Saul Kaplan: Wake Up Call

Calling all innovators and designers.  It is time to get below the buzzwords and to mobilize our networks with urgency and purpose. Waiting for public and private sector institutions to transform our urban economies won’t work. It is up to us to deliver on the promise of social media platforms and self-organizing networks. We must mobilize purposeful networks to address the big social challenges of our time including education, economic, and workforce development. I got a big wake up call last week while visiting Detroit for the first time.  Talk about a burning platform. If you need a call to action just visit Detroit and see the devastation for yourself.

This once great industrial city is a shell of its former self.  Detroit has lost half of its population going from a peak in the 1950′s of 2 million to under 1 million in the 2000 census.  It is expected that the population will settle below 700,000 as unemployment and home foreclosures continue to fuel out-migration.  What is to become of those that can’t get out and are left behind?

Real unemployment rates in Detroit are thought to be as high as 50% and recent block-by-block surveys indicate that about one in three land parcels are either vacant or abandoned. Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, called Detroit Public Schools a national disgrace that keeps him up at night. The new Mayor, Dave Bing, is talking about downsizing the city including drastic plans to relocate residents from desolate to stable neighborhoods.

photo-saulPin ItYou get the picture.  It is enough to make you cry.  Detroit isn’t the only urban center that has been devastated by the departure of an industrial era along with its good manufacturing jobs. Is your city far behind Detroit? The need for bold moves and real systems change seems so obvious. We can’t possibly address these challenges with tweaks to our current economic, education, and workforce development systems.

I went to Detroit to participate in a conversation about changing the trajectory of our urban economies. I had high expectations but the well-intentioned leaders assembled seemed resigned to working within current economic development models and systems to change our urban outcomes. I guess I naively expected more outrage and a greater sense of urgency for bold action to change the trajectory.

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Saul Kaplan: Wake Up Call

Saul Kaplan: Reboot Motivation

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Dan Pink always makes me think.  Each of his books elicits an “AHA” moment with staying power.  Free Agent Nation changed the way I think about work and relate to institutions forever.  A Whole New Mind rescued the right side of my brain from its inferiority complex and ignited a long-term love affair with design thinking.  Dan’s  book, Drive, is no different.  It has crystallized my life-long instinct that our thinking about motivation and incentives is out of synch with the possibilities of the 21stcentury.  Time to reboot motivation.

The 20th century was all about management.  The North Star was how to get more people to go through the motions efficiently. Seeking personal meaning in work was a distraction. The best workers follow the rules, work hard, and smile.  Work boiled down to an algorithm rendering out any creativity or autonomy.  Fulfillment and empowerment were HR buzzwords and the “soft stuff” relegated to off-site retreats that don’t get in the way of real work.  Incentives in the industrial era were all about carrots and sticks.  Motivation was based solely on external factors including compensation, title, office, and promotion opportunities.

Early in my consulting career I worked for a boutique firm that specialized in sales force incentive compensation programs.  I was consistently amazed by the gaping disconnect between the home office that inevitably over-engineered its goal setting and compensation practices and the actual behavior out in the sales territory.  Sales representatives made quick work of these elegant plans figuring out how to game the system to optimize earnings.  They cherry-picked the incentive plans based on experience, likelihood of earning a payout, and implications for the following year.  The annual dance was de-motivating and rarely resulted in self-directed effort to maximize either the short or long-term value of customer relationships within a sales territory.

photo-saulPin ItI have observed legions of managers attempting to manipulate the dials of industrial era tools to optimize the output of employees.  While it was clear to me that this approach sucked the meaning, autonomy, and motivation out of work for most employees it had the unfortunate advantage of delivering short-term business results, until it didn’t.  The game changed when computers began to replace people doing repeatable work tasks.  Technology also enabled repeatable work that still requires human involvement to move to lower cost locations.  If it can be reduced to an algorithm it can either be virtualized or moved.   This work is dehumanizing and uninteresting.  Industrial era work has left the U.S. and it is not coming back.  The work remaining to do requires both a new set of 21st century skills and a new approach to incentives and performance management.

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Saul Kaplan: Reboot Motivation

Saul Kaplan: Unleash the Animal Spirits

A friend asked me this week, what is the single most important thing holding our economy back?  Without hesitation I said our psychology is bad and negativism is getting in the way.  We have allowed cynicism to slow progress, growth, and innovation.  I am as cynical as anyone.  Here in New England we are born with a well-developed cynical streak.  In my home state of Rhode Island we have taken the art of cynicism to entire new heights.  I am convinced we won’t climb out of this economic mess until we become more confident in our selves, our communities, and our opportunities.  Psychology matters.  A strong innovation economy creating higher wage jobs result from the decisions made every day by organization leaders and entrepreneurs.  It is the sum total of these decisions on the margin to hire one additional employee or to invest one additional dollar which determine the trajectory of our economy.  While many factors influence these choices in the end it comes down to psychology or confidence.  We must find a way to move beyond our cynicism.

The imperative is to unleash the animal spirits.  John Maynard Keynes had it right in his book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, when he described animal spirits as the emotion which influences human behavior measured in terms of consumer confidence.  Keynes got the math right. Positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than mathematical expectations. Our decisions to do something positive can only be taken as the result of animal spirits, a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities.  Amen.

Keynes stood on the shoulders of earlier philosophers who also asserted that psychology matters.  David Hume, one of the most important historical contributors to Western philosophy, has been credited with laying the foundation for cognitive science.  In his seminal work, A Treatise of Human Nature, Hume lays out his framework for a naturalistic science of man that examines the psychological basis of human nature.  His views in 1739 were heretical and in direct opposition to the prevailing views of the rationalists, exemplified by Descartes.  Hume concluded that belief rather than reason governed human behavior.  I love Hume’s famous quote, “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.”

Saul KaplanPin ItBefore accusing me of being Polyanna-ish  (optimist for sure) or having my head stuck in a history book (only partially stuck) consider what is going on around you.  Everybody is pointing at everybody else.  It’s the government’s fault.  It’s the big bad industrial complex.  There isn’t enough resource to go around.  Democrats and Republicans are beating each other up incessantly while nothing changes (a pox on both of their houses).  Change is hard. Life isn’t fair. And so it goes. Add your barriers and excuses here. OK, Can we move beyond admiring the problem now?  How we love to admire the problem.  Enough already.

We have an incredible opportunity in front of us.  We must overcome our cynicism and bring passion to the fore as we optimistically try more stuff. Sure there are challenges but we live in a technology rich era with an unprecedented opportunity to enable purposeful networks focused on solving the big issues of day.  How about starting with health care, education, energy, and economic prosperity?  If we are waiting for institutions to lead the way we are going to be waiting a very long time.  Clay Shirky has it right in his recent books, Here Comes Everybody and Cognitive Surplus.  We are connected, communicating, and leveraging social media platforms in powerful ways.  Collectively we are blessed with a cognitive surplus that is huge, obvious, and accessible to solve real world problems and redefine how value is created, shared, and captured.  We just need to get on with it.  It is time to stop admiring the problem.  The biggest obstacle in our way is a negative psychology and lack of confidence to act.  Time to unleash the animal spirits.

Saul Kaplan: Innovation, Blessing or Curse?

cheeriosPin ItBeing an innovator is both a blessing and a curse.  Innovators are constantly seeking to improve things by finding a better way.  A questing personality is a blessing providing innovators with a source of personal pride, accomplishment, and exhilaration.  At the same time an innovator’s job is never done.  There is always a better way.  A sense of perpetual incompleteness and never being satisfied torments most innovators I know.  I think this blessing and curse dichotomy is the secret sauce that makes innovators tick.  It motivates innovators to take personal risks, collaborate with unusual suspects to find a missing piece, and jump through incredible hoops seeking a better way.   Innovators wouldn’t have it any other way.

There is always a better way.  It doesn’t matter how innocuous or small a thing from everyday life it is.  You can always tell an innovator because they fixate on addressing small things with the same child-like enthusiasm they readily deploy to large complex societal problems. It’s the little things that often get innovators the most riled up.  I learned this lesson the hard way and share one of many personal examples.  After a long career as a road warrior strategy consultant I found myself at home trying to figure out what I was going to do next in my career. One morning I came downstairs and opened the cupboard that housed breakfast cereal for our three children and found it filled with twelve half-opened cereal boxes. You know the one I am talking about.  Tell me you can’t relate to this important dilemma. I fell into the trap and loudly proclaimed, isn’t there a better way to organize this cereal.  The response was immediate and resounding, thanks for the input, now go find something else to do, preferably out of the house!  I know my wife is groaning reading this thinking, no, not the cereal box story again.  Can’t you come up with a new story for heaven’s sake?  P.S. regarding the cereal box story, the children and the cereal boxes have left home and I miss them both terribly.   Innovators can’t help themselves, no matter how small the challenge, there is always a better way and they are driven to find it.

Saul KaplanPin ItIt’s not just the small things. If you are like me it bugs you enough to create new solutions in your head while stuck in an avoidable traffic jam when the information was knowable, when one part of the health care system has no clue of your experience with the rest of it, and when one government agency has no visibility to your history with the agency right next door.  Don’t even get me started on education because it just makes me cry.  It is inconceivable to me how we have let our public school systems atrophy to their current state.  All of the innovators I know are outraged, screaming for transformational change, and willing to roll up their sleeves and help design a better way.

Innovators are constantly deconstructing life experience and coming up with new approaches to delivering value and solving every day problems.  It is rarely about inventing anything new. Innovators often solve problems with existing technology and by recombining capabilities in new configurations to deliver value in a better way.  Innovators are blessed to see a bigger picture enabling a larger palette from which to paint new solutions.

Innovators are also cursed by never being satisfied.  The job is never done.  Celebrations are muted and short-lived as innovators move on to explore the next better way.  Ignorance is never bliss to an innovator.  There is always a missing piece of information that torments innovators and keeps them up at night until they find it.  And when they think they have a bead on it two more compelling questions arise and the constant quest continues.  Innovators are generally anxious people who feed their anxiety by moving toward the edge where the best knowledge flows are.  Innovators are perpetually exhausted not wanting to miss an opportunity to advance an idea, connect with someone who can help, or find that missing piece of information.  It is a curse that innovators gladly accept and have reconciled themselves to live with.  Innovators are never satisfied and incredibly hard on themselves, but they are convinced in their souls, seeking a better way is both noble and right.

Being an innovator is both a blessing and a curse.  I am grateful to hang out with so many incredible innovators hoping that the blessing part will rub off on me. I already have the curse part covered.

Saul Kaplan: Innovation Lessons From Tarzan

Innovators leap across learning curves exploring new ways to deliver value the way Tarzan swung from vine to vine across the jungle.  Innovators thrive on the steepest part of the learning curve where the changing rate of learning is the greatest.  Watch how innovators manage their careers and lives. They always put themselves on a steep learning curve.  I know I always have.  Staying on a steep learning curve is the most important decision criterion for any career decision an innovator makes. Along the way innovators make many career moves none of which are primarily about titles, offices, number of direct reports, or money.  Innovators believe those things are more likely to happen if they keep themselves on steep learning curves. Every choice to take a new tack or direction is about the next learning curve. Innovators are self aware enough to know they do their best work while learning at a rapid rate and are bored to tears when they aren’t.  Steep learning curves matter most.

I have known many people who sacrificed learning curves for money and other extrinsic rewards and in the long run most ended up unhappy. In my experience innovators who follow their passions and are in it for the learning always end up happier and making more money anyway.

photo-saulPin ItThe tricky part for innovators is to know when to leap from one learning curve to the next the way Tarzan traversed vines to move through the jungle.  Innovators get restless when any curve starts to flatten out.  Instead of enjoying the flat part of the curve where it takes less effort to produce more output, innovators get bored and want to find new learning curves where they can benefit from a rapidly changing rate of learning.  If the goal for innovators is to get better faster the only way to accomplish it is to live on the edge where the knowledge flows are the richest.  It isn’t the most comfortable place to be.  It’s understandable most suffer the pain of the steep part of the learning curve, not for the kick of learning, but to finally reach the flat part of the curve.  No urgency to move to another curve once the plateau is reached.  It is comfortable on the flat part of the curve where the workload lessens and rewards are only available to those that have paid their dues and put in the time to climb up the curve. Yet innovators seem to extract what they need from the steep part of the curve and leap off to do it again moving on to the steep part of the next curve just when the effort required to further climb the current curve gets easier.

Innovators are less interested in climbing further up learning curves than jumping from curve to curve.  They are like Tarzan (no loin cloth jokes please) traveling through the forest by jumping from vine to vine.  Innovators learn from each curve and cross-pollinate other curves with their interdisciplinary experiences.  Innovators are disruptive to those clinging to a single learning curve.  Picture the disruption caused while hanging on to a vine for dear life when Tarzan gives his bone jarring animalistic jungle cry before jumping on and swinging across the jungle leaping to the next vine.  That’s how disruption works.  Ideas from each learning curve are combined and recombined to create new ways to deliver value and solve problems.   Hanging around on a single curve as the rate of learning slows down is no way to get through the jungle.  Innovators with the benefit of leaping across learning curves will enable disruption and get through the forest faster.  Maybe an innovator’s jungle cry like Tarzan’s would help speed the innovation process.

Saul Kaplan: Nooks and Crannies

Nooks and crannies are important to both English muffins and innovation.

I haven’t been able to get a picture of a lightly toasted Thomas’ English muffin with butter and strawberry preserves oozing into those marvelous nooks and crannies out of my head.  Maybe it’s because I’m resisting the temptation while on one of my frequent short-lived diet and exercise delusions.  More likely it’s because of a story that caught my eye last week about an executive who left the company (Bimbo Bakeries, I’m not kidding) that makes Thomas’ English Muffins to join the arch enemy, Hostess Brands.  It seems that Bimbo is suing to prevent the executive from joining Hostess because they suspect he has absconded with and will divulge the secret of how to make English muffins with perfect nooks and crannies.

You heard right.  The row is about protecting the trade secret for creating nooks and crannies in an English muffin.  Bimbo claims there are only seven people who possess the trade secret and of course the executive leaving to make Twinkies is one of them.  I find it hard to believe that only seven people have the know-how necessary to create great nooks and crannies. It sounds more like a marketing ploy. But what do I know.  I thought it was just using a fork to split the muffin!  Think about it.  Samuel Bath Thomas left England headed for America in 1874 with a recipe for his muffin baked on hot griddles.  Surely in over 135 years more than seven people have accumulated the know-how for nooks and crannies. And how are we to know if Samuel Thomas didn’t borrow the formula before heading for fame and fortune in America. Not to accuse Samuel Thomas of pilfering the recipe and starting an English muffin revolution but it does sound eerily similar to Samuel Slater escaping England with the trade secrets for the textile mill, which of course started the U.S. Industrial Revolution!

Saul KaplanPin ItNo surprise that nooks and crannies are the secret to a great English muffin.  Those air pockets allow for both perfect toasting and a natural repository for the aforementioned butter and jam.  So Bimbo Bakery goes to incredible lengths to protect its know-how.  Instead of recipes they use codebooks. Employees are on a need to know basis and only have access to the pages of the codebook necessary to complete their specific task.  They are shielded from the information and people in departments working on other tasks.  It doesn’t sound like a formula for innovation but then maybe Bimbo isn’t interested in innovation.  Perhaps they are  just obsessed with protecting the status quo for the nooks and crannies of English muffin making.

Nooks and crannies are also the secret to great innovation.  Innovators thrive in nooks and crannies and refuse to stay in any silo barred from communicating across them.  They know freely exploring nooks and crannies is the only way to get better faster. Nooks and crannies increase the surface area an innovator can expose to the best knowledge flows and new ideas.  With more surface area comes greater exposure to and absorption of a broader range of ideas, experiences, and capabilities.  A thoughtfully comprised network of unusual suspects increases an innovator’s surface area.  Social media platforms are just nooks and crannies on steroids to an innovator.

Innovators also know that most important innovations emerge from the nooks and crannies between silos, disciplines, and industry sectors.  It is by combining and recombining ideas and capabilities from across silos that innovators create new ways to deliver value.  System solutions for the big social challenges of our time including education, health care, and energy, will only be found if we get more comfortable in the nooks and crannies between us.  Pass the strawberry preserves.

Saul Kaplan: Interstitial Innovation Magic

Magic happens in the interstitial space between silos, disciplines, organizations, and sectors. The word interstitial comes from the Latin “interstitium” which was derived from “inter” meaning “between” and “sistere” meaning “to stand” therefore to stand between. Optimum learning, innovation, problem solving, and value creation happens when we stand between.

To fully realize the potential of the 21st century we must get more comfortable and better at standing between. The imperative is to go from interdisciplinary to trans-disciplinary. Only by celebrating the interstitial space between us will we invent new disciplines and system approaches to enable transformation in our important social systems including education, health care, energy, and entrepreneurship.

And yet we spend most of our time in silos. It is comfortable there. We know the language spoken. We know what is expected and our roles. We know the people who inhabit our silos. There are clear rules dictating our behavior within silos and even clearer rules if we dare to dip our toes into the interstitial space outside of well-marked boundaries. Incentives, performance reviews, and job ladders all reinforce insularity. While technology screams permeability, organization infrastructure and operating norms lean against it. Standing in between anything is often considered a career-limiting move.

Most organizations aren’t 21st century ready. Industrial era structures with hierarchical reporting relationships designed around functions will inevitably give way to networked operating models fluidly connecting capabilities both within and outside the organization. Enabling infrastructure and operating norms will celebrate and reinforce interstitial spaces. Standing between disciplines will become the norm rather than the exception. The enabling technology is already here. We don’t need to invent anything new. It isn’t technology that is getting in our way. It is humans and the organizations we live in that are both stubbornly resistant to change and hesitant to fully explore interstitial spaces. Organizations will either transform themselves to capitalize on the value in interstitial spaces or they will be disrupted in the market by others that do. And for those leaders who think they can wait it out. You can’t, the transition has already started and its pace is quickening. Just ask the youngest in your organization. Waiting is not a strategy and will fail.

Saul KaplanPin ItIt is easy to see the potential from enabling random collisions of unusual suspects. Just check out any social media platform. Social media is a hotspot for random collisions. You don’t need to hang out in these virtual places long to know they are populated with very unusual suspects. Interstitial spaces are ubiquitous and magic happens every day. We can bring this magic into our organizations, meetings, and gatherings. We just have to resist the normal tendency to hang out with the usual suspects. Most of the conferences and meetings we go to are teeming with usual suspects who love to get together to admire the problem. We sure do love to admire problems. Solution discussions are narrow and tend to shop around old solutions that have been discussed forever. If you want new ideas, approaches, and solutions go to gatherings that you have absolutely no reason to attend other than you might learn something new or meet somebody with a different perspective and experience. Make it a personal goal to attend gatherings where you don’t know the people or subject matter. Or better yet go to gatherings that are designed to bring unusual suspects together and to enable random collisions.

We are only two weeks away from our annual Collaborative Innovation Summit, BIF-6 on September 15-16. The energy at BIF in the weeks leading up to the summit is at dangerous levels. I am like a kid in a candy store and grateful that the summit is sold out again this year. Like-minded innovation junkies immerse themselves among unusual suspects. We design to optimize the interstitial space in between an incredible line-up of innovation storytellers. The event is not about the stories that will be shared from the stage although they will be great. (Stories will be live streamed during the event and videos posted a few weeks later on our site for those interested). The real magic happens in between stories at extended breaks where all participants and those following the conversation in the social media world collide. It isn’t about the storytellers, it is about random collisions in the interstitial spaces that happen every year among the participants and those connected to the conversation. I can’t wait.

The goal is to get better faster. If you want to get better faster hang out in interstitial spaces. Don’t just dip your toes into interstitial spaces but jump in with all the passion you can ignite. Magic happens in the interstitial space between us.

Saul Kaplan: Future of Work

Today’s concept of work, employment, and jobs are an outgrowth of an industrial era that is long gone. The industrial era is not coming back and it is time to rethink the basic concept of work. Despite what politicians say most of the jobs lost in the current downturn aren’t coming back. Work takes on new meaning in the 21st century and it is time to change our conversation. The real wake-up call of this downturn is the enormous skill’s gap between the requirements of a 21st century economy and the skills and experience of the current workforce. Waving our hands and political rhetoric will not close the gap. Our education and workforce development systems must be transformed. Now. The nature of work and the way we think about jobs must change dramatically. Labor Day seems like a good day to start.

Here are 20 random thoughts on the future of work. Add yours.

1) Work becomes more about meaning and impact than repeatable tasks.

2) 9 to 5 is so yesterday.

3) Global sourcing goes on steroids enabling third world opportunity and growth.

4) Free Agent Nation becomes a reality.

5) Projects are more important than jobs.

6) Teams assemble and reassemble based on the job to be done.

7) Changing nature of work transforms our daily commute and transportation systems.

Saul KaplanPin It8) Industrial era organizations give way to purposeful networks.

9) Everything we think and know about professions will change.

10) Education is no longer K-16 but a life long commitment.

11) Workforce and economic development are transformed and become indistinguishable.

12) Work becomes more self organized and less institutionally driven.

13) Job titles are more about what you can do than meaningless status monikers.

14) Compensation is about performance outcomes not seniority.

15) Entrepreneurship becomes democratized and the key economic driver.

16) Work and social become indistinguishable.

17) Getting better faster is imperative.

18) Art and design become integral to work and value creation.

19) Making things becomes important and interesting again.

20) Passion drives meaningful work.

Saul Kaplan: Stories Can Change the World

“Facts are facts, but stories are who we are, how we learn, and what it all means.” My friend Alan Webber, Co-founder of Fast Company and author of Rules of Thumb, has it exactly right. Storytelling is the most important tool for any innovator. It is the best way to create emotional connections to your ideas and innovations. Sharing stories is the way to create a network of passionate supporters that can help spread ideas and make them a reality. We remember stories. We relate to stories and they compel us to action.

Storytelling is a core value at the Business Innovation Factory (BIF). We believe that advancing our mission to enable system change in health care, education, energy, and entrepreneurship is critically dependant on our ability to create, package, and share stories from our work. Everything we do is about storytelling and our Innovation Story Studio is one of BIF’s most important capabilities. By openly sharing stories about the process and output of BIF’s work we are strengthening our community of innovators and becoming more purposeful with every new story.

It is no surprise that BIF’s upcoming annual Collaborative Innovation Summit, BIF-6 on September 15-16, is all about storytelling. I will never forget meeting with my friend and mentor Richard Saul Wurman (RSW) to get his advice prior to our first summit six years ago. As an innovation junkie it doesn’t get any better than having RSW as a mentor. He founded TED for heaven’s sake. I went to the meeting prepared with an approach that I had worked on for weeks. As an MBA, of course I had a matrix, with speakers organized by theme. RSW heard me out and could only shake his head saying, Saul you have a lot to learn about how to create an emotional connection with an audience. He patiently told me to throw away the matrix. He said it was as simple as inviting people to a dinner party. Ask speakers that you want to have dinner with to share a personal story that you are selfishly interested in and invite others to listen in. RSW has been a storyteller at every summit we have hosted and I can’t wait for his story at BIF-6.

Saul KaplanPin ItI love RSW for that advice. That is exactly what we do. No PowerPoint presentations, no matrix, just stories. One glorious story after another in no particular order, from storytellers (not speakers) sharing personal and raw insights about what innovation means to them. After about four to five stories back to back with no boring Q&A to break the rhythm we take a long break where all of the storytellers and participants can interact, connect, and share their own innovation stories and experiences. No breakouts, flip charts, or prescriptive assignments. It is up to the 300 participants to decide what is compelling and which connections are most interesting and valuable. We trust our audience. The most interesting collaborations every year come from connecting unusual suspects that find value in the gray area between their interests and disciplines.

Every year one of my favorite things to do is connect with each of the storytellers to discuss the upcoming summit and their stories. I just completed these calls for BIF-6. Talk about a kid in a candy store. To talk with each of these innovators is inspiring and a great joy. Check out the storyteller profiles on the BIF-6 portal and you will see what I mean. These innovators are asked to give speeches all of the time. Many of them have written books and do speaking tours. They all have PowerPoint presentations in the drawer and a stock speech they can give in their sleep, which they are not allowed to use at a BIF summit. I always find our storyteller’s reactions interesting when they discuss preparations for sharing a story versus giving a speech. They all say that it is far more interesting and challenging to tell a story than to give a speech. Regardless of their fame on the speaking circuit there is always trepidation in their voices when we discuss their stories. Every storyteller over six years has said that they are excited to hear the stories from the other storytellers and will be glad when they are done sharing their own. That is why they take the gig. It is a refreshing break from the grind of the speaking circuit. Storytelling is harder but more personally rewarding.

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Saul Kaplan: Stories Can Change the World

Saul Kaplan: If All Work Were Gamified

 

Need to turn around your company? Trying to start a movement? Want to change the world? Easy Peasy! Just turn it in to a game. Everywhere we turn, it seems there are experts claiming that the best path forward is to engage people with elements of competitive play. The business world in particular has gone gaga for gamification.

I thought games were mainly for kids, and the occasional ice-breaker or temporary escape from reality. Why encourage more of them? As adults, aren’t we supposed to set aside childish things and get down to work on the problems of the real world?

Truth be told, I have always loved games. Stratego was a mainstay among my school buddies. We spent hour upon hour lining up red and blue soldiers to protect our flags. My family’s Monopoly games were epic battles, beginning with the fight over game pieces. (No, I get the Scottish Terrier!) The side deals we struck and the arguments that ensued still liven up family gatherings. In college I became a professional Risk player. Tell me you didn’t learn about the challenges of fighting a multi-front war from playing Risk. Who among us hasn’t attempted to conquer the world by way of Kamchatka?

Games ruled – till it was time to make my way in the real world where they didn’t. By the time online games exploded onto the scene, I was so immersed in reality that I managed to ignore them. I’ve never created a level-80 character in World of Warcraft, won the staff of life in Spore, mastered an artichoke crop in Farmville, or knocked over any pigs with Angry Birds. But others have – hundreds of millions of them around the world. Already, 5.93 million years of total time has been spent playing World of Warcraft alone.

One response to this is to despair of all that wasted time. Imagine if only a fraction of it had been focused on improving our education, health care, energy, and economic systems. Another response, though, is to say: if you can’t beat them, why not join them?

Jane McGonigal’s Reality is Broken makes a strong case for leveraging game design and mechanics to work on the big social challenges of our time. McGonigal suggests that the four defining traits of any game – a goal, clear rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation – can be applied to any challenge. She even says game-playing makes us better people. The book is a passionate articulation of why we should pay attention to what is going on in the world of games.

Saul KaplanPin ItReading McGonigal’s arguments from my perspective in the world of work and social system change, it seems it’s the voluntary part we should focus on hardest. Organizations have a lot of experience with goal setting, rules, and incentives. What we haven’t figured out is how to align work with personal passion and commitment. The big aha from Reality is Broken is that we enjoy games and spend so much time playing them because it is our choice. We volunteer to enter their fray. Meanwhile, the problem with work is that so much of it feels involuntary. Certainly no one forced us to take a particular job, but whatever sense of excitement or mission we felt as a new recruit has been lost in the daily grind. We signed on to make a difference by capturing Kamchatka and now find ourselves peeling potatoes.

Applying game design in the workplace can bring back the thrill of putting points on the board, beating the odds, and accomplishing important goals. Leveraging game mechanics can unleash passion, potential, and personal commitment. Games can help transform the weak links of social media connections and conversations into purposeful networks.

But even as we increasingly recognize the potential of games to help us change the world, let’s not get carried away. Shakespeare pointed out the problem inherent in gamifying all our endeavors. “If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work.” So yes, let’s introduce an element of play to make the office more engaging – but let’s not turn Monopoly into monotony.

This post originally appeared here on the Harvard Business Review site.