Yearly Review
I just went through my yearly review at the zoo. And while I cannot say that the process was, in any way, worse than any other review I’ve had to take part in, I really felt like it was all a waste of time.
This is not to say that yearly reviews are a bad idea, or that we should do away with them, but I feel as though there has to be a better way to do them. I feel like this is an area where gamification can really make an impact.
Let’s pick apart what a typical (from my experience) yearly review looks like. There is a form, with questions and maybe some Likert-style rating scale, where your supervisor tries to crystallize you as a worker, usually in 100 words or less. Occasionally there is a long form, which involves an essay, also written by your supervisor (or in one memorable case, by me, because my supervisor was too busy), all about your strengths and weaknesses and working style. And then, finally, there is a section where you and your supervisor come up with some goals for the year.
The problem here is that this is not any sort of immediate feedback – it is all based on the recollections of an entire year – and the goals end up sprawling and strange because they are “yearly” goals. My experience has been that the goals are usually vague and unrelated to my actual day to day work, and that the actual review is usually couched with “sorry, but we need to do this because HR is breathing down my neck”. And sometimes there seems to be no real benefit to anyone, especially with many companies no longer giving out raises.
It seems like this is something that games are uniquely qualified to handle. Firstly, they provide immediate feedback. I saw a really nice example of this at LEEF this year – a bank had essentially created a leveling system for their employees. It was performance based, and it allowed the employees to see how they were doing throughout the year. This allowed them to make improvements as they went, and they were motivated to do so in order to earn more points and level up faster.
Secondly, games often have a structure of nested goals, which can allow achievement of large and long-term goals by creating smaller attainable goals along the way. To put this more concretely, games give us a series of small quests that build our confidence and competence and eventually lead us to the boss level, which we are able to handle entirely because of all the questing we did along the way. The current review strategy just tells us that our goal is to beat the boss, rather than sending us down a manageable path of skill-building to do so.
I know that I’m not saying anything all that new. This idea is actually somewhat central to a conference I am hoping to attend this fall – where they are actually encouraging you to invite your HR lead. I definitely think, however, that it is something that needs to be pursued, as the first waves of digital natives enter the workforce, and begin to demand more from their work experience.
Gamification of Life
I am currently reading Reality is Broken, by Jane McGonigal. Now I am fairly certain that she is not writing for someone like me, who is very clearly sitting in the “games are good” camp, but I am still very much enjoying this book.
One thing that I think she covers very well is this idea of ‘gamification’. In other words, creating games which dovetail with real life in a way that makes reality better and more motivating. Up until reading this book, I have actually been extremely skeptical of the gamification movement. I really don’t find badges all that motivating – badges are an extrinsic reward, which tend to be motivating for short periods of time, but are not enough for long term behavioral change. And sadly, it seems as though many gamification cultists are all about the badges.
However, I do believe that making real life more like games will ultimately make many people more motivated and happy in their daily lives. The problem is that we need to figure out ways to make real life more like a GOOD game, and not just a scavenger hunt or points checklist. The one example that I actually found most exciting is that of Chore Wars. While Chore Wars is not necessarily much more than a levelling system (or points checklist), it allows you to create your own chore quests for your household to complete. I think this is where the intrinsic motivation comes in. Rather than just getting 100XP for taking out the trash, you can ‘gamify’ the chore itself by creating specific objectives to be met and rules that need to be followed. Dr. McGonigal suggests things like needing to take out the trash without anyone seeing you do it, or having to sing a song loudly while you are washing the dishes. This extra level of silliness seems, to me at least, to be way more fun than just getting points for doing my chores. It reminds me a lot of Cranium – adding some creativity to your drudgery.
Dr. McGonigal also talked about what might be the best example of gamification in the US today – the Quest to Learn school in New York. She gave a brief account of a student’s schedule for a typical day at the school, which involved the student finding a random puzzle game within the library – which she worked on with her friends in order to get experience points, adding expertise to the school’s database related to mapmaking – so that the student could help some older students with a large project, and an assembly about a ‘boss-level’ which essentially is equivalent to an exam period, except that the students work together to try to conquer the boss.
It will be interesting to see where the gamification movement goes from here, as it seems like there were many people at LEEF this year who were talking about extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, and why intrinsic motivation is better. It is nice to think, though, that there are a bunch of game developers out there who are interested in making real life more interesting for all of us.
Game Cognito 