You donât have to guess my name anymore. Itâs Bart.. I work for an ICT service company CTG and live in Belgium, which is the surroundings of Brussels, as You all know.
Iâm a gamificationpractioner for more than 10 years. CTG Project Managers are not allowed in our training room but are dropped in Belgium largest reservate where they have to build a theme park. I make them sleep on an antique german train to learn budget management, I throw them off the train to learn them change management and I eliminated all project management software tools and gave them post its instead to make project planning. In small teams they have tobuild a theme park within scope, budget and time.
Butâs what puzzling me is how can I really convince my mgt and our customers. Because you had to be there to be convinced that gamification is more than just fun. But the hard part was to convince all the other, the once that only hear the funny stories but were not thereâŚ.
Becausethereâsstill a lot of convincingto do.because gamification suffers from the same effect as windmills in europe. I donât know what the general opinion on windmills is in the US. But in Belgium, , windmills and gamification suffer from the same effect, what I call the NIMBO effect. Yes windmills and gamification, they both sound interesting, let the others do that, but donât you dare to implement that in my BACK Office. NOT âŚIn âŚ.My ⌠Back ..Office. Thatâs the NIMBO effect. Thatâs where most European companies are when in comes down to Gamification.. and windmills.I will start with Number 4, then the number 3 and Number 2. And Just to keep you awake on this graveyard shift,. I will reveal the worst and best way of making that business case at the very end of this session.
Especiallyforyou I created a top 5 of strategiestoconvinceyourorganization of gamification.
On number 4, ROI calculations.I did that, did not help be that much. Quanitfying all the gains, the capex, opex,⌠all that stuff. Because it was too easy. ROI was to good to be true. Return came too fast.. So mgt doesnât buy it. I will post the ROI templateon my blog very soon. But remember calculating when the investments is earned back is not enough to convince your mgt.
Youalso have to prove thereâssome new profittobe made. Thatâswhyyou have toinvolve the customers. What I did was to sent out a contest directly to our customers. Not via sales, not via brochures but through social media. Itâs free and easy.I gave a way a free seat for the the next PM to a customer. They only had to reply with a motivation why they would earn that free ticket. I was the most succesfull campaign measured in responses from customers. The customer that won, was delighted about the training, acted as the first reference for pother customers and came back to buy other services. Now I had convinced our sales team about the value of gamification.If you wonder why a kidnapper is on the picture, thatâs because one of the games we play to train their negatiotaion skills is a game in which that customer is kidnapped by environmenatl warriors.
But sometimes itâs not all about the money. Sometimes itâs all about the story. Last year I was asked to do the keyote of the largest IT conference in Belgium. And I choose to tell the story the world of anny. Not the world world of ant that Microsoft or my company is promoting. I told that that world of any Is not important. The world where you can work with anybody. hardTheowlrd of anny is not new in IT. Iâts the world Microsoft amongst other s is promopting very hard . The world of anny where you can work with anybody, anytime, anyplace, anyhow. I donât live in that wolrd of any. But I live in the world of annie .This Annie. Itâs all about happy people and gamification.