you succeeded AND failed at creating something out of nothing? What have you learned from both success and failure? What do you know about this product, this industry, your potential customers and your investors?

It takes more than one idea to create a start-up. And it takes a great deal of passion and drive to create a successful business.

So what do you say to those who don't get it? Nothing. A true entrepreneur is collaborative and inclusive and shares his or her curiosity, energy and enthusiasm with those around them. If people want to come on journey with you, fantastic. But don't take any passengers.

Altered States of Being

2010-11-08T23:35:00.008+11:00

Playing at the nexus of neuroscience, augmented reality and game dynamics can really do your head in. However developing dynamic applications for human-tech interaction and experiences is truly awesome and worth the temporary insanity that it induces. Well, I'm hoping it's temporary...

However seemingly new science and technology is actually imbedded in old ideas. A few interesting ideas I've been wrestling with in my altered states of sanity lately go something like this:

What is reality?

I'm reminded of Plato's Theory of Forms where he argues that the most fundamental form of reality can be found in intangible, abstract ideas rather than objects we can feel and touch which are only mimicking real forms. I love the allegory of Plato's Cave, the story of where prisoners are chained to the wall of a cave and can only guess at what is happening in the world outside from the shadows that are cast and the echoes reverberating on the walls of the cave that contains them.

Quantum indeterminacy

There is an essential incompleteness in our knowledge of our physical systems at the quantum level of reality. We cannot know all the parts of the system and nor does the system determine the values of each of the parts as they are each unique and indeterminable. The incompleteness and interminability of reality sits nicely along side Plato (albeit developed a few thousand years apart) in questioning classical assumptions and social constructs about what is real and how the world works.

Simultaneous, multiple dimensions

We live in four dimensions - the three elements plus time as the fourth dimension. It's argued by certain physicists and philosophers that everything exists simultaneously outside of time, and that space and time are created by the human mind as a framework to structure and explain our experiences. We've heard this before: Time is an illusion and we live in a multiverse of all possible universes, simultaneously.

Entanglement of Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
This is the very appeal of augmented reality. Intuitively we know of the different layers and realms that surrounds us, and now we have the early forms of a technology that can show us a tiny glimpse of what the multiverse might look like outside our heads.

Quantum Entanglement: the strategy of letting be

2010-09-28T21:08:00.007+10:00

I had a fantastic day last Sunday at the Melbourne Trampoline event, an unconference of 150 amazing individuals who came to share their ideas about what fascinates them most in the world. The conversations, connections and fun at the event helped to put some form around a concept that had been swinging around in my head for the last couple of weeks: quantum entanglement.

The physics: It's possible for a particle to interact with another particle in such a way that the quantum states of the two form a single entangled state. Each particle is dependent on each other in some way to the extent that each particle can't be considered in isolation of each other. One particle can affect the other without any form of communication between the two, regardless of the distance between them.

I love the metaphor in this. For me it says that separation is an illusion and that we are all connected, often in incomprehensible ways. The human paradox in this is fascinating - our nature is to be connected, yet our emotions often have us separated and disconnected.

The business metaphor is just as compelling. Our organisations have become so entangled - between staff, processes, systems, products, customers, competitors, suppliers and government, that leadership and management of our organisations has become complex task - or so we think.

Participants in complex adaptive systems are also entangled (see David Snowden's work at Cognitive Edge). Participants in such systems are self organising and co-dependent. These systems follow simple rules as the basis of 'organisation' is getting 'the rules' out of the way and allowing people to find each other and connecting in meaningful ways. You can't manage complexity with complexity. This is business strategy 101 for the 21st century: create a stimulating possibility space and get out of the way to allow people to do their thing.

Post script: I've noticed a lot of traffic from South Korea lately. Thank you for visiting & I'd love to hear from you. Email is fine if you prefer to not leave a comment on this site: marigo.raftopoulos@gmail.com :)

Brave New World

2010-09-19T21:18:00.014+10:00

My early experimentation with the Emotiv EPOC neuroheadset has been nothing short of spectacular. Not only are the implications for human-machine interactions and user experience and functionality revolutionary, but applications will hit the mass market sooner than we think with API like this already in the hands of developers. This is a quick short post on my experience so far...

Setting up the neuroheadset

The headset is fitted with 16 EEG sensors (EEG = electroencephalography, which is a recording of the electrical activity along the scalp produced by the firing of neurons within the brain). It took me several attempts to fit the headset properly so it could pick up all key signals, but once all the green lights were on, I was good to go.

Connecting with your avatar (Expressive Suite)

The first step is to record my unique expression detection signals. There is a universal standard pattern inbuilt into the Emotiv engine, however I had to 'train' the system by recording my own individual brain 'signature patterns'. Training included smiling, frowning, blinking, winking, laughing, etc. The avatar then mimics your facial expressions right back you. How awesome is that! The implications and opportunities for gaming and virtual worlds is fantastic - you can have your avatars become so much more emotionally expressive and move without even placing a finger on your keyboard.

Mapping your mood patterns (Affectiv Suite)

The Emotiv engine tracks real time changes in emotions such as engagement (red line in the first graph below), frustration (blue), meditation (green), instantaneous excitement (black) and long term excitement (orange, second graph). No need to 'train' the system to your own signature patterns in this suite as the brainwaves for these emotions are universal. Looking specifically at engagement, Emotiv picks up changes in alpha and beta wave activity which shows changes in attention, focus and cognitive workload. For me, the potential opportunities would be a huge breakthrough for applications in e-learning, on-line collaboration, games, product research and e-health (just to name a few).

The beginning of amazing new horizons (Cognitiv Suite)

This just Blew. Me. Away. The objective of this suite is to map the user's real time brain activity associated with the intention to perform a physical action. At the moment Emotiv can work with 13 actions and will only allow you to work with four at a time until you master them through continuous 'training' before moving on. The four everyone starts with is push, pull, up and down.

How it works: The virtual 3D cube in the picture below is suspended in the middle of the frame. I had to concentrate or imagine pulling the cube towards me and astonishingly, it comes flying towards me. Same with pushing it away onto the horizon, or pulling it to the top of the frame, or to the bottom of it. The cube is only an animated representation of your brainwaves to help you visualise the intended action. There is also a corresponding 'power meter' to the left of the frame that measures the strength of your brainwaves for each action. For me, my most powerful, fastest and effortless move was pulling the cube towards me and holding it there. Not so easy was pushing it away from me. This rattled me a bit as I can see how I play this out in real life - but more on this later when I experiment/test out my theory more...

The remaining actions include left, right, clockwise, counter clockwise, forward, backward, and one from the imagination - disappear, which is apparently the most difficult. It is within this suite that the amazing applications for mind-controlled machinery come into play such as the physically disabled being able to maneuver wheelchairs and other devices.

Emotiv has exceeded my expectations and I'm really excited about mastering the techniques in each of the suites before I can move into application development mode. I'll keep you posted on any inspiring and awesome developments :)

It is (un)written

2010-09-12T23:15:00.008+10:00

My deep-dive into neuroscience and augmented reality is unlocking all sorts of philosophical questions about the power of our mind and the fragility of our physical existence. A recent link that was sent to me by @nambor (aka Rob Manson, thx Rob!) to his research in this same space has triggered a metaphysical journey into art and culture.

I'll apologise in advance folks, this is a reflective post, I'll get back to BAU eventually...

Written in Water

Photo Credit: http://www.artexpertswebsite.com/pages/artists/artists_a-k/kooning/kooningwater.jpg

In 2007 I rocked up the Guggenheim in NY on my last day in that fabulous city only to find that it was closed on Thursdays. Little did I know that one of the pieces I wanted to see in the flesh was Willem de Kooning's "... Whose Name is Writ in Water" was actually on loan to National Gallery of Victoria and was waiting for me when I got back home.

What I love about this work is what Kooning is saying to us about the impermanence of our existence, that all things are fluid and in a state of disappearance. For this work, Kooning was inspired by the epigraph on John Keats' tomb, "Here lies one whose name is writ in water". Just like a poet, Keats didn't want his name on his tomb, just this simple, beautiful line to remind us that life is fleeting. Keats died at age 25.

Written on the Body

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kenzilicious/206084654/sizes/z/in/photostream/

The metaphysical is daunting for most, so we focus on belief systems, structures and rituals that earth us to flesh and soil. We carry our histories with us, unquestioned and unexamined as if they were prescriptions for the future - guiding and leading us to safe and predictable directions. It's the best that we can do to make sense of our existence. I love the juxtaposition of Koonings painting and the Moroccan henna body art - fleeting and ambiguous aside permanent patterns.

Written on the Wall

Photo credit: This is my own, use it as you wish, I'm not precious, if I was I wouldn't be here on the 'net

I loved The Clash and Joe Strummer was one of my heros. Not just for the music, but for his rebellion against the status-quo, the constant questioning of our social and political structures and the structure and predictability of our own lives. Strummer was constantly renewing himself to avoid recreating more of the same by 'disassembling then reassembling' himself. Strummer never made himself out to be an extraordinary individual - he just personified how any individual can create his or her own future.

So what are my key takeaways?

1. we are fluid

2. we have a history

3. we can be what ever we want to be.

And what has this got to do with where I started?

Hmm, not sure, but let me try this: Neuroscientists have a wonderful term, the neuroplasticity of the brain, and essentially it means that the brain is constantly changing with each and every new experience we have up until we draw our last breath (this is a recent discovery, dispelling the myth that the brain does not change beyond childhood).

So this sort of ties together my three take-aways: our minds, like our lives are fluid and fragile. They contain our histories but are not enslaved to them as we are constantly learning and adapting and we contain unlimited potential to create anew.

Post Script: My Emotiv head set hasn't arrived yet and neither has Rob Manson's. But check out the awesome new toy he is playing with while we wait, and wait and wait...

I am, therefore I think

2010-08-19T10:40:00.009+10:00

I love it when convergence happens. I recently wrote about inducing Csikszentmihalyi's 'flow' to inspire engagement and how flow principles form the foundation of great game design and exceptional workplaces. Let's take this a little further and look at how neuroscience and augmented reality can open new dimensions on human engagement.

Awesome developments in neuro-tech over the last few years have produced personal interfaces for human-computer interaction. Neuroheadsets (and related applications) use a set of sensors that pick up electric signals produced by the brain to detect and respond to player thoughts, feelings and expressions.

The neuro-headset promises an amazing way to interact with digital applications, such as:

using thoughts, feelings and emotion to create color, music and art
control and influence a virtual environment with your mind
experience gameplay at a new level of awareness and contol by using a smile or focus rather than a key stroke
control an electric wheelchair with your mind
gain greater market research insights into how people respond/feel about material presented to them

Can anybody else see where this is heading? Depending if you're a glass half-full or half-empty kind of person, this is the begining of a new era in mind control or human empowerment.

I'm hanging out for my headset to arrive (can't be used on a Mac just yet, so bring out your gaming pc). I'll experiment on myself and with my fellow collaborators and let you know where my inspiration flows.

My friend and co-conspirator Silvia Damiano has been encouraging me over the years to go deeper and think about behavioural and cognitive neuroscience in relation to strategy and game design. So a big thank you to her. Incidentally I'm speaking and running a workshop on change, strategy, engagement and the human brain at a BarCamp Silvia is running next year. More details can be found on her blog and I'll let you know closer to the time.

Viva La Revolution!

2010-08-15T16:53:00.002+10:00

Fundamental, systemic shifts are taking place in our economic and social structures. Many are still in denial that these changes will have deep and disruptive impacts on the way we live and work, but there are those of us who can see things are changing however we don't know how to make the necessary adjustments to ensure that we have a meaningful and sustainable business or organization into the future.

There is no easy answer, and the larger the existing business, the harder it is to make the changes. The video below emphasizes that we are moving towards a participatory society and organizations need to make the necessary adjustments. In my mind, humanity is innately social and participatory however the hiatus of the last 150 years of command and control, post-industrial business and economics introduced structures that were counter to what people would do naturally.

That's the hard part: 150 years of assumptions and habits that we need to kick and reconnect with what it is to be collaborative. Systems thinking warns that any changes we make to the system will be met by push-back to revert back to the established system or power base.

Therefore knowing what needs to be done is only part of the answer (the 1% inspiration). The hard work (the 99% perspiration) comes through dedicated belief and leadership at all levels to work towards building a system that is more innovative, equitable and sustainable.

Are You Ready for the 21st Century ? from Michel Cartier on Vimeo.

The Future is Now

2010-07-31T15:13:00.006+10:00

The social constructs that once tried to define neat boundaries around "reality" are slowly being eroded. Augmented reality is now showing so much potential to integrate with our lives to an extent where virtual reality could not even come close.

I was blown away when Pattie Mae and Pranav Mistry from MIT Media Lab, presented their augmented reality system at their TED talk in February last year. While I was in a complete state about being up to my ears in expensive games development, along come this amazing, inexpensive and wonderfully accessible application that could revolutionize how we learn, communicate and share information. I've imbedded the must-see TED talk below.

However there is a trade-off for everything. As communities we will need to address new social challenges and personal responsibilities about how we integrate enabling 24/7 technologies with what is in reality, a fragile human condition. The risk of information overload and synthetic sensory overstimulation is a severe social risk that the marketing low-life do not respect. In fact, much of the criticism thrown at augmented reality is that there is a lot of marketing hype but very little substance emerging from the tech to date.

Have look at this amazing video created by Keiichi Matuda, a Masters student at the Bartlett School of Architecture in the UK, who looked into the potential social and architectural consequences of new media and augmented reality in our day to day lives:

The implications are that new social skills need to be taught so that we can make the best of this amazing technology for the public good as well as private profits. We need to unlearn passive consumption of media and advertising, to being our own digital curators of the content we allow into our lives, and that which we create and share with the public.

Let Go and Let it Flow

2010-07-18T23:34:00.006+10:00

There's nothing better than the exhilarating feeling in being totally immersed, energized and absorbed in doing something you love. You feel amazing, you produce better work and you inspire people around you. You are in the zone, in flow. So, with stuff that good, we must all be aspiring to this state. Or are we?

I've been inspired by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's work on creativity, innovation and Flow, having recently revisited the conditions of flow from a game design point of view. These conditions are what inspire people do amazing things in any activity that engages them:

immediate involvement in an activity
setting of clear goals
autonomy and personal control
direct and immediate feedback
challenge matched to ability
intrinsically rewarding activity

However there appear to be a few pre-conditions to flow. Certain personality traits are more likely to experience flow in more frequent and deeper doses, such as those motivated to do things for intrinsic reasons (just because it interests me), curiosity (wow, how does that work?), persistence (not giving in 'till I get it), low self centeredness (teach me, show me how to do that).

And of course, environment plays a big part. To induce flow, the physical spaces in which we live, work and play need to be designed to simulate our senses and curiosity and to engage people with everyone around them. We've all seen pictures of the workspaces built by Google, Facebook, MySpace, etc they have created spaces that entice their people to enter, stay, play and love their work.

Everything written above may not be typical of the average worker in the average workplace, but it can be. The principles and conditions of flow are just a different way of defining ourselves and thinking about how we work that is more closely aligned to what makes us tick and what is real. The hard part is letting go of all the attitudes and behavior that have restricted our ability to connect with our flow.

Great game designers create an entire world in which flow is incorporated into every task for every level for every player, as they know how to engage and involve people. No-one sits around as a passenger in a game, everyone has an important, active role to play.

Now here's the best bit - player disengagement is not blamed on the player, it is a limitation of the game. Disengagement is not an option for a game designer. Why then should it be for a manager, a teacher or you?

Awesomeness in Shackles

2010-06-26T15:31:00.007+10:00

I love inspiring people to embrace their inner awesomeness.

The early stages of a workshop, like early childhood, are full of can-do attitudes, wow, and yes-we-can! But by the end of a workshop, when it comes down to actioning wow into real, the same people suddenly seem worn out and despondent. Some of the blockers that are typically raised read like this:

This is my list of seven deadly organisational sins.

There is a wonderful quote that systems thinkers use: A bad system will beat a good person every time. If we want our people, our organisations or our communities to be truly awesome, we need to start getting really serious about removing the shackles our heritage systems and structures have imposed on them.

Saving the World, one gamer at a time

2010-04-05T08:47:00.004+10:00

This is the face that could save the world...

and here are some more...

These are the faces we need to see in annual reports - not boomers in stilted poses dressed in suits, but gamers immersed in what they do best - immersive, collaborative problem solving.

Jane McGonigal in her recent TED talk raises the challenge for society to harness the expertise of online gamers to solve real world problems (you may know Jane's epic online games - World Without Oil, Superstruct and more recently with Evoke). Her contention is that the average gamer will have amassed 10,000 hours of gameplay by age 21, the same amount of time the average youth will have spent at school from grade 5 to the end of university or college. As Jane says, 'They're spending a lot of time getting good at something, but what?"

It's a fantastic thought - the potential to harness the skills of 500 million online gamers to solve real world problems that would be just as epic and challenging as EverQuest or World of Warcraft. The biggest challenge however is creating an environment in the "real" world that leads to collaborative problem solving - empowerment, engagement, team building, positive feedback, win-win goals, self determination. Okay, no-one said it was going to be easy...

However there are amazing economists looking into this challenge. The most awesome is Edward Castronova who asks the question: What would our economy look like if it was designed to be - not efficient or rapidly growing but just plain fun? In fact, why isn't economic policy design aimed at producing fun?

I'm in LOVE!

I'm reminded of the thoughts of another great mind, Peter Diamandi who believes that every single problem we have can be solved as long as we put ourselves in the right frames of mind. He tells the story of how the average age of the NASA engineers who designed the Apollo mission to the moon was 26, and part of the reason of their success was that they were too young to know what couldn't be done.

So while the boomers are sleeping, the Gen Zs and millennials are skilling themselves in on-line collaboration, creating global guilds and leveling in epic wins. And one day, they'll be ready and courageous enough to solve the problems the rest of us couldn't get our heads around.

Serious Games BarCamp

2010-03-06T08:39:00.006+11:00

A group of us are organising a Serious Games BarCamp in Sydney on Saturday 8 May 10am-4pm. Turn up at the AFTRS Entertainment Quarter at 130 Bent Street, Paddington for what will be a great day mixing with creative minds and sharing experiences, ideas and even starting up a new collaboration. Sign up here and make sure you get there early if you want to grab a slot to present a topic, lead a workshop or start a conversation.

A special thanks to Gary Hayes and Peter Giles from AFTRS who, as always, have given us their amazing support and encouragement. And a big thanks for our industry partners IGDA, AIMIA and EINet.

Look out for me or my fellow organisers - Matt Moore, Elyssabeth Leigh, Stephane Zerbib and Arul Baskaran and let us know what you're up to and how we can connect you with others.

90-9-1

2010-02-28T02:22:00.006+11:00

Does this number disturb anyone else?

This revelation about participation inequality in the eco-system of on-line communities came out years ago and I see it recurring in my twitter stream and in the online communities I belong to.

Just 1% create content? Only 9% edit content. And 90% are so called lurkers?

Reconciling this with the rise and rise of social media and on-line communities, as depicted in Gary Hayes' wonderful gadget below, I keep asking myself, how do the 90% spend their time on-line, what are they looking for and what are they thinking? Imagine all the untapped ideas, knowledge and contributions that are lurking beneath the shadows of the noisy few.

And BTW, isn't this the most amazing gadget ever? Kudos to the wonderful and multi-talented Gary Hayes.

Life in the Long Tail

2010-02-28T00:47:00.005+11:00

Enough has already been said on the long tail debate by Chris Anderson, Clay Shirky, Anita Elberse and all the bloggers that have followed them since Anderson's seminal piece in Wiredin 2004. However I feel compelled to write this about life in the long tail after several years of working with entrepreneurs and start-ups in their niche ventures with little more than a field of dreams strategy.

First, an old economy definition. The foundation of the long tail is formed by the Pareto principle or "80/20 rule" where the majority of observations (e.g. sales) are accounted for by a minority of variables (e.g. companies or product lines). Traditionally in business this has been driven by the necessity of economies of scale due to high production, distribution and marketing costs for businesses to reach high volume markets and the consequent barriers to entry that this imposed for smaller competitors.

Some key implications before we move on:

· Correlation does not mean causality. There are usually other unknown variables that are driving the 80/20 distributions through unobserved or unnoticed deep connections between several other variables. We can’t see them because most of us operate within existing restrictive mental models. That’s why we only measure what we know and the rest goes unnoticed. True innovators can see and make connections between things that the rest us can’t.

· Long tail distributions are observed at points in time and operate within (economic and technological) paradigms and do not necessarily transfer between paradigms.

· “Old economy” businesses are still the predominant form of economic activity and wealth creation. I know that sounds uncool, but that’s how it is at this point in time.

Enter Web2.0 & the new economy. Disruptive technologies, social media and business model innovations have empowered much entrepreneurial activity in the long tails of many industries. However making a living in the long tail is a different proposition.

According to Chris Anderson the Pareto principal will give way to a new, more even distribution comprising of smaller niche players. This sounds wonderfully democratic, but the implicit assumption here is that the price premium earned by the niche player in the long tail is sufficient to make a reasonable return on investment and that the niche player can stave off intense competition from fellow niche players through continued innovation.

However this is a significant challenge where (a) a significant proportion of business costs are driven by heritage industry structures and (b) customers are willing to pay a price premium for the perceived value of the niche player’s offering (c) technology use is focused on cost-efficiency rather than innovation and (d) driving and communicating a differentiation strategy amongst all the noise in the long tail.

Few niche players do this well, and the ones that do are true innovators with great business savvy that have a winning value proposition for their market. Surviving in the long tail means that you have keep doing it again and again.

Das Kapital and all that jazz

2010-02-21T13:52:00.006+11:00

What was Karl thinking way back during the depression of 1867 when he wrote Das Kapital? Was he really convinced that a new economy would arise from the ashes of the fatally flawed capitalist system? As a young economics undergrad, in the bowels of the musty university libary ('cos that's where you had to go, before e-libraries were invented, to find any books not related to economic rationalism) I thought so too.
Several decades later I found myself enamored by another young upstart economist writing during yet another quasi-depression, promising another death of capitalism as we know it style revolution (this time I'm reading his blogs in real time).

I admit to feeling a pulse whenever I hear cries for change and revolution, however experience tells me that true revolution, like true innovation is rare. Every economist knows that. Most of us wait for change to happen, very few courageously go out there to make it happen. And maybe this is what both Karl and Umair were getting at all along: if you want more of the same, do nothing. If you want things to be truly awesome, then it's up to you.

Games, Seriously

2009-12-07T17:44:00.003+11:00

Tomorrow I'm making a presentation on a serious games panel at the national Games Developers Association GCAP Conference in Melbourne. Also on the panel will be my buddy Ben Kilsby (Holopoint Interactive), John Welsh (Sydac) and Dr Shlomo Berkovsky (CSIRO).

While my presentation is about encouraging games developers to better position themselves for the potential growth in the market for serious games, the message is a universal one. We all need to think differently about how we do business in an era of disruptive technologies and shifting community expectations about business, learning and living.

And to make the most of emerging opportunities, we can all take simple but powerful business lessons from the game mechanics of Lara Croft, Tomb Raider (chill, this is just for fun).

There are four key tasks to mastering Tomb Raider gameplay:

Kill dangerous creatures or human attackers that get in your way (a.k.a legacy business models, tried and tested formulas, people who keep saying it can't be done)
Collect objects (a.k.a new skills, capabilities, alliances, people with a can-do attitude)
Solve puzzles (a.k.a innovations, creative solutions for clients)
Gain access to an ultimate prize (a.k.a business success, growth and diversification)

Life is a game, isn't it?

The slide deck I'll be presenting is imbedded below. A million thanks to the organisers of GCAP for the invitation to present :-) You rock.

Marigo Serious Games Preso for Gcap

View more presentations from Marigo Raftopoulos.

Social Business Design & the NextGen organisation

2009-11-08T17:08:00.006+11:00

A few months ago, whilst immersed in my doctoral research into the links between business design, workplace creativity, innovation and business performance, the Dachis Group announced the next big thing, 'Social Business Design', which has created much excitement in social media circles. Not exactly new, but hey, a party was starting to happen.

Social business design has evolved out of classical thinking about the social nature of humanity and how workplace organisation, management and technology needs to better integrate and adapt to the social needs and preferences of people. Nothing new in this, however it has recently become increasingly obvious that a more strategic and systemic approach is required as organisations struggle to integrate social media and other workplace collaborative tools such as wikis within existing (legacy) business systems and organisational frameworks. So this has understandably become a priority for social media practitioners and social software vendors. Kudos for the Dachis Group for bringing these essential elements together.

My own research concentrates on how business design can be used to develop more innovative and sustainable business outcomes through building social capital and innovative capacity among staff and stakeholders (with and without the tech). Creativity is at the root of business performance and business design is the mechanism to transition workplace creativity into innovation and ultimately business performance. So how does social business design make this happen? Through a mind shift:

Breakdown traditional structures to create "possibility spaces".
Processes are too mechanical - instead think of "creating experiences".
Ditto with systems - think "enabling participation and interactions".
Culture is too monolithic - think "creating communities".
Then knock yourself out and use the best tech tools you can find to make real collaboration happen - there's plenty of them around!

A wonderful case study to share with you: Several years ago Novartis Pharmaceuticals in Switzerland had refocused its organisational strategy to manage what it saw as competitive threats and to progress a sustainability agenda. Novartis believed that the best way to foster innovation was to build the intangible knowledge assets of its people and to reach their intrinsic motivation. The social business design of Novaris was then focussed on developing 'deep meaning for staff and unleashing their energy and enthusiasm'. The result? Production waste was reduced, staff motivation and retention improved, sustainability initiatives were developed, corporate costs were reduced and profits increased. Love it!

I'm making a presentation on social business design at a knowledge management roundtable in Melbourne later in the month. Here is a sneak peek at my presentation. Actually I've been a bit cheeky with the material here by using game design mechanics to illustrate what SBD is all about ;-) Let me know what you think.

Social Business Design Introduction

View more presentations from Marigo Raftopoulos.

Mind the Gap

2009-08-15T10:13:00.005+10:00

Knowledge and experience gaps are appearing everywhere and growing at an astonishing rate. This is a treat for those easily bored by order, routine and predictability. However for most, the gap between what we know and our next move into the unknown is terrifying.

It’s imbedded in our culture to mind the gap, just listen to it:

Mind. The. GAP. (aka Stop, look down there, the gaping hole on the ground in front of you, you're going to fall).

Not:

Leap. Towards. Destination. (aka Fly up there, to that plateau that will take you to the next level).

We live in turbulent times therefore we require a different approach to strategy and leadership if we want to make a difference in the world and to our lives. There are two key things we need to pay attention to:

Past patterns will not repeat or trend into the future, therefore we need to look for new, emerging patterns. Be open, be curious, we aware. Above all - unlearn then relearn.
Closed minds, groups and systems have stagnating knowledge and insights therefore its important to tap into the distributed cognition and intelligence of networks. Be fearless, be inclusive, engage in collaboration. Above all - let go then let in.

Working with people and tools that help you tap into emergence and networks will make traversing the gap a piece of cake. Trust me!

The Cynefin framework developed by Dave Snowden provides a useful tool for mapping the different environments in which people and organizations play. Know your environment. It provides the best indication of how you can get the best out of it:

Many organisations are now finding themselves moving from the more stable environments on the right hand side of the framework (simple or complicated) towards the left (complex or chaotic).

A strategy designed for times that enjoyed a ‘simple’ or even ‘complicated’ environment will not enable you to manage let alone innovate in times of complexity and chaos.

And this too shall pass...

2009-07-28T01:00:00.004+10:00

These really were great tools for business 1.0, but *sigh*, no more. Good bye old friends, it was great while it lasted. So what do business 2.0 tools look like? Who knows, time to get creative!

Check out Tom Fishbourne's blog for more great insightful cartoons, especially if you're a fan of Dilbert.

What business can learn from a game designer

2009-07-19T10:30:00.007+10:00

You already know about my involvement with the development of the serious game, Galapagos, right? Okay.

I admit to driving the games designers on the team (the wonderful, amazing, talented, clever and incredibly patient dudes, Joe Velikovsky and Chris Mosely) up the freaking wall. Joe and Chris keep telling me two things:

Games are emergent systems, and

Let the game tell you where it wants to go.

And I know the guys are right because replace the word ‘game’ with ‘business strategy’ and I know these two statements to be universal truths. What bugs me is that it’s easier for a games designer to get away with that advice; from a strategy consultant, it’s instant death.

I’ve been researching and playing at the edges of the games industry for several years now, and I have made a manifesto of what business strategy can learn from game designers. Here are the two key points:

Strategy is an iterative design

Strategy emerges through the interactions of people and systems in real-time. Therefore writing a five-year strategic plan then expecting it to be implemented five years later is nothing short of hilarious.

Games and software developers will tell you that the “waterfall model” of detailed, structured and sequential plans does not work. This is because you cannot know of or foresee future implementation difficulties or predict relationships and interactions when designing a system up front.

This is why games developers predominantly use “agile methodology” where games evolve through a collaboration between self-organising, cross-functional teams in real-time. For this to work, everyone involved believes in teamwork, self-organisation and personal responsibility and accountability. Chris Mosely, CEO of RedTribe, admits that this at times is like ‘herding cats’, but it works because you empower everyone to be creative and make decisions.

For example, many developers using the agile method use scrums – self-organizing, cross-function teams that meet to solve problems or create solutions. This term is borrowed from rugby, where ‘the whole team goes the distance as a unit, passing the ball back and forth”. Nice.

Strategy needs to be fun

The key problem with serious games is that they can be overly prescriptive with serious content that totally fails in engaging its audience. No engagement, no play, total fail. So why can’t strategic plans be ‘fun’ so we can engage? Why not?

Raph Koster has done some amazing work in his ‘theory of fun’ for game designers, but it also has lessons for business. Here are some important insights that I have borrowed and juxtaposed for business:

Fun (business strategy) is about exercising your brain
Pattern recognition is a survival instinct programmed into the human brain. Once we see or master a familiar pattern (business plan), we disengage because the game becomes boring and we move on
Puzzles (business strategies) need to have more than one right answer, they need to be like art and lend themselves to interpretation
Fun (strategy) is a process of discovering areas in a possibility space
The art of creating a game (or a strategic plan) is to simultaneously craft and solve puzzles that don’t have one right answer.

A wonderful quote from Raph Koster: There will be a class of player who prefers the comfort of only tackling the puzzles they know how to solve. In the caveman days the wolves got them. These days we are a bit more tolerant – the job market gets them instead.

Something to think about!

Tiger in the Cage: Learning Unleased

2009-07-02T17:31:00.004+10:00

Lately I've been inundated by by requests to explain the benefits of games in learning and strategy. Without doing a rehash of a previous post (or writing a thesis), I'll keep it brief and simple. Games give us the opportunity for self-paced exploration of issues through play in a safe-fail environment.

And why do we need a safe-fail environment? Because our traditional education system and work-place socialisation has made us all proficient in rote-learning and anal about exploring and making mistakes. Not the best preconditions we need for a future driven by creativity and innovation.

Psychologist Michael Apter proposes that adult learning and pleasure through gameplay is dependent on a protective frame around a perceived challenge. He has a wonderful analogy of a tiger in a cage to illustrate this point.

Imaging approaching a tiger enclosure: An empty cage will produce boredom for you. A tiger without a cage will produce anxiety. A tiger in a cage will evoke pleasurable curiosity and excitement. A serious game therefore aims to eliminate boredom and anxiety and stimulate curiosity and excitement.

Apter maintains that the frame, or the game, is the safe space in which the player can play and where the 'real world' won't directly intrude or have consequences after we play. The value here is in the experience of enticing human curiosity, energy and engagement to emerge from behind anxieties of getting it wrong or looking like an idiot. The learning comes indirectly through engaging people with all their capabilities and not limiting them to their fears.

People are naturally curious and love to learn. However the boredom and anxiety that our real world systems often produce prevent us from realising our full potential.

Let the Games Begin!

2009-06-21T13:24:00.006+10:00

Amazing news to share with you – the Galapagos team has been selected to participate in the finals for the serious games competition run by ABC and Screen Australia.

Hold-on, let me backtrack a bit…

In May 2009 the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) and Screen Australia ran a competition calling for serious games proposals. The prize for the winning team was posted at $325,000 to go towards the full development of their game which will be hosted on ABC’s website and on an international portal for serious games.

The concept of Galapagos as a serious game had already been in development over the last 18 months based on my doctoral research and business strategy experience. When the competition was announced, I teamed up with games designer Joe Velikovsky and a leading games development studio, RedTribe which is headed by the amazing Chris Mosely, and Marcus Gibson, a specialist sustainability consultant (and an Al Gore collaborator to boot), to prepare a submission.

A total of 53 submissions were received by ABC-Screen Australia and 5 finalists were selected to enter into the next phase of the competition – and Galapagos was one of those teams.

The five teams attended an intensive serious games workshop run by X|Media|Lab in Sydney 12-14 June and we are now given 2 months to produce a final game design document. The other 4 teams we met and socialized with over the three days are very impressive. And despite the fact we are all “competing” for the final prize, we are all winners.

On behalf of our team I would like to thank ABC and Screen Australia for this great initiative that supports the serious games industry, and for selecting in our team as a finalist. It is truly an honor!

I’ve established a separate blog at http://galapagosthegame.wordpress.com as a forum for collaborating with any interested members of the community who would like to be part of our extended team. Our final submission is due in August 2009 – come and be part of the journey!

The Emperors New Clothes

2009-06-07T01:15:00.006+10:00

This week I was rattled by a two day symposium I attended on climate change. The speakers were divided into two basic camps. The largest one was full of well meaning presenters that spoke about policies and actions and measures and metrics. Their focus was on adaptation strategies in getting ready for the effects of climate change.

The smallest camp (and by far the most interesting) emphasized the need for a fundamental shift in our thinking and a complete renewal of our assumptions about our socio-economic-political systems. Because our systems are in meltdown we need more than adaptation, we need wholesale renewal and reform.

Scientists have been warning us for decades about environmental calamity (that will lead to economic and social shocks) however our political and business leaders have let us down badly. Dr Richard Hames claims that we are floundering the the shadows of the old paradigm. The environmental and economic crises we are currently facing have been framed within the context of our current mental models and our 'leaders' are developing solutions that only continue to prop up the current aging paradigm.

Our post-industrial socio-economic system is based on linear thinking, a limited accounting system and flawed assumptions that are still touted as universal truths by lobbyists funded by industries that have invested heavily in the status quo that profit off our society's addiction to oil and coal and petrochemical products. These are the merchants that are spinning the cloth from which we are tailoring our climate-ready public policies.

Paul Gilding boldly spoke about business as usual as being dead and as a global economy we have hit the limits to growth. Population growth coupled with unyielding demand for material wealth accumulation has already exceeded the Earth's carrying capacity. This means that we will not see the recent past levels of business and economic growth again and that as a global community we need to get our heads around what that actually means. Paul claims that what lays ahead of us are major systemic and discontinuous changes and a transformation of every aspect of the economy.

So why was I rattled? Because the most enlightened and passionate speakers spoke of the the need for fundamental change in the way we think and the way we live. We're talking systemic changes in every individual, in every community, in every country, on every continent. I know how difficult that this and how long it takes just in the organisations I work with. Multiply that across the planet, and... how much time do we have again?

There was one important point that every speaker agreed on. The fact that we are experiencing an amazing coalescence of humanity on the issue of climate change. We have finally hit the tipping point in our communities and the leadership, innovation and initiatives at the grassroots level surpasses that shown by industry and government. I have no doubt that we have the capacity to change, but communities must be told the truth and vested interests must get out of the way of the truth.

Sadly though, at the end of the symposium I felt that government was handing out the emergency manual and telling me to do up my seat belt, put on my oxygen mask and take the brace position.

The things they don’t teach you at business school

2009-04-11T15:48:00.006+10:00

How many of you went to business school with high hopes then found yourself years later, in more debt and caught in the real world with your pants down?

Now I’m not saying that you’re wasting your time (and money) going to business school, far from it. I’m a knowledge junkie and a great believer in lifelong education. But knowledge and education don’t necessarily mean the same thing anymore.

Strategically, we manage within a paradigm and lead between paradigms. Most of our business schools are well versed in the ‘managing within a paradigm’ model but are hopelessly under-prepared in the ‘leading between paradigms’ arena.

I am so inspired by the works of Umair Haque who is in the business of radical management and strategic innovation. This is what he has to say about the where to from here for business and government:

Tomorrow will not be like yesterday. This is no mere recession: it's a tectonic global shift in savings, consumption, and investment.

20th century business isn't fit for 21st century economics. Yesterday's businesses were built for a world of overconsumption, artificially cheap production, symmetrical competition, and macroeconomic stability. That was yesterday.

Tomorrow's market leaders have new DNA. The next-generation leaders look and feel radically different because they were built for 21st century economics, not 20th century economics.

Lectures, case studies and exams (followed by hierarchies, closed systems and a lack of real accountability) aren’t going to cut it in this new world. Even Harvard is now an active participant in the heated debate over whether business schools are responsible for the current economic crisis. So where does that leave you and me with a degree that is almost as embarrassing as owning a V8 car?

My view is that the system is flawed but it’s not (yet) broken. We can still leverage what we have learnt about processes, frameworks and models to continue in our own adventures in enhancing, expanding, testing and sharing knowledge. Above all, we can all exercise courage in unhinging ourselves and joining Umair Haque in seeking radical innovations in how we lead and organise ourselves through the current paradigm shift we are facing. This is after all an amazing time in our history.

i-Simplicity

2009-04-06T00:49:00.006+10:00

As a systems thinker I am often accused of over-complicating and over-analyzing (mind you, usually by people who under-analyze...oh, think I just did it again).

The paradox in this however is that while I may 'over-analyze' at the beginng of the problem solving process, my solutions are usually simple ones, out of the box or out of left field.

However this weekend I had a wonderful experience of caught out after a seamless transition from a Blackberry to an iPhone. In my head I carried the paradigm of the complicated and drawn out experience of setting up a Blackberry device with my multiple email accounts and hooking onto RIM's system. When I went looking for this complexity in setting up the iPhone, I didn't find it and assumed that I would not have the same level of control and functionality. But I was wrong.

The meta revellation: I didn't see what I was looking for (complexity) and couldn't see the brilliance in the elegant simplicity that was right there in front of me. However once the new solution is obvious, the old paradigm is shattered and we all move on to another new level.

How many paradigms in business and government can do with an i-revolution right now?

Invest in entrepreneurship

2009-03-30T22:40:00.003+11:00

This post is a tribute to support Jasmin Tragas’ initiative to raise money for the entrepreneurial ventures of women living in poverty in the Philippines. Incentive House has kindly offered to donate $1000 for a total of 10 posts written by Australian bloggers for the cause. This is my humble contribution.

I have been a contributor to microfinance projects for many years now for initiatives in Africa and Asia. I suppose it is my way of reconciling my deeply held beliefs for social justice with my love of travelling to these amazing countries, and with the living I make as a business strategy consultant.

I’ll never forget the first time I really understood the impact that such projects have on the people that are directly affected by them.

It was my first project in helping finance a women’s shelter in Zimbabwe about 20 years ago. This shelter housed women who were survivors of abuse and poverty and provided the resources needed to make hand-made crafts, mainly jewellery, baskets, clay pots and figurines that were sold into the tourist markets. From the money they earned, they were able to send their kids to school, feed them, shelter them, and eventually pay back their loans. Money paid back went to start up another shelter, and so on.

A year or so after the shelter had been in operation I decided to pay them a visit before starting a trek across southern Africa. The response to my arrival was overwhelming. I was welcomed into the village with celebration and tears of gratitude. What little they had they wanted to share with me.

The shelter had created an entire ecosystem of trade and community building. Surplus income generated from the crafts was used to build a water-well and start a community garden. This then improved the health and well being of the community which attracted more people into the community and the shelter’s business grew.

My small investment gave these women and their families the dignity, independence and confidence that poverty and abuse had robbed from them. Never underestimate the power we all have to make a difference to the life of others.

Other great posts to read in this series are Gavin Heaton, Des Walsh, Matthew Wilson, KerrieAnn Christian.

Creative Visualisation and the Art of Business

2009-03-12T12:32:00.006+11:00

Business can learn from the arts. And this is especially true for entrepreneurs who are in the business of creating something out of nothing but an idea. So how do we develop such ideas, whether you are entrepreneur, a bureaucrat or a research assistant? Vincent van Gogh said it perfectly:

"I dream my painting, then I paint my dream."

Dreaming or visualising a new creation starts with lifting our thoughts out of the “what is now” to the “what could be tomorrow” and then taking definitive action.

This is easier said than done as there are conscious and sub-conscious limitations that hold us back in this creative process. What are these limitations? Entrained thinking, systems capture, self-limiting perceptions and fear (see my earlier posts on Thinking Outside the Fishbowl).

There is an extensive body of work and resources out there on creativity and innovation that I have discovered through personal research and post-graduate study. However far the most impressive that I have found is Theory U developed by Otto Scharmer from MIT. Here is an outline of the process of creative visualisation and action that stems from a deep dive into your inner most drivers of who you are, what you want to be and what you want to acheive.

The process looks easy enough but it isn’t.

(meaningful pause: if you’re looking for a 3-easy-steps-to amazing-mind-blowing-success-without-getting-out-of-bed-blog, this ain’t it. But if you’ve read this far, I guess you already know that).

This is a deep dive into your inner self:

1. SUSPEND: what you already know.

2. DEEPDIVE: into your material, your thoughts and intuition.

3. LET GO: of everything you think you know and want.

4. PRESENT: fix yourself in the here an now (not yesterday or tomorrow, now).

5. EMERGENCE: with an open heart and open mind, see what emerges, let the ideas flow and observe them. Don’t grab onto anything just yet, just let them float around you.

OK the above is actually the dream sequence – “I dream my painting…” The next is the action or painting sequence: “I paint my dream”.

6. ENACT: select the ideas and start planning, designing and creating.

7. EMBODY: the act of building, testing, recreating.

Note that all the hard work lies up front. I cannot emphasise this enough, Pareto's 80/20 rule applies. Without this groundwork, the outcome is severely limited. How many times has your organisation (or even you) jumped into action that was half-analysed, half-hearted and ended up a half-success?

The important thing to note about the U process is that everyone has their own way of getting into that space and into each sequence. You can do what Vincent did (get wasted in bars, lose yourself in unrequited love and cut off body parts) or find what ever works for you in harnessing your inner power to achieve your full potential.

I am currently working with two entrepreneurs using Theory U – one in the software space and the other in the animation business - and I use it myself in my new start-up business in serious games. We are always uncovering the different amount of ways our thoughts and actions limit ourselves and the growth of our respective businesses. And each time, we revisit the U process and discover something new about ourselves and where we want to be.

We keep bouncing around and fervently asking each other as we turn each corner, are we there yet?

But it’s not about the destination, is it?

Shout Out Social!

2009-03-10T19:47:00.005+11:00

The lovely Jasmin Tragas as once again organised another fundraising event Shout out Social! for Opportunity International Australia. Jasmin has organised a group of us to donate photographs and artwork with a theme of shouting out to the world about the things that concern us in relation to poverty, social justice or the environment.

The work will be exhibited at the Horse Bazaar, 397 Little Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, Saturday 14 March, 5 - 7pm. As an added bonus we will be having Shahin Shafaei speaking about how to use your creative skills for positive change. So if you live in Melbourne, please join us! Otherwise you can view the work that has so far been donated at our Flickr site and make a donation here.

Funds raised will be used to reduce poverty in countries like India, the Phillipines and Indonesia through microfinance and enterprise development solutions. In other words, helping people to help themselves by developing their entrepreneurial talents.

My humble contribution of four photographs can be found at the Flickr site. But I'll leave you with my favorite one below. Hope to see you at the exhibition!

In case you can't read the caption, it reads: Share the load, and the journey...it's going to be a long one!

Come Fly With Me

2009-02-28T19:59:00.008+11:00

While researching into the CGI animation space for a client project this morning I unexpectedly came cross one of my favourite quotes. It’s by Oren Jacob, Chief Technical Officer at Pixar studios talking about how the creative tension works at the studio when they put themselves under pressure to create something groundbreaking and innovative. In Oren's words:

“Making any of our films requires getting all the creative people together. We all hold hands and we jump out of the aeroplane, and we make our parachute on the way down.”

The quote gave me the same amazing buzz reading it now as it did two years ago when I first found it. I ask myself why the wow and buzz? (because it doesn’t seem to draw the same response from many others that I have shared it with). It might have to do something with being a curious free spirited rebellious gypsy explorer ENTP trouble-making dreamer. But it may have also something to do with my deeply held belief that

Good is the enemy of great: take best practice and toss it out the window. Take Risks. Dare to be different.

Then there were the other things that happened this week that built on this theme.

I was inspired by a presentation made by Stephen Collins, of Acid Labs (aka @trib) at Inspecht HR Futures, who had recently returned from attending TED. Trib's key take-home message was that the future is made up of unlimited possibilities and the only way to realise those possibilities is through openness, engagement, trust and motivation. The four key words that made up the essence of his presentation on breaking entrained thinking and action are:

Think. Re-think. Imagine. Re-imagine.

And the third ping I received this week was a quote that has been doing the rounds in my Twitter stream overnight, originally quoted by Stephen Covey:

Live out of your imagination and not your history.

Our histories, fears, limited experiences and prejudices limit our thinking and action, and we end up producing more of the same. This was not good enough for Pixar, why should it be for you?

If I have connected with you in some way over the last few years, you would have already received my invitation to come fly with me, let’s fly together. Many of you are already in full flight with me now, and I am so humbled by the spirit of this crew who are fearless, passionate and know no boundaries.

And even if you have politely (or even rudely) declined in the past, remember that the invitation is always open.

Project Death-Cycles

2009-02-20T23:48:00.007+11:00

While I was preparing a post on using game mechanics in business to improve engagement I was interrupted this Dilbert comic. Change of plan, humor wins over games. Given the time of year, while most organisations are beginning their annual business reviews and planning workshop rituals, I thought this might put a smile on your face, or compel you to think of an excuse to give your workshops a miss this year.

It's funny (depressing) how organisations work like this. Gary Hamel in his blog this week was lamenting at how management is the only science that is not actively seeking innovation in its practices or technologies. In Gary's words:

"But why do most of us seem so disinterested in fundamentally reinventing that technology? Why are we so often satisfied with “best practice,” when we should be inventing bold new practices?"

Don't ask me, I'm just a consultant. And Gary is a consultant AND an academic.

So come on, what's with you guys? Now you're not blaming your consultants, are you...?

Un-Managing Change

2009-02-14T16:20:00.006+11:00

Like most people, I always have an urge to LOL at the term ‘change management’. Change management is now big business and that is not surprising as the industry had emerged to clean up after mediocre transformational leadership practices in today’s organisations. In plain English: we would not need change management if we managed effectively in the first place.

Change happens and people adjust (it’s the Darwinism of business and economics) however we have erected onerous management scaffolding all over a fairly simple process. Staff may perceive this scaffolding as a trap and will find ways to evade it. Others will game the system by mimicking what you want to see and hear but to all intents and purposes, it’s back to business as usual.

So how do we avoid resistance to change in organisations? You need to ask yourself some serious questions about how you lead in three key areas:

• Trust. Do staff really trust you? Do you have a hierarchical structure, a paternalistic tone, and hidden agendas? Do your staff feel under-resourced and under-valued? Is your leadership team transparent and held accountable for their decisions?

• Empowerment. Have staff been given adequate levels of training, authority, encouragement, support and resources to implement change?

• Inclusiveness. Have staff been a genuine part of the decision making process? Have they been consulted, have you collaborated across the organisation, has communication been two-way, open and transparent?

If these three practices are done well and on an ongoing basis (as part of the organisation’s culture), we don’t need to 'manage' change, it just emerges. This way, more effort and resources will be put into areas which inspire staff to achieve, rather than efforts that police or parent them into submission.

When I listen to clients talk to me about their troublesome change resistant employees, nine times out of ten, the problems lie with the leadership team in not being able to engage staff with trust, empowerment or inclusiveness.

While I agree that on the surface there appear to be individuals that are resistant to change, we tend to avoid the systemic reasons behind much of this resistance. It’s too easy to write it off as passive-aggressive behaviour as it only blames the victim. When given the opportunity and the right environment, people can achieve amazing things.

Bushfires

2009-02-09T01:49:00.005+11:00

Sadly it takes a terrible tragedy to make us take stock of how lucky we all are. At the time of writing this blog, 100 people have lost their lives and one of my favorite places on this earth, the town of Marysville has been obliterated.

I urge you all to donate generously to the Red Cross appeal so that survivors can start to get their lives back together again. Photo was borrowed from the ABC's site at http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/bushfires/.

Sailing into 2009

2008-12-31T02:39:00.007+11:00

You really know when web2.0 has become mainstream when friends and colleagues send out their seasons greetings emails & tweets with their 'tags for 2009'. Never liked the term resolution anyway. In the final hours of 2008 I've been thinking about which experience had stood out the most for me in terms of how it had touched and inspired me. Luckily I was able to capture a glimpse of that experience in this photo:

The photo was taken on board a felucca on the Nile river, somewhere between Luxor and Aswan in Egypt. The young man in the photo is Mohammed and he is the captain of the felucca we lived, travelled, played and slept on, and fished off for several days. What I loved the most about this experience is the simplicity in which we lived on this vessel, the hours we spent just watching the water, the direction of the winds and currents, the farmers and villagers going about their business at the banks on the river. And at night we moored off into an inlet, ate a simple meal by candle light and were rocked to sleep by the ebbs of the river, the croaking of frogs and the occasional calls to prayer from the nearby villages. With all my stuff and gadgets a million miles away, I never felt more alive.

I have always been a staunch advocate of social justice, religious tolerance and environmental protection. For 2009 I am placing those on top of my list.

Spirit inspires creativity and innovation

2008-12-24T22:06:00.007+11:00

This time of year is also a reminder that we need to celebrate the divinity of the human spirit, that which is contained inside of us rather than external to us. And that we need to nurture this on a daily basis, not when rituals and calendars dictate. When we truly recognise this in ourselves, only then are we able to see it in others and this becomes the precurser to true community building and peace.

I'd like to leave you with an excerpt of one of my favorite poems by William Blake. No, I'm not getting corny on you. I often use this with clients when we're looking to bring more creativity and innovation into their projects. Away from the usual, clinical business-speak, I often use art and poetry to explore the amazing depth and potential of what we have in front of us:

'To see the world in a grain of sand

And heaven in a wildflower

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour".

What do you see and feel when you explore these wonderful words?

Peace, beauty and creativity to all.

Serious Games for Serious Business

2008-12-11T11:57:00.005+11:00

I was invited by Venkat Rao to do a guest blog on www.ribbonfarm.com. Here is that post in full. Enjoy!

Gaming technology, interactive media, digital entertainment and knowledge industries are converging to create new forms of learning. Learning 2.0 in the form of ‘serious games’ that allow people to learn new skills and experiment with different strategies in ‘safe-fail’ environments. Serious games build in safe-fail experimentation on the basis that through failure we learn more about the problem that we want to solve through adaptive learning. In contrast, ‘fail-safe’ environments tend to stifle experimentation and innovation through an ensuing ‘fear of failure’ culture that tends to develop in such environments.

So what does a serious game look like? Check out this demo for a game designed to train emergency response paramedics in case of a terrorist attack (warning! Scenes are bloody):

What I like about this example is the absence of narrative. It stimulates the senses and encourages the learner to shorten the time-span between analysis and action, as a delay in action can cost someone their life. Civil aviation, space exploration, military training and healthcare services have been using safe-fail training techniques for decades mainly due to the fact that failure in ‘real life’ is very costly in these industries. A virtual experience can never replace a real-life experience, however it can better prepare the learner through experimentation.

The corporate world has now adopted the idea of encouraging safe-fail experimentation in the workplace as a means to improve staff training, strategy development and innovation in increasingly complex and competitive environments. There are several examples of serious games used in the corporate training and strategy experimentation. While most serious games are proprietary, some free flash-based games for you to look at and play can be found here.

Learners are changing

Learners have changed yet our education, training and development techniques are still anchored in the post-industrial era that produced workers for command-control institutions. However we are now in the grips of fundamental transition as economies move from the industrial age into the information age and an increasingly complex environment of doing business. This new environment necessitates a shift in management style and new forms of knowledge and skill acquisition. These new forms can be found in gaming technology.

Consider this scenario. You may be surprised at how many of your staff members are engaged in critical thinking in on-line games such as World of Warcaft in their leisure time. Consider this typical scene:

The player in this scene (the glowing avatar in the middle of the screen) has choices to make about which quests to undertake given the level of resources she has on hand (displayed on the control panels on the screen), who to partner with (see the other avatars around her) to achieve her desired outcome of levelling (achieve a promotion).

If your staff enjoy entertainment games similar to World of Warcraft, then learning about work related critical thinking through a serious game is not a radical idea, but a perfectly natural medium. Consider this typical scene in a serious game:

This is a snapshot of a serious game that is performing the same critical thinking function as the World of Warcaft example above. The key differences however are that the design is suited to capture a wider audience (gamer/non-gamer, novice/experienced) and a more obvious learning outcome. In both cases, a safe-fail environment is provided to experiment with different ideas and techniques to explore all possible ways to achieve an end goal.

The systemic changes currently taking place in business and economics are coinciding with a significant demographic shifts with ‘baby-boomers’ leaving the workforce, with ‘GenX’ taking the helm in senior management positions and ‘GenY’ moving into junior to middle management roles. These two generations think differently to their predecessors – they are much more technologically savvy and value autonomy, self-determination and collaboration over hierarchy and authority; the very traits required to prosper in the information age.

So where do serious games fit in?

Imagination is more important than knowledge (Einstein)

Serious games have only recently entered the corporate learning and development scene whereas the military sector has been actively using serious games and simulations since the 1950’s. To place serious games in relation other learning and development tools, consider the following matrix that I have drawn as a broad overview of key learning frames:

Serious games have the flexibility and capacity to work across both structured and unstructured pedagogies and both formal and informal delivery mechanisms. What is not obvious in the matrix however is the importance of a blended learning approach and the value that can be provided by a serious game element in supporting an organisation’s existing learning and development strategies.

While learning outcomes and its measurement are important, serious games tend to be bogged down by dictatorial pedagogy (thanks to our current post-industrial model of what constitutes education, learning and training) that fails to appreciate that there are many different ways in which people can learn.

The next generation of serious games that is emerging is now focussing equally on fun and engagement and are challenging traditional ideas about how we can learn and strategise in business. Already the use of narrative and story-telling is now becoming an accepted practice applied to research and marketing as a different medium to understand markets and communicate with stakeholders. Serious games are a digital form of narrative and story telling blended with learning outcomes - and a medium that appeals to the next generation of learners and knowledge workers.

Implications for business strategy

It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory (W.E. Deming)

The main driver for a serious game in business is for the organisation to gain competitive advantage through a more skilled workforce. Or in the case of public sector organisations, the key drivers are to gain efficiencies in service delivery or public policy optimisation through a more skilled workforce.

Developing serious games requires a structured approach and one that starts with the organisation’s strategic learning goals. Based on the works of Clark Aldrich and Marc Prensky, a typical methodology for developing a serious game would look something like this:

· Set your strategic learning goals.
This is the most critical part as it sets the foundations for the game. Here we define the learning or training problem, a needs analysis and indicators of how success will be measured. For example in a current project under development we interviewed senior staff and ran a questionnaire across a selection of other staff on the issue of optimising business planning between partners in a retail supply chain. As a backdrop, research was undertaken into industry ‘best practice’ to benchmark performance in the game.

· Scoping the game
To scope the game we look at how staff will be engaged, how to motivate them with gameplay and determine how best they can learn the target skills or knowledge. In my example, many of the staff played casual games but mostly first-person shooters (and this is how they conducted their business plans in real-life!). So we decided to design a game around building a community, similar to SimCity, but still maintaining a competitive element in terms of who can build the best community.

· Reflection and comprehension
During gameplay and within the facilitated sessions, ‘progress breaks’ are built in to the game to ensure the player reflects on what has been played so far, what had been built, how they feel playing the game and ‘checks’ that they understand what has been learned so far.

· Feedback
At the end of the session feedback is given to staff in terms of a fun element i.e. a picture and printout of the community they built and more ‘serious’ feedback in terms of how they scored against each other and against what was deemed best practice.

· Coaching and review
To ensure that the strategic learning goals of the organisation are met and maintained we suggest strategies that the staff and the organisation incorporate into ongoing learning and development plans. Games can be replayed for continuous learning on a formal and informal basis.

Integrating serious games with strategy

Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand (Chinese proverb)

Serious games need to be carefully integrated with other parallel organisation strategies for them to be effective. Business strategy is often compromised by mismatched organisational capability and culture. The dynamic capability of an organisation largely drives its ability to meet its strategic objectives. Therefore the integration strategy should include the following:

· The learning outcomes of the serious game must be tied to your business strategy;

· Integrate a serious game into your organisation’s prevailing culture through appropriate staff engagement. This needs to be managed like any other change management strategy. Communicate clearly why a game is being introduced, what is expected from staff, and ‘what is in it for them’. Like any other strategy working in isolation, do not expect a serious game to change your staff or your culture.

· Game design and gameplay needs to focus on achieving target competencies.

· The perennial challenge is to ensure that your organisations culture is aligned with your required capabilities and competencies. Often there is ‘push-back’ from the traditional system (mental models and legacy processes) whenever something new or different is introduced into an organisation. This needs to be pro-actively managed.

Remember that a serious game is also a very important communication tool. ‘Telling’ your staff that they need to take a different approach or 'informing' them that the organisation is going to shift its paradigm is one thing. Introducing a serious game really makes that message crystal clear.

In the opening paragraph I spoke of convergence – of gaming technology, interactive media, digital entertainment and knowledge industries to create exciting new forms of learning. We currently have neat silos that keep these specialist areas separate from one another, however to achieve true potential of learning through serious games, we require a breakdown of the current mental models that create silos and the unintentional blindness to new and different opportunities that games can offer business.

In their leisure time, baby-boomers enjoyed board games which are linear, structured and played in small groups in one physical location. However their GenX and Y kids (and GenZ grand kids) have been weaned on MMORPGs (massive multiplayer online role playing games) which are dynamic, collaborative, on-line with thousands of individuals playing at any one time across all time zones. And above all, they encourage experimentation. Which model is a better match for the organisational challenges we face today?

Web 2.0 fatigue or a deeper malaise?

2008-10-25T17:02:00.000+11:00

Fellow Aussie blogger and tweeter James Dellow asked in his blog this weekend, is anyone else suffering from Web 2.0 fatigue? My answer was a resounding YES!

Technology has been the key driver of change in business and economies for thousands of years (albeit at a more rapid rate over the last few hundred). And while the hype, the evangelists and the sales-artists touting for the 'next new thing' come and go, the fundamentals of business strategy and entrepreneurship have remained in tact.

However I don't blame the evangelists & sales-artists for the Web 2.0 hyperbole. Sadly this is a symptom of a modern management tendency to look for the 'quick fix' and engage in reactive decision making rather than deep strategic thinking. All too frequently business leaders look for the rabbit-out-of-a-hat solutions (often from external consultants) because it is easier. And because everyone else is doing it. And because they are rarely held accountable. And because that's what their MBA education taught them. And as I watch the world economy spiral downwards into recession, I wonder, are we all okay with this?

Think Outside the Fishbowl - The Sequel

2008-10-23T16:12:00.000+11:00

Due to popular demand I am following up on a blog I had written a few posts back. It's hard to pick the stories that touch a nerve in people (otherwise we'd all be writing best sellers) but judging from the tweets and emails I received it appears that Thinking Outside the Fishbowl had touched those of us who have found ourselves tapping on the glass of the bowl to be let out - or let in. Yes, let in I said. Because lets face it, life is a paradox. We push for freedom and creativity yet we occasionally feel the pull of that pervasive need for safety and security.

Here are some basic tips about thinking outside the fishbowl:

Thinking outside the bowl is a discipline
Catch yourself thinking whenever you feel good, bad, angry, happy, sad and examine where this thinking has come from. We form cognitive imprints and mental models from an early stage in life and then we spend a lifetime confirming them without really examining them. Get into the discipline of examining your thinking. Stop, listen, think, question, understand, then move on.

Thinking outside the fishbowl takes courage
The art of thinking differently does not happen outside of yourself. It is in your soul, it is in your DNA. That is, unless it frightens you(and thereby you remain in denial and back in the bowl). This is why we need courage to stand out from the crowd. To think different is to be different.

Thinking outside the fishbowl requires you to swim at your own pace.
This is not a race, there is no destination. There is only a journey and the wealth you accumulate through your life experiences. It is your journey.

Swim in diverse schools
Immerse yourself in the symphony of color and movement around you. Seek out difference in perspectives, be part of the conversation along the way, share your journey with others.

Know when to let go
You can't control the tides and currents as these are influenced by factors outside the ocean itself. You can only be a beacon to those around you, but you must leave them to their own journey.

To those of us who tap on the glass of the bowl: in or out, that is the eternal question. Yes the ocean is tretcherous but the bowl's safe water is stagnant. But for me it's only the ocean. Live it short and live it sweet. Be free.

Two Degrees of Separation

2008-10-04T14:33:00.000+10:00

We have all heard of 'six degrees of separation' and have felt amazement when we discover how close we really are connected to one another. But six degrees was before Web2.0. Now, according to Valdis Krebs, it is more like two degrees. I am just as smug as the next person at my accumulation of contacts in my Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc etc etc accounts. But please, let us keep that in perspective. Take a look at this video. How well connected are you really? And what meaning and purpose is being derived from it?

Web Strategy Tango

2008-10-03T14:37:00.000+10:00

Before I commence let me declare my interests up front and in order of significance. I am a poet, philosopher, thinker, alchemist and only a wannabe geek. Therefore my approach to working with clients on their business strategy will always start with three key questions: what business are we in? Who are are stakeholders? How are we creating value?

The questions appear simple enough, but all too often I hear solutions before we get a chance to map the landscape. And today in the age of Web 2.0 organisations are jumping to solutions well before they have determined what exactly is going on in their business. And this is happening across the whole gamut of my clients - from government departments, to corporate monoliths, to shiny new start-ups. Organisations tend to react before they think and all too often they seek quick fixes that create another set of problems elsewhere in their business.

We have an amazing array of web based social networking, media and knowledge management tools at our disposal now - however we need to keep these in perspective. They are tools, not solutions or proxies for savvy business strategy. Take a look at this holistic approach to developing a web strategy:

There are a host of issues with this chart (it was developed by a Forrester web-strategist)but let's focus on the key message which is that an organisation needs a balanced portfolio of strategies. The key word here is BALANCE. My tips are as follows:

1. Use Web2.0 applications appropriately and wisely. For example, corporates on Twitter are a complete embarrassment because they don't get it - Twitter is not a new free channel for you to continue your old school "PR" preaching, it is about conversations 2.0. You must understand the technology you are adopting.

2. Employ experts only in their area of (proven) expertise. There is an astonishing number of so called "social network and social media strategists" that have sprouted out of no-where (and yes, all of them are on Twitter!). Many of them are dodgy and are sticking their nose into marketing, stakeholder relations, product development and business strategy. Check their credentials. And if they laugh in your face when you ask about metrics, show them the door.

3. Business strategy. This is where it all starts and finishes. Use all the tools and experts you need to enable strategy, but don't allow them drive your strategy. Leadership, vision, entrepreneurship, learning and collaboration are those old fashioned human qualities that have been at the heart of every single innovation over time. Honor them and continuously develop them in yourself and your stakeholders.

Think outside the fishbowl

2008-09-27T22:18:00.000+10:00

I'd like to start with sharing this wonderful comic that I found on a government department website here in Australia:

How often do you see this in the workplace, at home, among your friends, in government? Probably more often than we care to admit. Is it that the world is so small, or is it that we swim in small circles? My guess that it is the latter, and this is the reason why we find it so hard to think outside the fishbowl.

I have worked with many clients on projects that required their organisations to think and act outside of their comfort zones in order to improve their service or competitive position. On most projects we managed to score some reasonable sustainable gains however in all cases, we had underestimated the pervasive hand of legacy systems and culture that countered any movements towards change at every step of the way.

I almost began to feel that it was me (i.e. perhaps I was an ineffective consultant) until I went to Boston in March of this year and found out that Peter Senge, Edgar Shein and Jay Forrester all experienced not only the same problems, but also the same feelings of self doubt. How do we change a system and a culture that doesn't allow you to change it? The answer is that you don't, because you can't. The best you can do is to make sense of the situation, encourage conversations, make connections and select leverage points for interventions.

The now dated 'change management' and 'business re-engineering' tools are no longer suited to the economic, business and social ecosystem that is now evolving. The brilliant work of Valdis Krebs shows us that the old industrial economy was driven by economies of scale (and old school management and consulting tools seemed to work well). However the new information economy is driven by the economics of networks, and this requires distinctly different management tools. Krebs, and others, maintain that our knowledge economy operates on the complexities of our connections and our networks. And at this point in time, many organisations still have the neat, mechanical hierarchies sitting on top of the complex networks of information flows and knowledge sharing.

To be successful individuals and organisations in a networked, knowledge economy requires a different mindset and different ways of thinking and working to what we have done in the past. The fishbowl we choose to swim in is merely a construct of our depth of vision, fear and limitations. The choice is ours to make - the bowl or the ocean?

Too long between posts

2008-08-24T19:56:00.000+10:00

That's what travel does, breaks routines and habits...and a good thing that is. I had to leave my baby Vaio behind given that we were to spend most of the time off the beaten track in Egpyt. I was also under orders from my osteopath to lay off the computer/mouse combo as I'm showing symptoms of RSI along the tendons of my right arm. Nasty. And it was only when I arrived overseas that I found out that mobile blogging doesn't work on a Blackberry. A conspiracy of sorts. Anyway I am back and more determined than ever to reinvent. Like I tell my children, I still don't know what to be when I grow up. They only give me that look of distain that tweenies have and say to me...you are so random.

I have had to let a few clients go this year and more is in store. A very difficult thing to do when you are self employed and in an economy on the brink of a slide. However I draw inspiration from people around me. My wonderful friend Ralf from Germany and I regularly Skype for sanity checks that we are doing the right thing in not selling our souls to clients who are looking for more of the same 'wham bam' type of consulting. And there are my colleagues in the two organisations that I am affilitated with - Society for Organisational Learning and Cognitive Edge. Peter Senge and David Snowden are true inspirations.

Oh, I haven't spoken about my trip to Egypt yet. It has been 20 years since I was there last, and it has changed enormousy. Last time it was pretty hard going walking across rocky outcrops and deserts in full sun carrying your own stuff and maybe the occaisional donkey to help out. NOW, there were sealed roads, carparks, courtesy buses, sheters, cafes and armed guards at every turn. Comfy but not the same, but the country and its history is spectacular as ever.

One short anecdote to share. We had to live on a felucca on the Nile for a few days in very basic conditions...sleep, eat, live on the felucca, not toilets, you get the drift. Our guide Mahmood was amused by all the gadgets we brought out with within 5 minutes of setting sail (all our batteries died within a few days so eventually we all went cold turkey). Mahmood took a shine to my son's PSP, listening attentively to what it can do...play games, movies, connect wirelessly to my Blackberry, connect to our camera, connect to the wireless internet of the hotels we passed along the Nile. Mahmood couldn't contain his laughter, and when he managed to draw breath he said... and they think that aliens built the pyramids!

I have much to share on the wonders of web2.0, social media and gaming on the future of management consulting, but more on that next time.

The end of business as usual

2008-07-03T12:01:00.000+10:00

I'd like to start with a quote from that wonderful book, The Cluetrain Manifesto (Levine, Loche, Searls, Weinberger, 2000): Markets are conversations. Trade routes pave the storylines. Across the millennia in between, the human voice is the music we have always listened for, and still best understand.

This passage took me back to my travels in north Africa (I've been a nomad of sorts since way back) as I immersed myself in the crush of the narrow, winding streets of the souks where merchants, craftsmen, traders exchange goods, services and stories. My first experience in a casbah was a significant one for me. The cacophony of voices, the smells of spices, the braying of donkeys, being seen, watched, and invited into the coffee and tobacco dens... this was a sneak peek into how we started the art of business thousands of years ago. Transport this forward to the meeting rooms, the water coolers, the staff rooms, the cafes, the web, and we find that our natural drivers of curiosity, connection and conversation still form the foundations of the art of business today.

But it has not always been this way...the art of business had suffered a setback over the last 100 years or so (I know, a mere drop in the ocean, or desert, considering the average age of a north African casbah is thousands of years). We meant well I'm sure, but our predilection for management as a "science", management by MBA, management by academic theory, and management by killing off the capacity of people to be curious, to make connections and to have meaningful conversations with each other, had created a disconnection. And management consultants only helped perpetuate this.

Today we a part of a new era where this disconnection is breaking down, because we have all had enough, and because web2.0 technology has enabled us reconnect and help make more sense of the world we live in. There is a new breed of management consultants out there that are part of this renewal. Most of us had served time in the big traditional firms, others had left the stifling hierarchies of traditional businesses, but all of us have gone out on our own because we knew that there is a better way.

Back to the Cluetrain Manifesto ...we are entering an era that spells the end of business as usual. I am extending the open doors and open minds of this Casbah as a meeting place for those of us who want to exchange views, ideas and experiences or even drop in for a sanity check from time to time.