Once upon a time, many, many years ago..........
Once upon a time, many, many years ago..........in every culture upon the planet, humans have used storytelling as an effective means of passing information from one generation to the next. Why?
Stories connect with our emotional and inquisitive side, if told well, they hold your attention and imagination. Most of us have had the pleasure of telling 'made-up' fictional stories to children at bedtime, seeing the calm, inquisitive and totally engrossed body language, when normally the child only operates at 100 miles per hour!
Stories are the oldest form of learning & development, due to the emotional connection that stories trigger, retention of information vastly increases. In the modern world this form of interaction is reflected in numerous forms - Films, Books, TV, Social Interactions, Games etc. and more importantly still covers all ages and cultures.
Do we use storytelling in the modern business environment? Well yes, but in my experience in 'snippets' of information usually aligned to experience (just like the many generations of people before us) - when broken down, these 'snippets' normally end up with a WHY we should or WHY we shouldn't - i.e. the modern use of stories within business are aligned to experience within a single situation and the resulting outcomes. Or we detail stories about success, like Salesforce.com or Uber / Airbnb, which are more specific examples of success. Valuable information no doubt, but not as engaging as the child's bedtime story. And more importantly not usually aligned to what we as individuals or teams are currently faced with.
Stories appeal to humans because your mind is transported into the narrative (if its a good one), the characters, situations, challenges, achievements, failures etc. trigger an emotional response and deliver information in a way that humans naturally enjoy.
Can we better utilise Stories to Greatly Improve - Learning, Retention, Change?
The norm within the majority of the large corporations that I talk to in relation to L&D is the provision of LMS / e-learning? My personal view in relation to this response, usually with executive level connections is that this has become a 'tick in the box' (apologies to the L&D people who do not fall into this category) provision of self-learning and based upon value and not outcomes. The company provides the capability for employees to learn via a platform, the problem being that a significant number of e-learning courses are never completed and/or are completed under duress (compliance) but are seen as a 'chore' once each year to keep/achieve certification.
Aligned to this and I've discussed this before (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/game-based-learning-tony-chamberlain/edit) is the explosion and appetite for the connected family - home based / mobile technology is a fundamental necessity to the younger generation who really don't believe that we lived in a world prior to the Internet - phones, tablets, Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Gaming, Homes and Cars.......the list is endless, but the key is the capability, usability and user experience / learning that these numerous interconnected communities provide. The 'home' / 'personal' / 'mobile' technology experience currently far outperforms the average corporations technology user experience. If you look at the above list of Internet communities a key engagement trigger are stories, stories that involve your friends, gaming communities, YouTube followers etc.
Games - let's look at a single technology that achieved global revenues in 2015 of $91.5B......compared to say 2015 Global Box Office revenues (record year) of $38B. That' a lot of teenage lads, locked up in their rooms for 24hrs per day......well obviously its not!
Video games are amazing at story telling, they have one single key differentiator, you and if you want, your friends are part of the story, you are engaged - according to Deloitte - Global Human Capital Trends 2016 - "After three years of struggling to drive employee engagement and retention, improve leadership, and build a meaningful culture, executives see a need to redesign the organisation". (http://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/human-capital/articles/introduction-human-capital-trends.html)
The report discusses 'The rise of teams' of organistions becoming more agile, customer focused - moving the organisational structure from traditional, functional models towards interconnected, flexible teams. A 'network of teams' in which companies build and empower teams to work on specific business projects and challenges. These networks are aligned and coordinated with operations and information centers similar in command centres to the military. Becoming more like Hollywood movie production teams and less like traditional corporations, with people coming together to tackle projects, then disbanding and moving on to new assignments.
The rise of teams - interconnected - networked - Hollywood production model?
Back to Video Games - that $91B industry that is built on engagement, teams that are incredible well interconnected, are created and disbanded once a project is complete and have been doing so for years. Our organisations contain many, many Gamers - people who build, belong, form, develop these interconnect, network of teams. Are we as the modern flexible, innovative organisation taking the opportunity of utilising this capability?
The Serious Games market statistics show figures from $2B upwards, so there is some notion that we are starting to utilise the capability of engaging, flexible, interconnected, networked L&D outcomes using a technology that people are comfortable with - the average age of a Gamer is now 35 and not just male.
Another key component of this industry is failure, yes failure - I'm typing this from the UK where failure is generally frowned upon, not celebrated - if you look at successful companies and interview the founders they all have famous stories, yes stories, engaging stories of how many times they nearly failed, how they developed innovative new products when all around people were telling them that it would not work, the financial struggle to keep afloat etc.
Mark Cowan published a recent article - (http://www.happen.com/why-failure-is-underrated/) "In the UK, we shy away from talking about failed projects, ideas that didn’t work. It feels taboo, almost embarrassing. Truth is, as a team if you’re not evolving from each bump in the road then you’re not really growing and, in innovation terms, that’s the biggest risk of them all." - I'd say that Mark has nailed it - failure is a requirement of success, working together as an agile, interconnected, networked team - Video Games provide the perfect platform for failure, a safe environment to practice the required skills to achieve an outcome, a key point here is that Video Games make the players comfortable about failure not taboo.
So Video Games - engaging, interconnected, flexible networked teams, provision of happy failure, create stories that drive learning and development, are a known and loved medium by the existing workforce and are available within the workplace - Serious Games Industry. Are you redesigning your organisation, are you looking to retain talent, are you moving to technology that is as engaging as home / mobile / personal technology platforms - Get Serious about Games!
Comments
Post a Comment