The Art of Turning Work into a Game

As unlikely as it sounds, organisational leaders realise that when people think of a project as fun, they are more creative and produce better results. Michael Netzley, Academic Director of Executive Development at SMU, says that the theory of game mechanics creates amazing opportunities for businesses and governments.

‘Gamification’ or ‘game mechanics’ as Netzley prefers to call it, is about reframing a problem in terms of a game. While this seems like a very simple solution, it has shown to have the potential to revolutionise the process of problem solving. Netzley says that the concept of a game taps into a deep source of human motivation. Until now, organisations have generally tapped into their employee’s desire for reward in the form of financial compensation or a promotion. Games, on the other hand, tap into a deeper source of energy. “Deep down inside, fun is something that we are inherently interested in. We inherently want to devote our thoughts and energy to things that we perceive to be fun,” he told Perspectives@SMU.

Strategise

While the idea of fun is obvious, it requires some strategy to integrate game mechanics into the workplace or public policy. If you turn every aspect of life into a game, then the whole concept of game mechanics loses its uniqueness. “When the whole day becomes a game, gamification becomes a joke. It is no longer an effective tool. You need to decide where to apply it and where not to apply it,” argues Netzley.

According to Netzley, the key is to prioritise problem-solving goals. “You need to apply it to a core set of problems, things that really require time, energy and thought.” He says that organisations that have successfully used the gamification model have applied it to a very specific problem that has proven to be persistently hard to solve.

NASA, for instance, has applied this model to solving particular mathematics problems. They have created an open wiki where anybody who can do math at the level of a NASA engineer can play their advanced game and in doing so, they help NASA solve important problems. This is a form of crowd-sourcing, that is, tapping into a broad, interested segment of the public to solve a problem. The people who participate in these games do not receive any sort of financial incentive or compensation for solving problems. They choose to play because they find it fun and challenging.

The City of Philadelphia in the U.S. applied game mechanics to solve a very specific problem: the city had lost track of where public defibrillators were located so together with the University of Pennsylvannia hospital, they created a contest in which they invited the public to go out and find 200 defibrillators. The game took place over eight weeks and there were very modest prizes of $50 for each defibrillator found and $1000 for the team that found the most. Hundreds of people joined the scavenger hunt and they found more defibrillators than they could have imagined – more than 1,400! The city was able to produce a free map of where defibrillators were found and it is currently used by ambulances to locate the closest device when they receive an emergency call.

The success of game mechanics reveals that people are very excited about participating in problem-solving exercises, even when they will not end up with a reward. This goes against the economic theories of motivation that suggest that people will work to solve problems when given the right financial incentives. The opportunity to be part of a project that is fun and pleasurable can be much more attractive to people than money.

Tool to improving processes

From an organisational perspective, Netzley says that game mechanics is not necessarily a new form of strategy, but instead, it allows us to take our strategic processes and make them more enjoyable to the people participating in them. “It is essentially creating incentives systems to perform better with our strategic processes. Think of game mechanics as a tool that you apply to public policy formation, public service, the classroom, executive or student learning. What you are trying to do is improve an existing process.”

Netzley says that Singapore could easily apply the theory of gamification to produce specific public policy outcomes:“If you want to promote entrepreneurship in Singapore, a public agency could set up an extended game that entrepreneurs could play. They would feed off one another, compete with one another and hopefully this would drive that entrepreneurial spirit.”

Singapore Management University