Making motivation worse with Gamification

Man with head on desk 300x201 Making motivation worse with Gamification

When people talk about gamification, it is pretty certain the word “motivation” will pop up. “We want to engage and motivate our people, gamification is definitely going to be the answer for that!”.

The trouble here is that gamification is AN answer, not always THE answer.

People lack motivation in job for a number of reasons, often self perpetuating reasons. Whatever their reason, they are often viewed as poor at their job and an irritant. It is easier to view low motivation as an issue with an individual than with the company or setting. Read More ...

Personal Brand. What is it and why should I care?

Personal brand, like gamification, it one of those terms that seems to come up more and more these days.

In a nutshell, personal brand is the image of yourself that others see. By this, I don’t mean the clothes you wear or you haircut (though this can be part of it), I mean something deeper and more important in the long term.

Have you ever searched for your name on the internet? If not, head to Google and do it now (then come back!).

Now, answer these questions about the first page of results; Read More ...

Prompts. Learning from kids toys and LinkedIn

Ok, so maybe a serious blog this week.

Prompts are important, we use them all the time, but we probably don’t think much about them. Do you set yourself reminders on your phone or in Outlook? Meeting requests, messages on your pin board at home to remind you what to by at the shops, Post It notes on the fridge? All of these are prompts, they are also all calls to action.

My daughter has a lot of toys. For the most part they all make noise as well. One of the things that scares the hell out of me is when one decides to make noise, five minutes after she has stopped playing with them. She as one called Alfie Bear.  When you put him down, just before he switches off properly, he suddenly laughs and says “Come play with me”. Creepy, but a very good call to action. There is no ambiguity about what you need to do next – go play with him! Lots of her toys do similar, in much the same way as arcade machines of my youth had an attract mode. This would show you some of the cool things in the game and shout things out from the machine, to attract you to play. Read More ...

Treating the Klout

Just recently, Klout changed something in their scoring algorithm. This something changed quite a few people’s scores. Some for the better and some for the worse.

Now you see this proves the point I was making in Catching the Klout. Chasing numbers is, in many ways, pointless when it comes to social networking.

Using arbitrary numbers to check what kind of influence or engagement you have, can only be a small part of the over all picture. This is especially true when the numbers can be affected on the whim of developers at Klout. Read More ...

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