As a gamification expert I was recently asked, but what have you gamified in your business and beyond. Well quite a lot to be honest, I think I was that kind of motivated to set myself mini-quests and challenges throughout all of my career and life in general with rewards to strive for.
The visual gamification when you are looking at my business website is the captain up plugin which allows people to gain points when they share and view content, which we obviously also encourage by having share buttons on each of our blog posts. We do our best to socially communicate and build a following through all of our social media accounts. Where possible we use creative story-telling like for example in our Dr Doom free webinar to engage as well as educate.
In the courses that are for sale, we have added in progress bars, we will be adding a better storyline, badges and quests. In fact we are reworking a lot of these. But our first internal quest was to have the video elements recorded and sequenced and then refine, we like our agile approach to a sprint finish, so the next sprints will be revealed to those that buy. So if you would like to see our eLearning gamification grow, the paid courses is where you will be able to follow that progress.
When we meet clients to brainstorm about their gamification, we play storm in fact. We use games and game-like features to discover processes that are ready for gamification and how the client wants to see them work. We believe the best form of gamification should always play on the voluntary participation element or the intrinsic motivation of people. So we will always play with how to achieve this for clients. In my view most people in work will want to give a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay and be proud of their achievements, so the key is to tap into some of the motivational elements behind this.
Up until the end of February I was also listed as a gamification guru on a leaderboard, however from the beginning of March the people behind the board chucked me out, because I was deemed to be a business. Personally I am a not happy with this and as a fellow guru said on social media, in the end of the day everyone on the list is a business. For me it was an external measure of social media success, because effectively that is what the board tracks. It doesn’t track actual successful projects, happy clients or money in the bank, which in my view are better measure of business success, but not so easy to find out. We have therefore decided to opt out, because what is the point if a leaderboard isn’t equal for everyone. We see our social media as a way of marketing and creating a following with potential contacts that we hope to do business with in the future, a leaderboard will not change that.
We have internal tracking boards with rewards attached for number of clients, successful projects and money in the bank. Actually the software FreeAgent, which we use for our accounting sends us a Monday motivator message to let us know how much money we have to collect or coming our way, which is a nice touch.
As an individual I already shared in a previous blogpost, how I use the Jantastic challenge to keep me on track for my running. I also work this way when it comes to work tasks. I try to match a task with a reward, even if that reward is just a break or a happy dance or sometimes a bit more indulgent such as a sauna visit or a glass of wine. I do try to keep it proportionate to the task. Finishing a blog post or finishing a book are rather different. I also set more fun rewards when the task I am doing is particularly boring and will take a bit of will power to conclude.
I opted into a health insurance that provided money back when I ate well, exercised, etc, which as it is now renewal time turns out to be untrue. A bit of negotiation going right now.
I am sure that there are many more elements I do, to make sure the business, productivity and my life in general is a pleasure.
What do you do to gamify your business? or your life?
