Manny Pacquiao, the eight time boxing champion in different class, was forced to defend himself for his stance on “gay marriage” issue. He emphasises that he is not against gay people (or gay behaviors for this matter) – but he is against gay marriage, a view that reiterates his Catholics faith.

Poor Manny! He is just a nice guy who is caught in between a horrible journalism and Catholics faith. He could have ducked this whole mess, if he exploit the different understanding that people have on gay marriage and re-define the term in his favor.

How Social Media Could Create PR Nightmare

What a PR mess that Pacquiao got himself into. This is one of the dark-sides of the internet / social media, i.e. the power to create PR havoc. All it takes to “light the fuse”, is to extract the (negative) emotional element out of its context, and spread it across multiple social-media channels like Twitter and Facebook.

That’s why I’m not so surprised when I learn that the recent Ferrari crash incident – involving a successful foreigner from China and a Singaporean cabby – was turned into an anti-immigrant rhetoric. Emotion can be made viral. Hard facts can’t.

During the interview, Pacquiao did not mention about the infamous verse (Leviticus 20:13) that implies gays must be killed. What Pacquiao did, was simply saying that gay marriage shouldn’t be allowed. Isn’t Pacquiao entitled to his opinion just like the rest of us? Has being religious become out-of-fashion in modern society?

Thankfully for Pacquiao, he did a damage control. He clarified his statements publicly. I think bringing the context back to the (misquoted) statement is the smart thing to do when you find yourself in similar situation like Pacquiao’s.

Pacquiao could do better if he understand the discipline of Information Architecture (IA).

Gay Marriage Is a Wrong Term. Civil Union Is The Right One. 

Andy Ho argued that gay marriage should be called “Civil Union”. (Source: The Straits Times, 19 May 2012)

At the heart of the uproar, is the different perspectives about the term “gay marriage”. Some people see gay marriage as an equivalent to the traditional marriage between a man and a woman. Some people like Andy Ho from Straits Times and I, opine that gay marriage is equal to a civil union.

The different understanding about a term can cause confusion, disagreement, and frustration. If you ask me, whether I support gay marriage, I would say no (I’m not a gay-hater. I just think that there is no such thing as gay marriage). But if you ask me, whether I support a civil union between people of the same gender, then I would say yes.

Why my responses are different for issues that are seemingly similar? Well, I’m not alone in this contradictory behavior. Words are multi-faceted and thus are slippery. Thus, when people from different background collaborate, there are always frictions caused by the different understanding from the same words.

Yet, words can be used to unite people. To facilitate collaboration and co-creation, people must have the same understanding on commonly used words/terminology. This can be achieved in two ways. First through strong culture. Second through IA study, i.e. call a meeting, get people to do card-sorting exercises, and then decide on the right terms to use.

Back to Pacquiao. To minimise the PR damage and to project a positive image of himself as an intellect, he could have said, “I support civil union between gays/lesbians – but not gay marriage. Marriage is sanctioned by god to be the union between a man and a woman.”

The above extrapolated statement is powerful because he will not be seen as a gay-hater (the statement clearly said that he support a civil union) and he can defend his Catholics belief at the same time.

Indeed, clearly defining terms could save you from a PR nightmare, could salvage relationships, and could win over people. Information architect to the rescue!

Thoughts? 

SMRT to refocus on its engineers, The Straits Times, 12 May 2012.

I – a loyal SMRT customer for the past 12 years – applaud SMRT chairman, Koh Yong Guan, who wanted to give more attention to the engineers. I think Mr Koh hit the nail on its head on where SMRT should be headed. Engineering excellence should be one of the organisational pillar of SMRT.

Under the leadership of Saw Phaik Hwa, SMRT seems to focus more on profitability than on engineering excellence. That’s probably one of the reasons why Ms. Saw brought retail shops to MRT stations. Unfortunately this new initiative has yet to yield some profits.

However, I sympathise with Ms. Saw. It is easy to cast aside the boring engineering matters when everything went well. Furthermore, talking about technical stuff has long been considered as “operational” and thus the “strategic” management executives should focus more on the sexy profitability – especially when this is what the board wanted.

What Mr Koh did, consciously or not, is elevating the importance of engineering matters in the top management’s agenda. By doing so, engineers can have the top management’s attention whenever they  brought up concerns about engineering stuff or whenever they have ideas on how to improve SMRT’s engineering excellence.

The top management’s attention is like a premium fuel that would energise (read: motivate) the engineers to put forth their ideas and to speak up about possible engineering problems. At last, the engineers are being heard by the top management. At last, they can feel good about doing a good job.

The top management’s attention is like a premium fuel that would energise the engineers

Without the top management’s attention, the engineers will feel unappreciated and become demotivated over the long run (why bother bringing up ideas when the bosses are more interested in sales?). Under this situation, if I were SMRT engineer, I would either join another engineering company, or reinvent myself to be a retail sales expert.

Credit to Mr. Koh for bringing SMRT back to its engineering roots! Mr. Koh also shows that leadership matters* because leaders have the power to shape the organisational culture by giving appropriate attention to key focus areas and the people who have the right expertise.

I’m looking forward to the transformation of SMRT.

Note: I can empathise with SMRT’s engineers not because I’m one of them (I’m not an engineer and I have never worked for SMRT), but because I’m an intranet / information professional and a Knowledge Management (KM) practitioner.

Getting the management’s attention on intranet excellence is, I guess, an uphill battle that every intranet professional have to go through many times in the life span of the intranet.

Comments? 

_____________

*A former US secretary of state, Madeline Albright, spoke about the importance of leadership in her excellent book, Prague Winter. Read her thoughts in a recent Forbes interview transcript.

It has been a while since I last visited NUS campus. And boy, what a tranformation NUS campus has gone through. I’m disoriented when I didn’t see the university hall, and instead I saw a big sign, that says university town. The signs pointed to Science faculty direction. I was like “Huh? What’s going on?”.

Thankfully, the perennial landmark, Yusof Ishak House is still there. So I boarded an internal bus service, D1. And then the bus went to a flyover and stopped at new modern buildings named CREATE. That’s where I alighted.

I made my way through, to Tembusu college. The clear signage along the way clearly helps. Here, look at the impressive buildings. (I can’t help but feeling envious to the current batch of NUS students. I wish NUS campus was this beautiful when I was a student).

University Town, NUS. This is where I alighted from internal shuttle bus. (Impressive, eh?).

University Town, NUS. On my way to Tembusu College

Education Resource Centre, University Town, NUS

Tembusu College, NUS. (Finally, I reached the barcamp venue).

Once I reached Tembusu college, I knew I was at the right place when I saw these.

The Singapore Barcamp logo

Topic Board at Singapore Barcamp

Event schedule of Singapore Barcamp

I was in Barcamp Singapore between 11am and 12.30pm. As any typical barcamp session, there were talks about programming (heavy stuff). I don’t think I can understand those technical talks. So I chose the less technical ones, i.e. Singapore mini maker faire by William, lightning talks, and my adventures in the Balkans and Hungary by Sayanee.

I learned quite a few interesting information / insights.

1. Singapore mini maker faire is just around the corner! It will be held on 4 – 5 August 2012 at Science centre.

2. During one the lightning talks titled Our Robotic Future, I learned that the world has 18 million robots today. The speaker added that robots will allow human to build things at a much faster rate. This implies, people have to make the right decision faster since robots can do rapid implementation of ideas. So making the right decision will be a competitive advantage – which means the decision science and the decision-support system will gain more prominence in the near future.

3. In another lightning talk, I learned about the power of HTML5 and CSS3 in transforming how we present ideas. Good bye static presentation-slides deck! (Yes, I’m talking about Microsoft Powerpoint). The future belongs to people who can visualise their ideas using dynamic presentation tool such as impress.js

4. Sayanee talked about her adventures in the balkans (Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia) and Hungary. Throughout her talk, I kept thinking that I should visit eastern Europe one day. I love medieval castles and churches. She also talked about Gavrilo Princip – a man who was considered as a patriot by the Serbians and a terrorist by Austrians. The difference between patriotism and terrorism is a matter of perspective.

Did you attend Barcamp Singapore? What did you learn?

Iron lady is a great film about the life of Margaret Thatcher – the longest serving British Prime Minister. I admit, I didn’t know much about the UK iron lady (a.k.a. Margaret Thatcher) before I watched the film. But wow, I’m impressed with her personality.

No doubt, there are a lot of things that we can learn from her. For a start, I think all of us can learn five good lessons from her rise to (and fall from) the summit of UK government.

1. Get a meaningful job

“Do the job that you love” mantra is a time-and-tested way to be successful. In the movie, Thatcher told her soon-to-be husband that she did not want to waste her time washing dishes. And she insisted that “one’s life must matter”.

The lesson here is not so much about washing dishes sucks, but rather you should define what kind of job that excites you and go for it. (I’m sure there are people in this world who are passionate about washing dishes. But to Thatcher, washing dishes is a meaningless activity.)

2. Surround yourself with people who believe in you

No one is perfect and this is a fact of life. But why should you make your life harder, by hanging out with people who think that you have 1,001 things to improve? Stay away from these people because they will suck your energy and hurt your self worth. Instead connect with people who believe in you.

Thatcher surrounded herself with people who believe in her potential like Airey Neave. They encouraged her to lead the conservative party and offered help/advices on the few things that Thatcher has to improve, to fulfill her potential.

3. Use your own criteria to decide what to change about yourself

Who has the right to tell you on what to change about yourself? Nobody but yourself and someone whom you have deep respect. The truth is, we know ourselves better than anyone else. And thus, we should be the worst critics of ourselves – not someone else.

In the movie, Thatcher insisted that she wouldn’t be persuaded, not to wear her pearl necklace. And she brushed off the doctor who seemed to know what her feelings were.  She believed thoughts and ideas were more important than feelings.

Watch your thoughts for they’d become words. Watch your words for they’d become habits. Watch your habits, for they’d become your character. And watch your character, it would become your destiny.

- Margaret Thatcher

4. To change things, lead the change initiative

In the movie, Airey Neave told Thatcher to lead the party if she want to change it. I totally agree with Neave on this, i.e. to change things, you need to lead the change initiative! (apparently, this view is not uncommon). Napoleon Bonaparte seems to share this view too.

I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies.

- Napoleon Bonaparte

Who else can do a better job in communicating change and determining how to get there, than the person who fervently believe that change must be done? It makes perfect sense to be the leader of the change initiative when you are the most passionate advocate of change.

5. Be gentle when giving criticism

In the movie, Thatcher was warned, “…not to test one’s colleagues loyalty too far”. Unfortunately, she didn’t listen.

In her last days in office, Thatcher alienated many of her colleagues by easily dismissing their views and acting like a dictator. She brutally criticised Geoffrey Howe in front of other cabinet members – prompting his resignation from the cabinet and eventually this leads to her own downfall.

Thoughts?

Have you watched the movie: The Iron Lady? What life lesson did you learn?

The greatest challenge in the change management is making people care about the message that we are telling them. This isn’t an easy thing to do – especially in organisations, where people are swamped with daily work activities.

Most people just want to get on with their daily routine and maintain status quo. It’s not that people are lazy. They just need to be convinced that the change is worth their attention and energy.

So the question for us – the people who roll-out change in organisation – is how to grab people’s attention and tell an engaging story. To me, the answer is by launching great marketing campaigns to initiate the change effort.

Posters and a website are the foundation for a good marketing campaign, because they create greater awareness and inform people on the reason behinds the change effort. To have a great marketing campaign, however, you need to produce fantastic videos.

The Power of Videos

In recent years, more people and organisations are using videos as a change management tools, because videos are the best medium to store and convey stories – especially the emotional elements of the story.

Take for example, KONY 2012. It is a successful viral campaign that calls people to take (simple) action to stop Joseph Kony. (if you don’t know who he is and you don’t care, then I was at the same boat with you – before I watched the video clip below).

Here is another brilliant example of the use of video as a storytelling tool: the trailer of the movie, Prometheus. By using real event brand – TED – and projecting it into the future, i.e. year 2023, we are unconsciously drawn into the story. It’s akin to getting invitation to participate in the future – told by the movie.

Why the Adoption of Video Has Accelerated

The use of video has been increasingly important over the years, and will be critical in change effort in the future, for at least two reasons. First, the effort and cost to produce and to host videos have been steadily decreasing over the years. Second, the technology to support the consumption of videos, such as broadband internet, mobile platforms like iPad / iPhone, and sharing tools (i.e. social technology) is widely available.

Even within the organisation, the infrastructure for hosting videos can be easily acquired and it is now more affordable to invest in such technology. In sharepoint 2010-based intranet, you can consider Kontiki enterprise to host and distribute videos.

In short, the time is ripe to make use of video as the leading tool in change initiative. By not investing time / effort in producing videos and not investing in infrastructure, organisations are making change more difficult. And these organisations are not agile, are less innovative, and will get left behind.

Thoughts?

Further Readings

Bailyn, E. (19 March 2012). The Difference Between Slacktivism and Activism: How ‘Kony 2012′ Is Narrowing The Gap. Huffington Post

Tsukayama, H. (10 March 2012). Kony 2012: The Anatomy of a Viral Campaign. Washington Post.

Suddath, C. (16 March 2012). Five Reasons the Kony Video Went Viral. Bloomberg Business Week.

Pomerantz, D. (18 April 2012). ‘Prometheus’: When Movie Marketing Goes Very Right. Forbes.

Prometheus Viral Clip: David The Android. Youtube

A Snapshot of The Business Times, 16 April 2012.

What’s up Singtel? After a study trip to Silicon Valley, the company reshuffled its senior management team and the CEO, Chua Sock Koong, said that the kind of talent that they would recruit into Digital Life were people from media, internet space and digital space.

Wow! Can a single study trip change the mindset of the senior management? In Singtel’s case, it seems to be. I’m happy for Singtel, not because I’m their loyal customer for the past five years, but because I think they are moving in the right direction for two reasons.

First, Singtel understands that, to be successful in today’s economy, they have to bring-in talents with skills in social media / PR. It is folly to think that customers (employees included) will keep their opinions, on new ideas and on service dissatisfaction, to themselves -  when they are highly educated and armed with social media and mobile gadgets. Today’s economy is about co-creation. And Singtel gets that.

Second, Ms. Chua’s philosophy on innovation. She has definitely hit the right tune by looking wide at the whole business ecosystem, to come up with innovative adjacent product / services like AMPed and skoob. This perspective on innovation is advocated by Ron Adner in his book, The Wide Lens: A New Strategy for Innovation.

Don’t get overly excited, however, by the senior management’s good intention to make change happen. They may not succeed because of – you guess it – the middle management’s resistance to change.

To deal with middle management’s resistance and to increase its chances in changing mindset of their people, Singtel has to do two things well.

1. Promote the right people, i.e. people who share the senior management’s views and are able to translate their vision into day-to-day actions, and convince everyone that the change is the right thing to do via dialogue and focus group conversations.

2. Adopt social organisation model. Singtel has taken a huge first step in being a social organisation. It has Expresso – Singtel’s internal Facebook, and blogging and sharing platform.

Expresso is certainly a laudable effort in stimulating quality conversations among employees and cultivating internal communities.But, to make it work, Singtel has to think about social intranet strategy, i.e. how to have user-generated contents, how to store/retrieve contents easily, and how to maintain the quality of contents in the intranet.

Social intranet strategy has to be accompanied by social media strategy. To strengthen its social media effort, Singtel have to think about connecting with customers via online conversation – especially in Twitter, because Twitter is the king when comes to real-time digital conversation and tracking the reach of the conversation / measuring online influence.

Singtel got to act fast, because Starhub has been tweeting for awhile now!

Singtel's Twitter account (as of 22 April 2012)

Starhub's Twitter account (as of 22 April 2012)

When the proposed transformation is completed, I believe Singtel would become a more customer centric organisation than it has ever been and a truly exciting multi-national company.

Thoughts? Agree / Disagree?

Check this out: Greg Smith, a vice president in Goldman Sach, posted the reason for quitting his job in the New York Times. And said that his former boss was at fault for the deteriorating corporate culture. Goldman, he said, cares more about profit than its customers.

Greg Smith stories went viral on the internet. And scores of career consultant throw their hat into the ring by offering opinions on career management. Did Greg Smith commit a career suicide? You bet. Whatever Greg Smith does in the future, it won’t be related to the banking industry. His banking career is over!

I totally agree with Amber Mac, a respectable career consultant, on why you and I shouldn’t follow Greg Smith’s example. Like Amber Mac said in the article, you should quit your job gracefully when you know it is over. And one way to do so, is to keep your (negative) opinion about the job to yourself. Just because you want to quit, it doesn’t mean you have to burn the bridge.

Since this blog isn’t about career management, I’d like to offer social business’ perspective to Greg Smith’s story. There are two thought bubbles that pop up in my head when I read the story: (1) Why did Greg Smith’s story go viral? What’s the secret sauce of viral stories?; (2) What should be the platform for real conversations between management and rank-and-file staff?

The Secret Sauce of Viral Stories

Greg Smith’s story is by no means unique. Watch the above video clip. And you would see another man, Joey DeFrancesco, who also quit his job publicly. And like Smith’s story, his story went viral in the internet. This begs the question: Why the seemingly ordinary stories of people lives can go viral?

The main reason is empathy. We can empathise with both stories because of the bigger picture. DeFrancesco quits because the unfair treatment that hotel employees usually receive. He becomes the voice of all hotel employees who silently suffers from the gross mistreatment. While Smith quits because the deteriorating corporate culture in Wall Street (read: greed).

Those reasons appeal to many people. And because we can relate to Smith’s story and DeFrancesco’s story, we feel the urge to like or to forward the story to our friend, colleagues, or family members. That’s how the story went viral.

So the secret sauce of viral story is the emotional hooks that the story has. Can you position the story to appeal to many people? Can you make people feel emotional through your story? If you can do that, then there is a high chance that your story will go viral.

Social Intranet is The Right Chamber for Employee Engagement

Greg Smith and Joey DeFrancesco wouldn’t be folk heroes if what they say doesn’t make any sense. Organisations need to do more about employee engagement than just conducting the infamous corporate climate survey.

It is unfortunate that Smith and DeFrancesco used the wrong media to tell their story. In the age of social intranet and social organisation, they could have expressed their displeasure within the corporate walls, i.e. via internal blogs, discussion forum or video repositories.

If they are brave enough to tell their opinion in social media, then surely they are brave enough to share it with all their colleagues. The management could then conduct closed-door honest conversation with the relevant people.

No matter how bitter they are, Smith and DeFrancesco should have given the management a chance to tell their side of the story. By going public, they are killing off the opportunity to do real dialogue between them and the management. The social intranet, not the social media, is the right chamber for engagement and conversation.

Arguably, a real dialogue is only made possible if the management doesn’t punish people for expressing their opinion in the social intranet. But at the very least – you, I, and other rank-and-file staff, should extend our hand and give the management an opportunity to prove that they care about employee satisfaction.

When all else fails, look for another job! Discreetly of course.

Comments? Do you agree with me?

I change the main title because I wanted to focus more on the gamification part, instead of the engagement part. Here is the video of my TEDx talk and the presentation slides. (If you are in China, please click here to view the video of my TEDx talk).

You can find the minutes of my talk below.

The Coming War of Engagement

Studies have shown that since 1987, the job satisfaction rate has been steadily decreasing. Among the younger workers (aged 25 and younger), the job satisfaction rate is only about 40%. So more people are disengaged at the workplace.

Disengagement can hurt organisational performance in 3 ways: (1) Higher absenteeism; (2) Lower productivity; (3) Lower creativity. This can lead to massive loss in productivity. It was estimated that nations like Singapore, Germany, and United States lose billions of dollars in lost productivity.

Far and away the best prize life has to offer is, the chance to work hard at work worth doing. Theodore Roosevelt

More importantly, we need to engage because engagement cultivates talent. When people are engaged in their work, they have the energy to put in 10,000 hours of deliberate effort that can transform them to be talented people. However, once people become talented people, they can be disengaged. So engaging people must take priority over bringing talented people in.

This means the war for talent is over. To be successful, organisations have to win the war of engagement. Organisations have to figure out ways to maximise the motivation and creativity level of their people, so that they can have Steve Jobs and Jeremy Lins among their rank.

To win the war of engagement, organisations have to do one thing right: making work meaningful. Organisations have to blur the line between work and play.

Gamification and How It Can Be Used to Unleash Total Engagement

According to Malcolm Gladwell, there are three ways to make work meaningful: (1) Autonomy; (2) Complexity; (3) A link between effort and reward. The third way, a clear link between effort and reward, also means making progress visible – something that Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer Advocates in their book: The Progress Principle.

Autonomy, Complexity, A link between effort and reward, and Progress visibility are the elements of fun and the keys to total engagement.

One way to bring out all the elements of fun, is through gamification. Gamification is the use of game design techniques and game mechanics to solve problems and to engage people.

When we play games, we are totally engaged to the point of obsession. Games are so addictive because the game designers embed game mechanics in the game.

The game mechanics are none other than the elements of fun that we talked about earlier. In games, we have: (1) Autonomy, i.e. we can defeat the enemy in any way; (2) Complexity, i.e. we develop skills just-in-time to defeat the enemy; (3) A clear link between effort and reward, i.e. we get points, artifact, and other virtual goods once we defeat the enemy; and (4) sense of progress, i.e. we know how far we are in the game.

Underlying these game mechanics is the build up of confidence / self-belief. Games build confidence. In games, there is always someone / something who guides us and believes that we can fulfill our destiny – despite the adversity that we face.

Gamification isn’t a fantasy. It is enabled by web 2.0, cloud technology, and mobile platforms (e.g. iPad, iPhone). With these things, for the first time in history, we are able to collect and analyse big data – which is the lifeblood of gamification.

And our world is increasingly gamified. More organisations like Amazon.com, Linkedin, Salesforce.com, Nike plus, are gamifying their business so that they can engage their people and their customers.

Allow me to use Salesforce as an epitome of gamification. In Salesforce, you can find:

• Goals – a  function that triggers two elements of fun: autonomy and complexity.
• Points and achievements – function that trigger another element of fun: a clear link between effort and reward
• Progress bar – a function that gives sense of progress.

To make gamification work, all elements of fun have to be used. Tencent weibo (qq weibo) is the poster boy for gamification gone wrong. Despite its fantastic point system, i.e. badges, levels, and points – qq weibo fails to inject meaning into their point system because they don’t have goals. A fact that is made worse by the ranking model (it is based on the number of followers – not on points).

Nike Plus is one of the best examples on injecting meaning into the point system. Nike plus did so well because they understand what the community of runners needs. Nike plus know what the people want, i.e. setting personal goals, improving your performance, training smarter, etc.

Point system isn’t the essence of gamification. The build up of confidence is.

Gamification can unleash engagement because it offers an array of tools like goals, points, badges, achievements – to build confidence so that people can focus and achieve their personal goals.

Smart organisations use gamification to engage their people and to maximise the motivation and creativity level of their people. With an engaged workforce, organisations can increase innovation and improve productivity by leaps and bounds.

He kept saying great things. You will have a great fight. You will do splendid. You look great. You are looking better. He kept giving me compliments and compliments about everything that I did. - Mike Tyson talking about Cus D’Amato -

Listen, you can change your life. Your family life. You can become something that is very special.  - Cus D’Amato -

I love watching the above video clip. D’Amato builds Mike Tyson’s confidence and he turns him into a great boxing champion.

In basketball, I see a similar thing happening. D’Anthoni trusts Jeremy Lin’s ability, gives him confidence and opportunity to shine. And Lin took the opportunity and rise to NBA stardom.

No doubt, D’Amato and D’Anthoni are world class trainers in sports. But I think building confidence is the first thing that great mentors, in any field, should do. Too bad organisations have to many bosses and to few mentors.

In the business world, people talk about Key Performance Index (KPI) and disregard confidence. And that’s a real pity, because confidence is a premium factor of performance in any kinds of work. To meet or exceed business KPIs, you must first have confidence to do so.

Whose Job Is It to Build Confidence?

Now, you may ask, whose job is it to build confidence? The answer would depend on who you ask. Bosses would say that they expect their staff to be self-motivated (read: solve your own confidence issue). On the flip side, staff usually expect their boss would help to build their confidence (read: please help me to be confident).

On either side, the expectation is inflated and unrealistic.

Over the course of their work, rank-and-file staff often face hurdles or disagreement with their boss that knocks their confidence down. Although, the good people can motivate themselves and try again, too many knocks on confidence could lead them to give up. People, no matter how tough they are, can be demoralised. And they need help to regain their confidence.

Expecting the bosses to continuously build their staff confidence is also unrealistic. Pressure to produce results often means the bosses can’t afford to make mistake. Once the fear to make mistake sets in, the bosses don’t have the time and energy to build confidence in their team. Bosses, afterall, are just human.

So what now? The job of building confidence is practically in no-man’s land.

Gamify Work to Build Confidence

Perhaps a third party intervention is needed. Gamification of work is requried. This doesn’t mean that we all should play games at work. But rather gamification is about applying the principles of gaming into the business world.

The interesting fact about game is that it builds confidence. If you play game, you would notice that gamers start at level 1 - a level in which you don’t know how to do anything. But as you progress in the game, you gain more confidence on your ability and on using the right skills to achieve the goals.

Game mechanics is the secret mechanisms that builds confidence. In games, you earned points, badges, level ups, artifacts, and other virtual good. All these virtual stuff are in fact some sort of compliments that you get for everything that you did right. If you did something wrong in the game, you would die. But, you learn something when you die, you are making progress, and you have an opportunity to try again.

When work gets gamified, all of us can inculcate self-belief and have the privilege of receiving many compliments – just like Mike Tyson had. All of us can become champion in our line of work!

Comments?  

Note: This is a prelude to my TEDx Talk: Addicted to Greatness: How Gamification Unleash Total Engagement. Stay tuned if you want to find out more about how gamification builds confidence.  

In the meantime, you may want to watch another video clip of Mike Tyson. Pay special attention to 2:40 onwards and between 3:06 and 3:41 - that’s how D’Amato implants self-belief in Tyson’s mind.

Much has been written about the Harvard-graduate, Asian American, Knicks’ point guard, Jeremy Lin (a.k.a. Linsanity) and his sudden, spectacular rise from obscurity to stardom. Everybody, from the media to the bloggers, is captivated by his “linderella” story.

I think the main reason behind Linsation is that we all saw a piece of ourselves in Jeremy Lin. I mean, how many of us longed to be recognised in our work? How many of us are dying to be given that one opportunity to showcase our god-given talent?

All of us want to have our “Jeremy Lin” moment, i.e. the magical moment where all our hard work paid off. Alas we may not get our chances because of prejudice against our gender, race, or religion, or perhaps because of perceived lack of experience.

Frank Deford asked this question in Sports illustrated: how many “Jeremy Lins” out there who never got their chance? I asked the same question in my head. I think it is a sad fact and unfair to write people off without first, giving them the opportunity to shine.

I reckon millions of people around the world change their job, become “zombies” at work (translation: completely disengage with their work), or become depressed because they never got the chance to show what they are capable of.

Wouldn’t the world becomes a happier place to live and to work if everyone has their “Jeremy Lin” moment? I believe so. In fact, I would argue that to succeed in today’s economy, organisations have to uncover the invisible Jeremy Lins within their workforce, to improve productivity, increase innovations and retain talents.

Relying on the big data to uncover more Jeremy Lins

The key to uncover the hidden gems at the workplace is to rely less on instinct and more on numbers. Let’s face it, no one could tell in consistent manner, who would be the best man for the job / the task. We have cognitive bias such as the Halo effect that impair our judgment when comes to picking talents.

Fairness (or the perception of it) is another reason to use numbers to uncover talent and to assign tasks. People are more receptive when they are told that they don’t get the job because they are short of the necessary statistics, than because they are instinctively disliked by the management.

Believe it or not, numbers were used to predict Jeremy Lin’s rise. Ed Weiland, an amateur number cruncher, foresaw the incredible rise of Jeremy Lin. Amazingly, he even predicted that Lin would score less when Anthony Carmelo (the star player) returns to Knick’s lineup.

The technology to collect and analyse big data is already here. Web 2.0 enables us to track performance / work activities and to instantly number-crunch the data. This means we can derive a new perspective from the work that we do. For example, Linkedin offers InMaps that allows you to visualise the relationship among your communities.

Furthermore, more people like Ed Weiland, now can have opportunity to learn and can gain access to business intelligence software such as QlikView (free). This trends is going to further increase, thanks to the ubiquitous mobile platforms like iPad / iPhone, the cloud technology and the decreasing cost of the software over the years.

So for the sake of happiness, and for the sake of innovation and productivity (translation: profits), organisations have to use the big data to analyse the performance of their staff and to assign challenging work according to their best ability.

Only then we can have more Jeremy Lins and less disgruntled zombies at the workplace.

Thoughts? Comments?

P/S: I’m learning how to be a Chief Data Scientist, so that I could harness the power of big data. It’s time for you to learn business analytic too. There is a pent up demand for people with deep analytic skills.