A Story about Learning, Gaming and Winning
If you are going to ‘win’ with digital, you’ll have to play the game(s).
“When we’re playing a good game — when we’re tackling unnecessary obstacles — we are actively moving ourselves toward the positive end of the emotional spectrum. We are actively engaged, and this puts us in precisely the right frame of mind and physical condition to generate all kinds of positive emotions and experiences. All of the neurological and physiological systems that underlie happiness — our attention systems, our reward center, our motivation systems, our emotion and memory centres — are fully activated by gameplay.”
― Jane McGonigal, Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World
Growing up playing games, I enthusiastically embrace the idea of learning and games. The fun, intensity and gratification that comes from playing a great game (and winning!) beats the heck out of the drudgery of old school learning. Sitting through long, boring lectures is a demotivating and ineffective way to learn. Gaming, could be introduced as a new and improved learning approach. But, we can’t assume that all games are good and will be effective (and in a similar vein, not all classroom experiences are bad).
In an earlier attempt at this post, I started down the path of discussing what makes a good game. In that effort I discussed theory, frameworks and concepts. This included looking at Vygotsky, Piaget, Papert, Playcentric game design and “magic circles.” Gaming theory and frameworks are interesting (and fun!), but there can be a long path from theory to impact. So, I pivoted — and we’ll look at the impact that a great gaming experience can have on learning.
I like to highlight that ‘being’ digital requires new ways of working and — new ways of learning. But, new doesn’t mean that we throw away the old. We bring forward what makes sense, adjusting it as needed to improve and have a bigger impact. Yes, we need to increase focus on social and informal learning. But, we don’t have to abandon formal learning. To enhance the impact of informal learning, I like to include games. Sometimes, these experiences are short and focused on a specific concept. For example, the coin game is quick and fun while highlighting the importance of batch size and the theory of constraints. Sometimes, the games are much bigger and take most of a day to play. The key is to have good games that are impactful. Doing so can impact culture and help organizations achieve their digital maturity ambitions.
With this background, I’d like to tell a story about impact through gaming. The story focuses on playing the Sunburst Simulations’ Espirit Ways of Working simulation (formerly the G2G3 DevOps Simulation). Here are some details about the simulation:
- This is an all-day learning experience, featuring 3 rounds of gameplay. There is a scoreboard, there are rules and it’s competitive. We remind attendees to take breaks and step away from the game.
- Each round of gameplay includes planning, doing, reviewing and some best practices (Theory).
- Each player gets a role: Business leader, Product Owner, Scrum Master, Developer, QA, Release Engineer, Operations or Service Desk.
- To win, each role has to collaborate with the other roles.
- The scoreboard provides everyone with views on their progress, challenges and performance.
- Each role has a type of puzzle to complete to do their “work”. And, like the real-world, there’s a need to collaborate to be able to succeed.
- There are two main types of work: new development that the business requests and incidents that come in via the Service Desk.
- As work moves through the “pipeline”, one of the facilitators is bridging the digital and physical worlds. Paper cards flow through a “pipeline” and the facilitator confirms the work. The facilitator also gets to play the role of “chaos monkey”, so to speak, and gets to break servers — leading to service incidents.
- Work from the business arrives via the Business and Product Owner roles.
With this background in place, I’d like to share one of my favorite stories about this valuable experience. My team was facilitating the simulation at a well-known, global technology company in San Jose. We had a group of senior managers and directors participating. They were in the early days of their division’s digital transformation. This company lives and breathes technology every day. But, they still found that they needed to improve and adopt new ways of working (…and learning, thinking and leading). The agenda for the day included a two-hour overview session followed by the simulation. In total, we had a very full, 8 hour day planned.
I led the overview session. The goal for this session was to drive alignment on Agile, DevOps and ‘connect the dots’. The session included lecture, Q&A/discussion prompts, and a video session with their boss. The video session reinforced the importance of these efforts and highlighted the support for our day. It was during this session that I first met “Simon”. Simon sat in the middle of the room and he caught my eye. He was paying attention, rather intently, but he also had his arms crossed and was leaning back — and was radiating doubt. I introduced the benefits of DevOps: improved collaboration, better quality, and enhanced customer alignment. And, that’s when Simon jumped in: “So what — we’ve seen and heard this before! Each new approach that shows up offers the same thing. Bigger. Better. Cheaper. Faster. Why should this time be any different?” At that point, I felt the spotlight turn to me, get more intense and the focus of the room follow along. How to answer? How could I convert Simon? And, how could I avoid losing the group?
Pausing for a moment, I realized that I couldn’t convert him with words. I shared some thoughts and stories — but I could see the disbelief radiating from Simon. There was a bit more dialog with others in the group joining in, but we weren’t making much progress. Simon wanted proof he could touch, see and experience.
We completed the overview section and moved on to the simulation. We put Simon into the Scrum Master role. The intent of the assignment was to give him direct insight into how work was flowing and engage him with both business and technology roles. He was going to get his proof!
Round 1 of the simulation is chaotic as participants only have a little bit of time to prepare for gameplay. Simon worked hard in Round 1 and in the debrief shared his views on the results, challenges and how everyone worked together. After everyone debriefed, we discussed ways to tackle identified challenges. We provided guidance on techniques and ways of working. We empowered the group to be the driver for continuous improvement. The team had to take their experience and the practices we provided to come up with better ways of working. We repeated this pattern at the end of Rounds 2 and 3. However, for Round 3 the goal was to carry forward lessons learned into their day-to-day work. I won’t go into details of the techniques, approaches and thoughts shared (I don’t want spoil the sim for you) — but I will highlight that we made an impact. Throughout the day, Simon changed. His demeanor went from doubtful, frigid and a bit antagonistic to warm, smiling and passionate. Why? He was able to get his proof. He experienced the changes that happen as we take on new and better ways of collaborating. He felt empowered as he and his colleagues made their system work better. Data and debriefs along the way showed them bottlenecks and highlighted issues. And, new ideas on practices fed into experiments that led to solutions. For me, this was a huge win. In traditional training and coaching situations, I don’t see such a transition in one day.
The simulation wasn’t the end of their journey. People don’t leave as DevOps experts. But, the sim sets the stage for pulling more learning, for igniting pursuit of improvement and culture change.
I’ve had the chance to run the sim at some other companies and would like to share from those experiences. In one sim, my then client and now friend Keith Buehlman was a participant. Keith was the leader of the organization’s transformation. I asked him to reflect on the experience and he shared the following:
“One of the best parts of the DevOps simulation was the opportunity to go through realistic scenarios and, in the process, refine skills and learn best practices that can be used immediately. The DevOps simulation was an important piece of the transformation strategy as it comes to understanding the culture that was needed to operate in an agile fashion. It truly supplemented the hands-on training and day-to-day coaching of the employees.”
I especially like the reference at the end of his thoughts. The simulation is not a one-off, silver bullet that solves all transformation challenges. But it’s a piece of the puzzle that also includes other training and coaching. And — as much as this is about skills and practices, it reinforces the cultural changes needed.
Other participants have highlighted that they found it motivating to see the connection between their work and impact. For others, they walked away understanding T-shaped skillsets. One participant shared his surprise that people would cheer for improvements in MTTR. And, as we put participants in roles different from their day-to-day; they come away with a new appreciation for their teammates. Empathy for others can go a long way to making the workplace more hospitable and receptive to change. G2G3 published this interview with the then-CIO of Royal Bank of Scotland, summarizing the impact the simulation made across the business.
Through game play we have an exceptional day of learning. The energy is high, passion is evident and the time flies by. And, we create ripples in the organization that support us in driving a bigger change. In wrapping up, here’s a great quote from Ralph Koster that speaks further to the power of gaming and learning:
“Fun from games arises out of mastery. It arises out of comprehension. It is the act of solving puzzles that makes games fun. In other words, with games, learning is the drug.”
I hope this story sparks interest in adding games into your formal learning events. If you’re already using games, which ones are you using? What impact are these games having? Are you creating any new games that are specific to your organization?
Originally published at https://blogs.ubc.ca on February 9, 2020.
