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Why leaders should be inspired by online games

April 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A friend told me about Jane McGonigal’s Ted talk a few days ago, and this morning I finally had time to watch it. Believe me, you should no wait that look, you should drop everything right now and see it. Because if you are a online gamer you will learn about your possibilities and the education you have done, and if you are or will be a leader you will learn of what you should do to get the people you work with as passionate about what they to as an online gamer can be about the game.

Jane talks about how the ideas and wisdoms one can draw from online gaming can be used to save the world and I believe that it can be done. But more than that I think that her ideas can safe people’s daily drabness. If we could design work environment where we where contantly encouraged for what we did, like we are with skills in WoW, we could level more in real life to.

For example, If I’m a person who is terrible with numbers and great on speaking in front of people, I would already have a high skill on speaking but not on numbers. Then in my work place I could be encouraged to get even better at speaking, but also to improve what I’m not good at, and get points for everything I do which for example could give me a higher salary or a longer vacation. Perhaps one should get bigger rewards for developing the skills we are worse at.

Now, I know that some companies have grading systems similar to what I just said, but I think they are built in the wrong way. If you build them like games they could actually trigger the gaming feeling in everyday life and all of us could work to improve ourself.

Another point that Jane makes is that in gaming we are always trusted to complete the next challenge, and we always get challenges that are on our level or slightly higher. I think this is perhaps an even better lesson. As a leader you should trust your employees to complete their challenge and evenly important, you should make sure they know that you trust them.

Now, I should stop blabbering, and you should watch:

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No more multitasking – just answering is the key to productivity

February 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Multitasking or doing one thing at the time. Working early in the morning or working-out before work. The theories on how to be most productive are many and sure you can try all of them to see which makes you most productive. However, it is my firm believe that everyone has their own way of accomplishing their highest degree of productivity and it this does not necessarily mean that it won’t change depending on the circumstances.

Having that said, I thought I would share one of the thing that many people ask me about. “How the h**l do you have time for everything?” I’m believe in completing one task at the time to do them at the fullest, but I also believe that you should never let your team members wait for an answer of a question you can answer in less than 15 minutes. (Which might be why a colleague one’s reminded me to answer an email I’ve received 8 hours earlier)

My theory is this: If I am focused on one thing and trying to fix this and I get stuck because I need information or knowledge from one of my team members, I tend to want it as soon as possible rather than the next day. That might mean that my colleagues have a similar idea.

Giving is getting – or what do they say? If I learn how to answer their questions while still focus on my bigger task, I can help them stay focused and the processes can continue while I’m not focusing on the exact same thing as they do. As an example, imagine that you have two project running parallel with different people on them. If I can answer a quick question for project B, that one can keep going while I’m focusing on project A.

Thinking like this have made risen my level of productivity significantly for a number of reasons:

1. Projects I work on rarley “get stuck”

2. People tend to answer my questions fast as I do the same for them

3. I can have many things running parallel

Sure this have it’s down-sides as well. As an example, people tend to ask me questions they know that others can answer as well, simply because they know that I’m likely to answer faster.

Either way, try once or twice to think like this when you are really focused on what you’re doing and “you” might be able to get even more things done.

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Introverted leaders doesn’t have proactive workers, good listeners do!

February 6, 2011 By 2 Comments

I just finished reading an article from the December issue of Harvard Business Review called “The hidden advantages of quiet bosses”. The article discusses the benefits of introverted leaders compared to extraverted leaders and focuses on who will have the most proactive workers.

The author Adam M. Grant argues that introverted leaders makes better leaders as they have more proactive workers. While extraverted leaders have less proactive workers as they tend to feel threatened by them. I cannot help but find this quite a strange claim because in my mind, workers do not become proactive because they have the room to be proactive. They do it because they feel encouraged and inspired to do so. Sure leader who feels threatened will not have proactive workers but I do not think being extraverted means feeling threatened by proactivity. I find that a big generalization.

Instead I want to argue that leaders that are good listeners are those who will have the most proactive workers. Because they will not only allow a worker to be proactive but they have a higher chance of encouraging their workers to be proactive as they will feel that they are noticed for it. Leaders which are good listeners will give workers the space and attention necessary to become proactive.

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