Might gamification make your company thrive?

Note: This posting is based on my weekly “Thank God It’s Monday” which is offered to help companies thrive!

This week’s focus: gamification

I’m just back from the Gamification Summit 2012 in San Francisco. If there was ever an expression that fails to connect with its essential essence, it might be “gamification.” The Chief Scientist for Salesforce.com, PJ Rangaswami, opined that many people who could have benefited from attending the summit likely didn’t simply because of the name.

My big take-away is that gamification is about offering and giving people status, incentives and rewards to realize better work performance and incentivizing desired behaviors and business outcomes. Rewards can ranges from a Starbuck’s gift card, cash rewards, dinner with the CEO, the opportunity to be part of a team of your choice, a 3-day weekend, etc.

Charlie Kim, CEO of NextJump, used gamification to drive better employee fitness which they have correlated to better individual, team and company performance. Over a period of several years and numerous fits and starts, they now have 80% of their team exercising at least twice a week in company gyms. Gamification was key to driving this.

The gamification industry is in it’s infancy and a trend worth watching. Gamification is predicted to become a standard enterprise tool by the top Global 2000 companies by 2015, generating about $2 billion in software and implementation services revenue. Current technologies are really tool kits that require implementation assistance and guidance. Implementation should be viewed as iterative process that has the potential to improve over time based on feedback and assessing results.

Will gamification help your company thrive? Properly designed and applied, it just might.

Thought for the week:

“The really idle man gets nowhere. The perpetually busy man does not get much further.” – Sir Heneage Ogilvie

What do you think? I welcome your blog comments!

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Dave Gardner, Gardner & Associates Consulting

http://www.gardnerandassoc.com

© 2012 Gardner & Associates Consulting  All Rights Reserved

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