Millennials - the Largest Living Generation... Is Your Workplace Ready?

Millennials have surpassed Baby Boomers in the United States as the largest living generation.

According to a recent analysis of U.S. Census data by the Pew Research Centerr, millennials - defined as those ages 18-34 in 2015 - now number 75.4 million, surpassing the 74.9 million Baby Boomers (ages 51-69) for the top spot.  And the ranks of millennials are expected to swell nationally to roughly 81 million by 2036.

What does this mean for you?

Dutch Driver - Open Mic - Gamification and the 2020 Workforce

Part 1 of a casual open mic session where Dutch turns the tables on Monica and interviews her about gamification.

This week my guest is Dutch Driver – like most of my gamification colleagues – we met through social media – and then had an opportunity to meet live and in person when I was in Alabama speaking a few years back. Dutch is one of those creative, research type people that I find fascinating…

In this episode we discuss:

Finding Fun in the Things We Have to Do

Many people are intensely competitive in games, trying to outpace and outsmart their way to the top. Face it, we have been playing games since the days of the cavemen, and it is human nature to compare ourselves to others to see how we measure up. 

Add technology to the mix, and today gaming has become a hugely popular and tremendously profitable industry, to the order of over $100 billion dollars globally this year. 

The reality is: 

• People enjoy playing games
• Popular games inspire extreme loyalty
• People are motivated by gaming reward and achievement systems
• Therefore, if non-games are made more game-like, we’ll be more likely to ‘play’ them 

The success of social networks and social gaming has demonstrated how behavioral psychology plays a factor in a successful user experience. Games have proven that people crave personal progress in building social connections and completing goals, especially in light of the fact that millions of people engage with these services without getting a dime in return.

Are You Ready for the G Generation?

Research into the development of the brain has shown early childhood and adolescence are the critical years for how the brain is prepared for perceiving and reacting to the world. These critical years leave our brains with a particular set of assumptions and beliefs about how the world works.
  
Games reinforce certain beliefs about the players themselves, how the world should work, how people relate to one another, and about the purpose of life in general. 

Games create a self-centered universe where the player is in charge, and within certain rules or boundaries, can manipulate other people and objects. 

Data from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that an average 8-10 year old spends more than an hour a day with video games. The huge amount of time spent with video games during their formative years has led the Gamer or G Generation to be “hard wired” differently than those who came before them. 

Thinking Differently is Easier Said than Done

How often do you think differently?

Thinking differently means approaching your daily challenges and habits in new, innovative ways. One of the best ways to think differently is to challenge assumptions.

Every time you approach a problem, the natural thing to do is the thing you've always done.

You approach the situation by bringing your accumulated knowledge and experience. The more experienced and skilled you are, the more likely you are to assume certain outcomes.

One of the most powerful ways to generate new ideas is to challenge assumptions.

Player and User Types for Gamification Design

In this episode of Gamification Talk Radio Andrzej and Monica explore the use of player and user types in gamification. The history of their use in gamification, the short comings of traditional types, and how to make use of the Gamification User Types Hexad - a user type classification model that Andrzej created

• What user types / player types are - a brief history
• Why they are important to gamification
• How to make use of them for your gamification strategy and application

About Andrzej Marczewski: A Gamification expert at Capgemini UK, keynote speaker and author of Gamification: A Simple Introduction. He has spent 14 years as developer and a lifetime as a gamer.  Andrzej is also the creator of the Gamification User Types Hexad, the first taxonomy and framework specifically designed to help gamifiers create solutions that put the user at the center of the experience. Connect with Andrzej at http://gamified.co.uk and on Twitter @daverage.

About Your Host:  A gamification keynote speaker and curriculum designer, Monica Cornetti is rated as the #1 Gamification Guru in the World by UK-Based Leaderboarded. She is the author of the book Totally Awesome Training Activity Guide: Put Gamification to Work for You. Monica’s niche is gamification used in the corporate environment. Connect with Monica (@monicacornetti) www.monicacornetti.com

The Gamification of Talent Development

Gamification is definitely the BUZZ word of 2015.

If you're in the Talent Development, HR, and Employee Engagement fields, haven't you heard that gamification is in high demand and will continue to be for at least the next 7-10 years?

And isn't it true, if you do a quick job search on any job site for trainers, instructional designers, eLearning developers... you'll see that gamification is on the list of preferred, if not REQUIRED, skill sets?

Gamification: Become a Player

To become a player, one must voluntarily accept the rules and constraints of the game. This acceptance of the game’s rules is part of what Bernard Suits calls the lusory attitude. (Lusory derives from the Latin word for game.)

The lusory attitude of the players is defined as the “State of affairs where in one adopts rules which require one to employ worse rather than better means for reaching an end.”

For example, in the game of golf:  The objective is to get the ball in the cup on each hole with the least amount of swings of the club. Whoever has the least amounts of swings wins the round. Putting it in the hole with your hand would be best way to do that. You would not choose to take a stick with a piece of metal on one end of it, walk 300 or 400 yards away from the hole, and then attempt to drive the ball into the hole with the stick.

Gamification, Like Hot Fudge on Ice Cream... or is it??

While points, badges, and leaderboards are important elements of gamification projects, gamification is more than just drizzling these elements onto a business process like hot fudge on Blue Bell Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream.

Gamification requires a great deal of thought about the entire design of the system, including understanding the nature of your users, thinking about what you’d like them to do and how best to make them do it.

As with any type of program design it needs to be carefully considered, designed, and reviewed. If you’re going to gamify your training and development then you’ll need to have knowledge of psychology, motivation, and game design, and understand the potential pitfalls of each.

Here are four areas to consider:

Good Gamification in Corporate Training Means Good Storytelling

Studies show that learners comprehend and retain more through stories. And storytelling, when used in training design, allows us to connect to the learner on an emotional level and helps to create interest in the learning topic.

Since training should be more than just about delivering facts. When developing high-quality, effective gamified training programs, we should weave stories into the instructional design and delivery – framing the quest (or learning adventure) in a spellbinding story.

For example, I was hired to gamify a 6-hour Payroll Law class. I was told, “Do your thing… make it fun and interactive. We want them to hire us, so they should understand how complex payroll law really is, and at the same time they should walk away from the day with a basic knowledge of the many components of the law.”

Joshua Roberts - Video Games to Create Powerful Scenario-Based Learning

 

Recently Joshua Roberts wrote an intriguing blog article about instructional design -- Choices and Decisions in E-Learning – What We Can Learn From The WalkingDead (Video Game) Series – I was hooked . Immediately I thought, “Who is this guy? I need to connect with him today!"

And, this week on Gamification Talk Radio, Joshua and I explored how to take advantage of video games in the world of learning.

4 Ways Gamification of Real-World Activities Will Motivate Employees

Gamification is the use of game elements and game-design techniques in non-game contexts. Let me break that down.

Game Elements: Think of game elements as a toolkit for building a game. Game elements include game pieces, avatars, rules, scoring points, proceeding to the next level, receiving badges, or unlocking a reward. As you begin to gamify a system, you can and should modify the elements to target certain business objectives and to make the experience more engaging.

Game Techniques: The aspects of games that make them fun, addicting, and challenging can’t be reduced to a list of components or step-by-step instructions. This is where game-design techniques come in. How do you decide which game elements to put where to create an overall productive gamified experience? Just like strategic leadership, managing a team, or creating a killer marketing campaign, game design is a strong mix of knowledge, skill, and luck.

Non-game Context: The final aspect of our definition is that gamification operates in non-game contexts such as on-boarding, marketing, training, client engagement, etc. The key element in each is that they involve real-world business goals. Your players are not storming a fortress, they are exploring the website of your new product. They are not collecting gold coins, they are collecting achievements on the way to learning a new skill or process in the workplace.

The three major non-game contexts are: internal, external, and behavior change.

The Reality of Most Corporate Training...

Corporate Trainers – we’re an enthusiastic bunch.

We glow when we think about our training programs. We’re positively gushy and unbearable talking about how our programs will:

• Improve customer satisfaction
• Improve employee performance
• Improve employee satisfaction and retention
• Enhance company profits
• Save time
• Save money
• Give the company and overall competitive advantage

But start to ask us the tough questions – like, "What has changed as a result of your training?" and that's where we start to go a little sideways.

Adam Hollander - Successfully Implementing Sales Gamification with Fantasy Sales Team

In honor of this week's BIG news - Microsoft acquires FantasySalesTeam, an innovative sales gamification platform, to help organizations increase productivity - I am pulling from the vault, an interview with the CEO of FST, Adam Hollander.





Why Your Sales Incentives Are Failing: How to Successfully Implement Sales Gamification

When you talk sales incentives - Leader boards? Top scorers? Challenges? these elements have been part of incentive promotions all along.

But… most sales contests fail due to poor design and a lack of understanding how to motivate the entire team vs. the traditional top performers.

Successful use of gamification is much more than just fancy leaderboards. This week learn how to successfully drive sales improvements by implementing gamification the right way.

About Adam: Adam Hollander is founder and CEO of FantasySalesTeam which helps sales managers run more engaging and higher performing sales contests modeled on fantasy sports.  Adam has worked with hundreds of companies to assist them in achieving their sales targets and has held a variety of sales and sales management roles at both small and large public enterprises.  Adam holds a BA in Business Management from Babson College. Connect with Adam: (@FST_Games) www.fantasysalesteam.com

About Your Host:  A gamification keynote speaker and curriculum designer, Monica Cornetti is rated as the #1 Gamification Guru in the World by UK-Based Leaderboarded. She is the author of the book Totally Awesome Training Activity Guide: Put Gamification to Work for You. Monica’s niche is gamification used in the corporate environment. Connect with Monica (@monicacornetti) www.monicacornetti.com

3 Ideas to Implement Low-Tech Gamification in Corporate Training

There is a new generation of workers taking over key positions in your organization and in your meetings.

This generation is younger, yes, but they’re also different in ways that will definitely change how business is done — and those differences are driven by one central factor: growing up playing video games.

Data from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows 8-10 year olds spend more than an hour a day with video games. The immense amount of time spent with games during a child’s formative years has led them to be literally “hard wired” in a different way than those who came before.

The G Generation (Gamer Generation) will soon outnumber their elders in the workplace. Their way of thinking will soon pass the business tipping point and become standard operating procedure.

Sooner or later, those who grew up without video games will have to understand the gamers. That means not only learning what they’re all about, but finding ways to redesign your organization’s on boarding, engagement, loyalty, and training programs.

Welcome to gamification.

Gamification is an important and powerful new strategy for influencing and motivating people. It takes the elements of your favorite games like Clue and Angry Birds and applies them to everyday life. Simply defined, gamification uses game mechanics and rewards for non-game applications in order to increase engagement, knowledge transfer, and loyalty.  

You can take the game mechanics that game designers had been using for years such as competition, real-time feedback, and goal-setting, and apply them outside of gaming.

Gamification works to drive behavior because it is based on satisfying fundamental human needs and desires.

Gamification does NOT mean making a computer or a video game, and expecting it to motivate people … it’s about much more than the technology. It means taking the concepts around games and great game design, and using them in an authentic way to drive the behavior you want to get.

For example to implement low-tech gamification in your corporate training you can:

1. Organize a module of training into quests with challenges that individuals or teams must solve
2. Turn a review of new information into a highly-charged, audience-driven process where teams work to solve scenario-based problems before time runs out
3. Ask participants to create avatars or identities they will use when participating in activities

Gamers think differently than you do… are you ready to think differently about how to connect, motivate, and engage with them?

Implement gamification in your corporate training TODAY, download Gamification Design and Implementation - A Starter Kit.

About the Author:  Monica CornettiFounder and CEO, Sententiawww.SententiaGames.com
www.monicacornetti.com

A gamification speaker and designer, Monica Cornetti is rated as a #1 Gamification Guru in the World by UK-Based Leaderboarded. She is the author of the book Totally Awesome Training Activity Guide: Put Gamification to Work for You, writes The Gamification Report blog, and hosts the weekly Gamification Talk Radio program.

She is a professional consultant and known for being one of the leading players in thinking differently to create uncommon results. In fact, as an early adopter, she has been designing and delivering gamification programs for her clients since 2008.

Are Leaders Born or Made?

Like me you’ve probably worked for the boss from hell, a bully manager who insults direct reports, belittles their efforts, and blames them for things over which they have no control.

The boss from hell will suck the life and soul out of your people and your organization, stealing dignity and purpose, and replacing those ideals with intimidation and fear.

A recent poll of 800 managers and employees in 17 industries, revealed that after being bullied by a boss, even employees who do NOT consider themselves disengaged, develop or exhibit behaviors that greatly impact their organizations bottom line:    

Action-based Learning... The Art of Design

Research has demonstrated that people learn best when they are actively involved in the learning process. Over the years, action-based learning has been proven to appeal to all types of learners, as it accelerates knowledge and skill acquisition, and ensures long-term retention.

Action-based learning uses experiential and accelerated learning techniques such as immersive simulations, game attributes, and other interactive activities to help learners develop insights and transferable understanding as they internalize new information.

Well-designed games and simulations that focus on strategic business issues are extremely powerful learning tools because they are able to engage and motivate learners well beyond more traditional teaching methods. Gamification adds the mechanics that triggers the actions to fulfill the individual motivations and needs. All of these work together to ensure key learning and business objectives are met.

Sententia’s Leadership Development Program is artfully designed so that learners can easily connect the stories, tasks, and insights they experience during the program with their day-today work lives. This unique, trademarked program engages and involves participants and motivates them to learn..

Is now a good time to schedule a Sententia World Explorer Essential Leadership Skills in a Diverse Workforce™ training program for your leadership and management teams?

For more information on program content and how it works, you can view our Slideshare presentation or Download our Facts Sheet

For more ideas on adding game thinking and gamification to your work and play go to:  http://www.monicacornetti.com/gamification 

Let’s play!

About the Author:  Monica CornettiFounder and CEO, Sententiawww.SententiaGames.com
www.monicacornetti.com

A gamification speaker and designer, Monica Cornetti is rated as a Top 4 Gamification Guru in the World by UK-Based Leaderboarded. She is the author of the book Totally Awesome Training Activity Guide: Put Gamification to Work for You, writes The Gamification Report blog, and hosts the weekly Gamification Talk Radio program.

David Mullich - Gamification and Learning... A Game Designer's POV

My guest is David Mullich, a video game producer and designer, and our topic is – Gamification and Learning

Today David and I will explore gamification from the perspective of an experienced video game designer who uses gamification in the classroom to teach game design to students.

1. How traditional video game designers view gamification
2. How to use gamification in the classroom setting
3. How to teach gamification to others

This is a perspective we’ve not yet explored on Gamification Talk Radio, so let’s play…




About David Mullich is a video game producer and designer who has worked at Activision, Disney, 3DO and the Spin Master toy company. He is now is a freelance game consultant as well as Course Director for Game Production at The Los Angeles Film School and co-creator of the Boy Scouts Game Design Merit Badge.  As both an advocate and teacher of gamification, David is consistently rated as a top gamification guru on Leaderboarded. You can connect with David at http://www.electricsheep.biz, davidmullich.wordpress.com, and on Twitter @David_Mullich.

About Your Host:  A gamification keynote speaker and curriculum designer, Monica Cornetti is rated as the #1 Gamification Guru in the World by UK-Based Leaderboarded. She is the author of the book Totally Awesome Training Activity Guide: Put Gamification to Work for You. Monica’s niche is gamification used in the corporate environment. Connect with Monica (@monicacornetti) www.monicacornetti.com.

The World Explorer - Essential Leadership Skills in a Diverse Workforce

The World Explorer is a comprehensive blended leadership training that is based on next-generation gamification tactics using rich game narratives, simple game mechanics, understanding of unique personalities and motivators, competition, collaboration, creative thinking, and more…

Humans like to play, and when there is play involved, we become skillful learners.

The World Explorer uses a graphical story that captivates your interest and imagination. Two young explorers, Louis and Lindsey, are your guides on this adventure. As millennials, they are digital natives and feel quite comfortable with the use of apps, wearables, and websites to access information when and where they need it – and they’ll show you how to excel in this NEW digital era.

Learn how to plan for your journey and pack wisely to make every item count. This proven trademarked program ties into corporate objectives and performance goals and encourages on-the-job mastery, improved communications, and lasting organizational change.

Receive hands-on practice in building and leading teams and learn how to:

• Create a collaborative work environment for faster, better results – while maintaining healthy working relationships
• Formulate strategies for attracting, retaining and developing top-tier talent
• Increase engagement and retention by matching your company’s goals with the goals of the employees
• Understand the person your trying to lead – and persuade more effectively by speaking to their motivators
• Motivate your team – even the “difficult” ones

For more ideas on gamified corporate trainings please visit us at www.SententiaGames.com

About the Author:  Monica Cornetti
Founder and CEO, Sententia
www.SententiaGames.com
www.monicacornetti.com

A gamification speaker and designer, Monica Cornetti is rated as a #1 Gamification Guru in the World by UK-Based Leaderboarded. She is the author of the book Totally Awesome Training Activity Guide: Put Gamification to Work for You, writes The Gamification Report blog, and hosts the weekly Gamification Talk Radio program.