The Game Changer

THE BIG QUESTION: HOW DO YOU MOTIVATE PEOPLE TO DO GREAT WORK?

'You can do it!' roars the motivational speaker. 'All you need to do is BELIEVE in your ability to ACHIEVE, and you will SUCCEED! Repeat after me: conceive, believe, achieve. Conceive, believe, achieve. Conceive, believe, achieve.' Fist-pumps abound.

Except. you know motivation doesn't work like that. You can inspire people - and be inspired - all you like. But unless you change the game, nothing changes. Inspiration is like milk: it expires. And what you're left with is the work required to make your goals and ideas happen.

'So let's just offer a bonus reward', says the manager, eager to see change happen. 'If we offer a bonus, people will do it.'

And sure, you can change the game by adding in a reward. But, you'll be shifting the motivational dynamics and potentially hobbling creativity and collaboration in the process. People might get so focused on the reward that they take shortcuts that undermine the whole process.

To stay ahead of the game, and to make great things happen, we need to change the way we design our projects and processes so we can sustain and amplify the desire, or motivation, to do great things.

That's what this book will show you - how to change the game so that work and change become inherently motivating.

'What's this talk of games?' I hear you ask. Well, we'll unpack that in glorious detail in chapter 6. But for now let's roll with this: games are the interplay between goals, rules and feedback. A good game is a goal-driven, challenge-intense and feedback-rich experience geared towards progress. These three components correlate to our modern understanding of intrinsic, non-contingent motivation - purpose, mastery and autonomy (more on this in chapter 3).

It so happens that you could take the definition of a game and apply it to nearly any meaningful project or process at work. All projects and work consist of goals, rules and feedback. But sometimes the goal is misaligned, the rules don't work or the feedback loops get out of whack. By changing the game, we can shift motivation and unlock progress.

For too long, many of us have been led to believe we need more motivation. If we don't have the motivation to work towards an important goal, or to drive ourselves to succeed, or to think differently, we feel that there must be something wrong with us. That we are somehow lazy or have a poor attitude.

But there's nothing wrong with us; we simply cannot function at high levels of motivation in all things at all times. Fact. But what we can do is craft the games that keep us motivated and aligned to progress the work that matters.

This book will show you how to drive motivation, not just through inspiration, or remuneration, but by fixing the structure of your goals, projects and work.

If you're leading a team, you'll know that it's hard work carrying the motivation torch all the time. You can give your rousing speeches, and you can put on a big event to kick off the year, and maintain a state of perpetual optimism - but what happens when you're not around? Does everything collapse into monotonous, repetitive automation?

This book will show you how to craft the games that will sustain the motivation of others and how to get your team doing great things, even when you're not around.

We've all endured presentations on SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time based) goal setting. We've all heard sage adages like 'Whether you think you can or you can't, you're right'. And many of us have experienced organisations that suffer from perpetual shiny-new-process syndrome, where there's a new fad program each year: 'Neurolinguistic programming? Oh yeah, we did that five years ago. Design thinking? Yep, we did that too. What's next?'

But we can do better than that.

Much of what we have traditionally learned about managing motivation came from the factory era, when the focus was on productivity, efficiency and performance. While this is still relevant for today's work, what's emerging, and what the old tools often fail to address, is the need for motivational dynamics that inspire and support creativity, collaboration and agility. These are the core ingredients for innovation, change and progress.

This book will show you how to use the right game elements to create the motivation needed to drive progress.

This book isn't called The Game Changer simply because it's a catchy title. We're going to unpack some of the sophisticated design elements of games, combine them with what we know from the science of motivation, and apply these new rules to every project and process challenge at work.

Right now, more than half a billion people (the vast majority of whom are adult men and women) spend more than 5 billion hours each week playing online video games with a level of focused engagement that we just do not see at work. There's a heap of savvy that we can take from this phenomenon to apply to the game at play.

This is because there's always a game at play. And you, the game changer, must learn the rules - so that you can tweak, bend, break or remake them to get the results you want.

And so maybe this is all a bit too confronting. If you're searching for warm fuzzies and feel-good fluff, this probably isn't the book for you.

The world of motivational books is rife with inspiration and stories of hope. Inspiration is fine, as it's the precursor to aspiration and motivation. But hope? That's nice, but you don't need hope. Hope is only helpful when you're hopeless. And you're not hopeless. You have the ability to make dramatic changes to the way you and the people around you progress to meaningful goals through work that matters.

So, let's abandon all hope and fluff. This book will give you the science to make game-changing work a reality.

Now that we've got hope out of the way, let's rethink the cult of success. This book is going to encourage you to fail. The path to innovation and any meaningful growth, change and improvement is non-linear and fraught with failure.

This is not a new thing. It is estimated that gamers spend 80 per cent of their time failing, and Einstein reckons 'play is the highest form of research'.

Success is simply a failure to fail.

If that doesn't work for you, think of it like this: in science there is no such thing as failure, only disproven hypotheses. Thomas Edison, the famous and very prolific innovator, probably had this figured out best. He was quoted to have said, 'I have not failed - I've just found 10 000 ways that won't work'. Edison made a distinction between personal failure and failures in a particular methodology. And that's something this book will help you understand.

So, we can either retreat and cook up perfect new visions, goals and plans (note: there's no such thing), or we can tackle changes iteratively, conducting micro-experiments and launching progress-making games where it's safe (and smart) to fail fast.

If you're a perfectionist, I'm going to show you how to become a progressionist. And, if you're worried about failure, I'm going to show you how to reframe failure and make it work for progress.

For you, the game changer, there are only good games and games yet to be made better.

Let's remember what we're doing here. This is about shifting what influences human behaviour. You've heard people talk about culture. You can't see it, and you can't touch it - but you can feel it, and you know it's there. And you know it underpins all the results you get, good or bad. 

But culture is something you can't tackle directly. So how do you change culture?

You use science, and you start with the right motivation design (see figure 0.1).

Figure 0.1: the precursors to culture

This book -...