How games can improve management skills

The elements that characterise successful games, the ones that fascinate and engage, that become fashionable and that everyone is familiar with, whether physical or digital, are very precise (if you want to delve into them, there is a nice book by Jane McGonical a few years ago).

Below I have chosen three elements present in games that in my opinion can help those working as managers.

There is no game without a goal to achieve. The goal serves players to focus their attention and direct their choices.

In successful games, the goal is broken into steps or paths, making progress and progress visible to the player and offering step-by-step micro-rewards along the way. In this way, we stay grounded in what we are doing, feeling supported along the way and linking our productivity to the results we are achieving.

It is interesting to see how many similarities there are with the logic of the SMART model, but there is more! In games, the goal is also to train people in finding meaning in what they are doing.

For example, if I play online with other players to create an alliance against the Viking horde that is about to attack the shores of my kingdom, I am not just using the keys of a console to transmit information: I am saving my kingdom and securing my subjects a future.

Or again, when I play Monopoly, I am not just rolling a dice and collecting pretend money to get red or green tiles representing houses or hotels: I am defining a real estate strategy that can make me richer than others.

With a goal to achieve, while playing the game our mind trains itself to give an interpretation to the reality we are handling, an interpretation that has meaning for us, that elevates the single activity, which might even seem insignificant, into something bigger and meaningful.

What the games suggest to managers on this issue is not only to assign clear objectives on what to do and what results to achieve, but above all to help their employees find meaning, a significance to what they are asked to do, linking the activities or results to be achieved to a broader vision.

The game reminds us that the value of what we do is not so much in the thing itself, but in the meaning we can attach to it. I think this has a strong resemblance to what in business today is called "sharing the purpose".

In games, rules are a fundamental element.

On the one hand, they make clear to the players the context in which they must move and create homogeneity with respect to the starting conditions.

On the other hand, they impose constraints on how we can achieve the goal.

For example, in the Scrabble game, players have to write the longest word but with no more than 8 letters at a time, fitting it in with the words of the other players, without conjugating verbs, avoiding foreign initials, etc.

By eliminating modes or limiting them, the rules encourage players to explore previously unexplored spaces of manoeuvre.

In the game, rules unleash creativity and foster strategic thinking.

In working life, as managers we live in a system of constraints and rules, which we must respect and enforce. However, what the games suggest is that we can also use constraints to make people realise that everything that is not a rule can be a space for individual or group initiative. And stimulate - also thanks to rules - the team in the development of innovative thinking.

In the game, feedback tells players how close or far they are from reaching the goal. It can be in points, levels, ranking, progress bar, or an objective outcome, such as "the game ends when..."

Real-time feedback in the game represents a promise that the goal can actually be achieved and provides motivation to continue. And this is an important message about the value of frequent feedback in working life.

In addition, successful games obsessively take care of the design of negative feedback, related to when the player makes mistakes. If they want to become successful games, they must in fact construct the negative feedback in such a way that it does not create frustration or abandonment of the game.

What they do is implement a feedback system that allows us to develop optimism and positive skills, eliminate the fear of failure and improve our perception of our chances of success.

Negative, error-related feedback in games must be fun in ways and must create what in technical jargon is called 'happy embarrassment'.

An example of 'happy awkwardness' can be that of karaoke, where the comparison with the song tells us that we are out of time, we have not said the correct words, it makes us feel a bit stupid, but also that we can get to the end without completely losing face. Indeed, perhaps even winning the admiration of those present for our courage.

In this way, in the game, negative feedback becomes almost a reward, which makes one optimistic about the ability to succeed, to try again. It does not block but pushes learning.

In business life, this element suggests that we build negative feedback with the aim of not losing confidence in the possibility of success, helping people to:

- highlight what they have achieved and not just what is missing,

- leverage the potential growth of capabilities needed to achieve the result,

- using error as a lever for learning and not for failure,

- identify alternative strategies and encourage them to experiment with them.

The three elements of Goal Purpose, Rules and Feedback System, transferred from games to professional life, can help to create that positive feeling one gets when playing, which helps to create in people a sense of well-being, drive, initiative and creativity.

So why not use suggestions from the world of play to make our work more exciting and playful?

*Founder&Partner bbsette - Consulting, Training and Professional Games.