As defined by Mr. Shapiro, Users include customers, employees, job candidates, business prospects and partners, brand fans, members of media and other influencers.  Creating communications that are relevant to the different interests of Users poses a new level of complexity for the organization.  Add various digital channels like your Website, intranet, mobile app, Social Media, etc. and it looks like tapping into “today’s most powerful growth engine” will require new communications strategies and the ability to integrate different technologies.

I’ll explore some ideas about integrating multiple digital channels across the enterprise platform to collect insightful User behavioral data.

The authors of “Repeatability: Build Enduring Business for a World of Constant Change”, examine how the nature of strategy in business itself is fundamentally changing.  The topic of dealing with a world in constant change immediately grabbed my attention and the core finding that “simplicity, focus, and mastering the art of continuous change nearly always trumps strategies of radical change or constant reinvention” spoke directly to what I’ve been learning through my own business experiences.

In agile2 (www.agile2.biz) we frame the “Great Repeatable Model” of as “Repeatable Growth” as part of the business Expansion Platform we use to achieve sustainable growth by adhering to these 3 principles:

1. Differentiation.  Position your current products and services to optimize business development.
2. Promote Core Values.  Identify and use your strengths and core values to align sales, marketing, and the entire organization.
3. Continual Learning.  Build processes to learn from consumers, competitors, and employees.

It is the “Continual Learning” principle that I will explore from the content of gamifying the enterprise platform to collect behavioral across a company’s digital ecosystem in my next post.

Here’s a brief intro to the book from the HBR website with a link to the podcast.

Is radical reinvention the key to winning in today’s fast-paced world? Not judging by the results of some of the world’s best-performing companies. In “Repeatability,” Chris Zook and James Allen–leaders of Bain & Company’s influential Strategy practice–warn that complexity is a silent killer of profitable growth. Successful companies endure by maintaining simplicity at their core. They don’t stray from, or regularly discard, their business model in pursuit of radical renovation. Instead, they build a “repeatable business model” that produces continuous improvement and allows them to rapidly adapt to change without succumbing to complexity. Based on a multi-year study of more than two hundred companies, the book stresses the value of repeatability in business, showing how the “big idea” today is really made up of a series of successful smaller ideas driven by a simple and repeatable business model. Zook and Allen show how some of the world’s best-known firms combine a core differentiation model with speed, adaptability, and simplicity to land them at the top for long periods of time. These firms include: Apple, Danaher, DaVita, IKEA, Nike, Olam, Tetra Pak, Vanguard, and others. CEOs, senior executives, managers, and investors all need to read this book. It’s the new blueprint for reaching the top–and staying there.

Podcast link: http://blogs.hbr.org/ideacast/2012/03/good-strategys-non-negotiables.html

One of my daily activities is listening to podcasts while I’m having breakfast and when I exercise.  I discover lots of interesting ideas through this routine; however, I often forget a valuable source because I don’t write it down when I hear it.  This is the case with the Khan Academy http://www.khanacademy.org/.  I heard Mr. Khan’s story over a year ago, but never visited the Academy website.  Fortunately, I was reintroduced to this amazing resource during a conversation with Keith Smith, the CEO and Founder of Big Door http://www.bigdoor.com/, a leader in Gamification.  I met with Keith at his office to discuss Big Door’s market position in the Gamification space, when I mentioned my interest in gamifying corporate training portals and my interest in continual learning.  Keith told me about his experience with the Khan Academy, which immediately reminded me of the podcast I heard in 2010.

I encourage you to have some fun learning through the Khan Academy and start thinking about how a similar learning portal would benefit your industry, your company, and your career.

For anyone that’s been following my frequent posts on LinkedIn and Twitter (@tzbaren), you know that I am very interested in the potential of gamifying most any form of training and education, which I’ll be writing more about.  However, today I’d like to introduce an online tool that I think has training value.  It’s offered by traintool (http://www.traintool.com/), headquartered in the Netherlands.

TrainTool.com enables online “soft skills” training.  I was given a little tour of the system by Peter van der Reijden, Founder and CTO and given a link to their demo.  I found the demo ‘session’ both challenging and fun.  The first part of the training I experienced in the demo is brilliant in its simplicity.

To start, I logged into the demo a it automatically set up my video camera to record me for the training session.  Once into the demo I interacted in a real sales simulation with another (pre-recorded) person.  My roll-playing partner a current customer presenting me with the challenge to differentiate myself from some of his other vendors, my competitors, who also want a bigger share of his business.  Since I didn’t know what to expect, my first recorded response was quite frankly, terrible.  Delete!

After gathering myself I did a little better on the second shot.  Then I decided to write down a few bullet points for my next session.  The cool thing is not only did my response improve, but the way I responded, facial and hand expressions also improved.

Peter told me that the self-training component is just one part of a very rich training program that includes personal coaching and more.  Since that brief encounter I’ve began to think of the potential of this training platform as it is, but imagined incorporating it with game mechanics.

This is the first in my series of posts related to gaining adoption of gamification from the Executive Suite. I will discuss the practices and psychology of gamification within the context of current motivation and loyalty research as well as management concepts from academic and business thought leaders about achieving corporate objectives with higher performing workplaces.

Let’s start with the impact of employee satisfaction.

The economy of the past few years has put a lot of pressure on business to do more with fewer resources, which in turn requires each employee to do more too.  Employees have taken on more responsibilities with little or no increase in compensation for now, but employers should be aware that their employees are looking, especially their future executive talent, and they will leave for new opportunity.

Worldwide employee satisfaction, or engagement, remains at the lowest levels since 2008 according to Aon Hewitt analysis of 5,700 employers.  Their research indicates that 45 percent to 65 percent the workforce is indifferent to organizational success or failure. This is critical because there is a direct correlation between employee engagement and financial performance.  According to this research, organizations with engagement levels of 65 percent or greater outperformed the total stock market index and posted total shareholder returns 22 percent higher than average.

What can business do to increase engagement with gamification?

Human Resource experts recommend investing in some specific areas to improve engagement, such as:

• Create specific goals for each employee based on data.
• Link company goals with employee success.
• Provide leadership in a transparent environment.
• Improve employee abilities.

Integrating gamification across the enterprise platform directly supports each of these recommendations by:

• Continuously collecting employee (and customer) behavioral data.
• Focusing employees’ actions on achieving short and long-term goals.
• Linking employee behavior to KPIs and company goals and objectives.
• Creating a transparent management environment with employee access to real-time feedback.
• Incentivizing on-going learning and skill improvement.

Within the broader perspective of employee satisfaction/engagement, gamification transforms the work experience from working longer hours for a paycheck, to a greater sense of fulfillment and satisfaction through an orchestrated progression of recognition, personal advancement, and a much greater sense of fun in the daily process.

There is much more that can be said about applying game mechanics to achieving the stated objectives. My objective is to move thinking about gamification into real business benefits through a series of posts that support the message to CEOs that “Gamification is Serious Business”.

Demand Generation, which includes Sales Force Automation and CRM, and the range of communication channels to engage a company with their digital audience, provide the platform to increase revenue and profits.  However, understanding what motivates customers (and employees) desired actions is the ultimate driver for success.

Michael Wu, Ph.D., is a true thought leader digging into the complex dynamics of social interaction and group behavior in online communities and social networks.   Here’s an introduction his recent posting, ‘Gamification 101: The Psychology of Motvation.

Fogg’s Behavior Model (FBM)  asserts that human behavior is a result of the precise temporal convergence of three factors:

1. Motivation: the person wants desperately to perform the behavior (i.e. he is highly motivated)
2. Ability: the person can easily carry out the behavior (i.e. he considers the behavior very simple)
3. Trigger: the person is triggered to do the behavior (i.e. he is cued, reminded, asked, called to action, etc.)

Game mechanics and game dynamics are able to positively influence human behavior because they are designed to drive the players above the activation threshold (i.e. the upper right of the ability-motivation axis), and then trigger them into specific actions. In other words, successful gamification is all about making these three factors occur at the same time. As I mentioned last time, the temporal convergence is the key.

Click The Psychology of Motivation to read his entire post.

Next, what are the available technology and service solutions and how do you invest in technology that easily integrates with other external and internal systems and will adapt to emerging technology.  David Raab of Raab Associates, in the best source to help navigate the myriad of options with a complete understanding of function and cost.  He is a resource I rely on when creating the architecture for a company’s digital ecosystem.  Following is an excerpt from a recent blog post, “Marketing Vendor Selection: Trends You’ll Need to Support”.

Social Media. The first wave of marketing automation features for social media is now several years old.  These included making it easier to share emails and Web pages, tracking shares through embedded URLs, and monitoring social media conversations. The second wave is just starting.  It includes more sophisticated features for working within social media platforms, such as delivering forms and personalized ads within Facebook, using social sign-on to capture more data, and building more detailed profiles based on activities, consumption, connections and influence. Beyond the execution technology itself, these features will require substantial increase in analytical horsepower to make sense of the results.

Mobile. Many marketing automation vendors have added mobile interfaces for the marketers and salespeople who work with them.  But the focus is now shifting to marketing campaigns that are delivered by mobile.. The first change is to create standard materials in mobile-friendly formats. But this will soon be followed by more profound adjustments for touch screens, shorter view times, QR codes, special-purpose apps, gamification, social interactions, location awareness, and other mobile-specific possibilities. Third party developers will probably pioneer these capabilities, so look for marketing automation vendors who are good at integrating with outsiders and, eventually, have the money to acquire their technology.

Video. Plenty of video is used already in marketing promotions.  It’s particularly useful as a way to generate lots of content at relatively low cost. But marketing automation vendors haven’t built many special features to make video easier to use. One big need is better tagging to make video more search-friendly; others are better upload and content analysis to support user-generated content. This may be another area where marketing automation vendors rely on external developers rather than pioneering for themselves.

Benchmarks. This is a hot topic among vendors, both because clients love benchmarks and because there are now enough clients to supply sufficient data. Benchmarking requires standard definitions to allow comparisons across program types, funnel stages, responses, and industry groups. It also needs ways to present the information so marketers can easily understand it. Eventually, benchmark systems will start making recommendations on what to try next – although I’ve yet to see that happen.

Testing. Too few marketers have a rigorous testing program, and, perhaps for that reason, most marketing automation vendors have focused their energies elsewhere. This may be changing, as marketers see simple and effective testing in other areas like Web landing pages and paid search. Speaking as someone who trained in traditional direct marketing, where testing is an absolute religion, I can only hope so.

Automation. Let’s face it: most marketing automation today is still pretty darn manual. The automation I’m talking about here is having the system make choices so marketers don’t have to. Think about lead scoring, where the traditional approach is for a team of people to sit around a table and negotiate a set of scoring rules. An automated approach would eliminate that by using techniques like regression analysis to derive the formulas directly from the data. Other automated applications could be matching contents to user behavior and choosing the optimal timing for campaign messages. This type of automation is a way to overcome the skill shortage that has slowed the growth of the automation industry. In that sense, it’s an alternative, or at least a supplement, to better training (creating more skilled people) and easier interfaces (making the few skilled people more productive). Delivering this automation requires major investments in statistical technology, standardized definitions, and process monitoring to avoid the “sorcerer’s apprentice” problem of uncontrolled execution.

External data. Marketing automation systems are increasingly gathering data from external sources like social media, list compilers, and online behavior tracking. They’re also moving past CRM to tap other internal systems like accounting, manufacturing and order processing. This poses a major challenge for some marketing automation vendors, who didn’t design their system for sources outside of CRM. It requires more flexible data models, APIs for smooth data exchange, and often a substantial increase in total data volume. More complex data also implies much higher implementation and maintenance costs, making marketing automation tougher to sell.

Pay per Result. This is the ultimate extension of external data: instead of buying information, marketers can just buy qualified leads directly. It’s also another way to compensate for the skills shortage. Of course, some pay-per-lead programs have been around for years. But as marketers use them more aggressively, the marketing automation systems will need to get better at merging their inputs, identifying duplicates, estimating the value of new names, and analyzing long-term results.

Analytics. Many marketers claim they want better analysis but few have made the investment. Perhaps this will finally change as data becomes more widely available, CEOs press for clearer return on marketing investments, and the exploding complexity requires better measurement to keep marketing under control. We’re seeing two specific applications: revenue analytics that look beyond marketing to track the entire customer life cycle, and optimization to allocate resources across the many different marketing opportunities. Both require substantial investments in new data structures, reporting tools, visualization, dashboards, information distribution, and user management. Marketers who are serious about analytics need to look closely at which vendors have created the necessary foundations and will continue build on them.

Introduction by Tom Zbaren

The simple definition of gamification provided by Dr. Wu is, “the use of game attributes to drive game-like behavior in an un-game context.”  In this interview, Dr. Wu provides important insights into what gamification is, it’s value and the potential pitfalls”.

Most people working in the gamification space agree that name probably inherently sets up an acceptance barrier with CFOs and other management personnel in the budget approval process.  In addition, most Sales and Marketing senior managers tend to limit their investigation because the name simply does not properly communicate how it can improve their sales and marketing performance.

I’ll be writing more about how to ‘sell’ gamification as a valuable tool to create engagement, build loyalty, and motivate personnel.  I believe the primary issue is that gamification suffers from the same acceptance challenges as Social Media; it’s not marketed and sold in language that aligns the benefits with primary corporate objectives of revenue, cost savings, and improved organizational performance.

For now, please take a few minutes to learn from a true thought leader on behavior within online communities and social networks.

As principal scientist of analytics at Lithium Technologies, Michael Wu is one of the leading thinkers on behaviour within online communities and social networks, and has spent years exploring the dynamics of social interaction. MyCustomer.com caught up with Michael on the London leg of Lithium’s Likes to Loves world tour to discuss the opportunities and dangers of gamification.

MyC: What is the distinction between gamification, game mechanics and gaming dynamics?

MW: Gamification is what I’d define as the use of game attributes to drive game-like behaviour in an ungame context. What are these gaming attributes? Some of those are the game mechanics and game dynamics. These are the building blocks, the nitty gritty things, the appointment dynamics, the level-up dynamics, all those sorts of things are pieces of tools that you can use to drive certain actions or certain behaviour in your players. And so the difference between game mechanics and game dynamics is that game mechanics is usually a static point of view, and …

Click to link to full interview and video http://www.mycustomer.com/video/gamification-it-s-science-its-art-it-sustainable#