When the XBOX 360 came out, it added a new dimension to gaming – Achievements. For those who are unfamiliar, I will explain. Achievements are earned through playing games, either through the course of playing through an adventure, or to celebrate certain feats of gaming – 25 headshots in a shooter or playing through the game at a certain difficulty level. When you accomplish an achievement, it pops up on your gaming screen and later you can view all your achievements for all of your games on your XBOX 360 profile. On top of this, your achievements are visible to others and you can compare yourself to your gamer friends to see who did what.
It's an amazing motivational tool. Like many people, I play games for fun. I play a game the way I want to play it, usually only once. However, with achievements, that has changed. I find myself looking up what the achievements are and spending time trying to get them, even if it means I try things I don't normally try. It forces me to explore the game more fully, even to play the game multiple times. And it's surprising how much I care about those little medals of honor.
It's not unlike star stickers that we might use for children's chores, or rewards for good behavior. Can anyone explain why a little one gets so excited about a gold star sticker? I remember earning them in a math class – nothing made me want to do math more than the recognition that I had worked hard in the form of a little star.
It works so well for children. It works so well for gamers. Why don't we try it on professional white-collar workers? Imagine if a project manager came up with a list of achievements. Some would be standard project achievements – as the team progressed through each stage. Other achievements would be for an impressive performance, completing QA with all critical bugs fixed, for example.
One important aspect of Achievements is Awareness. If you don't know what they are, you can't strive for them. Most of the time, the team knows the phases of the project, but how often do they have a way to measure how well a task is done, let alone a goal to strive for?
The second important aspect of an Achievement is Visibility. If you have a co-located Agile team, you already use a lot of visual artifacts. Why not an Achievement posterboard? A SharePoint site or other collaborative team site offers a virtual location. Another option could be part of the presentations at the project close-out.
Sometimes, we business people can learn from our leisure time. This time, the XBOX 360 taught me something valuable about motivation.
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