Friday, May 20, 2011

Keeping Score to Motivate People

Can playing games drive the adoption of sales force automation?
"Recently, there's been a lot of research in the area of gamification: the process of adding gaming elements to a non-gaming activity to encourage action and participation."
I'm pretty convinced that some people are motivated by keeping score and getting rewards while others are not. When I was a help desk tech, I would work as hard as possible to see how few tickets I could have open at the end of the week. I saw it as a game - some of the other guys didn't.

We also used visual aids to promote good procedures. For example, we took turns manning the phones. We tried to maintain constant coverage, so when nature or duty called, we had to get someone to cover for us. We bought a stuffed Tux the linux penguin. Whoever had the penguin was responsible for the phones. The rule was that Tux could never be left alone. It made it pretty easy to toss the penguin baton to someone as you walked out the door.

The only similar thing my group does today is that I "hand out" blue Cisco console cables when the non-network guys help with a server or network problem.

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