Topic: Badges, Levels, Leaderboards, Accolades! Gamifying the learning experience Description:  Learning can be made fun, and learners can be kept engaged for longer, by applying game-design thinking to non-game applications. These gamification techniques aim to tap into learners’ basic desires such as competition, achievement, rewards and status, which drives deeper engagement, higher completion rates and stronger […]

The early 1980’s saw me suffer through horrors of unimaginable proportions. As an eight through twelve-year old boy, our family car was none other than the Ford Country Squire station wagon. Yes, it was a magic bucket of bolts on four sturdy wheels replete with … wait for it … fake exterior wood paneling. The ignominy didn’t end there. Inside the ‘woodie’ was an 8-track cassette player. I swear my parents only had money for one 8-track and - wouldn’t you know it - that one cassette was the greatest hits of ABBA. As you can imagine, I heard the song "Take a Chance On Me" several million times. Maybe that’s where my gumption comes from. It hurts to admit it, but maybe ABBA helped me become who I am today. Are you afraid to take a chance? Do you have the courage to try new things with your passions, with your career, with your life? Does bravery emit from you as laughter does by children at a playground? Michael Jordan once said: I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. (Nike Culture: The Sign of the Swoosh (1998), by Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson, p. 49) I thoroughly enjoyed watching Jordan play basketball. There was confidence. There was a bit of a swagger. There was leadership. But most of all, there was courage. He was willing to try. He was able to coach and mentor his teammates to try harder, to push for that extra inch of space. He always tried harder. He not only wanted the ball to take that last shot, he was comfortable knowing he might not make it. He even tried baseball with the entire world wondering, "What is he doing?" That’s part of being brave. It’s an integral piece to the gumption puzzle. For the past five years I’ve had the luxury of working with an amazing team - both directly and indirectly across the entirety of the organization I work for - and we all accomplished incredible feats. It’s been an incredible thrill; an honour to be part of something so transformative. I could have begun to mail it in though. I could have rested on the security of a past track record. I could have simply collected the paycheque. I could have resisted the ball - the last shot - and said, "No, let’s keep passing it around to one another." That’s safer. We’ll be ok. I could have resisted shifting from being a basketball player to trying to become a baseball player. But I would have been untrue to myself. I would have felt as though I was cheating. To me, the journey would have ended. I’m not suggesting I’m perfect - by all means, I’m full of foibles - but one thing I learned long ago was that life should be treated as a journey, and that journey needs to be fueled by courage, bravery and gumption. I don’t want to fail, but I’m absolutely comfortable in my own skin knowing that things might not work out. I invested heavily in Blackberry, and … well that’s not going very well. I once bought a condominium that was sold eight months later for less than what was originally paid. I gave a presentation in the late 1990’s unrehearsed, unscripted and without PowerPoint slides to see if I’d be able to pull it off. It was mediocre at best. I toured on bicycle throughout Tuscany in 2012 (with my better half) and didn’t use a map or strategize a touring plan before the trip began. There were innumerable moments where I thought we might divorce. This included the time where a decline of 20% grade on one of the many hills in the region saw a certain someone descending the road not riding her bike, but by walking it … in her socks. She started talking to me again on the flight back to Vancouver a few days later. The examples above are failures. But I learned from those failures. Most importantly, I wasn’t afraid to try. I wasn’t pleased with the end result, but I learned and used it to my advantage in other situations. That job I just left? It was fantastic. It was as cool as the one I left in 2008. It was as cool as the one I left in 2002 and in 1998 too. I have no idea if I’m going to be successful in this next role. But I have confidence in my ability and my prior experience should help me navigate through the forest of the unknown. We might call it needing to have a bit of ‘Forrest Gumption’. (nailed it) I guess you could say I’m always willing to take a chance on me. Thank you ABBA. Thank you overly grotesque station wagon. Which begs the question, do you "Take a Chance on You?" Dan's Related Posts:Friday Fun: Meet Gump ShunLessons Learned From a First Time AuthorWhat I Learned From My Daughter About Decision MakingWe Are All BostonVirtual Worlds in an Organization are not a Time Waster (and other beefs)

In the Dutch Province of Makkinga, motorists drive around uninhibited by signs instructing them to stop, yield, or merge. They don't have any parking meters to feed, red zones to avoid, or yellow lines to follow.

Founded in 1875, Proskauer is a global law firm providing a wide variety of legal services to clients worldwide. You might find it odd for a law firm, but they’re really interested in social media too. What a refreshing change. The firm recently published the third version of its "Social Media in the Workplace Global Study". The first survey and research report was based on results from 2011. When a law firm begins surveying and analyzing social media, you know it’s going to be different. This isn’t your typical data that reports on number of users, number of comments or number of posts on internal collaboration and social platforms. The 2014 version is chock full of very interesting tidbits that you may want to pay attention to, including: 90% of companies now use social media for business purposes Social media policies are now found in 80% of organizations, up from 60% Only 17% of organizations have provisions that protect them against misuse of social media by ex-employees 36% of employers actively block access to such sites, compared to 29% in 2012 43% of businesses permit all of their employees to access social media sites, a fall of 10% More companies are utilizing social media for business opportunities, which is a good thing, but it seems there is much more rigidity than in 2012 when it comes to policies and the blocking of sites. And for whatever reason, in 2012, 53% of employers permitted all their employees access to social media sites yet it’s down 10% in 2013. That’s alarming, if you ask me. Another bombshell from the report came from the following: In nearly all the jurisdictions, an employer is permitted to prohibit the use of social media sites during work, both on equipment provided by the employer and on the employee’s own devices That’s right, apparently in all jurisdictions (other than the US) where Proskauer was conducting the research, country law dictates an employer can actually block social media sites on BYOD — Bring Your Own Device to Work — situations. So if I’m at work in Canada, and I’m using my own iPad on the company wifi, my employer has the right to block me from utilizing LinkedIn if they so chose. It doesn’t give the employer the right to monitor where I go, but they can block access to it. It’s but one study, however, if the trend continues into 2014 — and through other research papers — I’ll become even more alarmed than I am at the present time. I would hate to see any more increases in the percentage of companies blocking access to external social media at work. Has anyone banned the smoke break? Sure, you can’t smoke at your desk anymore (that’s a good thing) but people are still smoking outside or in designated smoking areas. Shouldn’t we be thinking about social media the same way? Shouldn’t we be educating workers on the better social media behaviours as opposed to simply turning it off or blocking access to it? It seems to be a huge step backwards in the quest to create a more harmonious, open and collaborative workplace. Dan's Related Posts:Q&A on the Future of Social, Mobile and eLearningShould Companies Allow Facebook at Work?Social Media is not Social LearningThe Social C-SuiteCan Leaders Lead From the Side?

Wired Science follows up a story on which this blog commented several months ago.

Being a leader is a complex job. One of the subtleties that takes time to master is knowing when to manage someone to ensure they produce an immediate result, and when to coach someone to help them solve a problem on their own.

The family and I were ‘out and about’ on a lovely, sun drenched Mother’s Day this past weekend. Denise was celebrating her 11th Mother’s Day but if you do the math properly, she’s been a mom now to the three goats for a cumulative total of 27 years. You’ll figure it out in a moment. After a lovely morning replete with gifts for mom, flowers, brunch, cards and of course three blog posts from each of the goats paying homage to their mother (Claire’s post, Cole’s post and Cate’s post) we decided to venture out. We fell upon a somewhat makeshift carnival outfitted with rides, games and fatty desserts like donuts, candy floss and snow cones. As we were leaving, the goats went to the loo with mom while I went back to our truck, parked in the Community Center parking lot. In said parking lot, adjacent the ‘Mad Tea Cup’ ride was a perfect example of ‘Hierarchy for the Sake of Hierarchy‘. Witness Exhibit A: Those that work at a Community Center are noble people. The service they provide the community itself is stellar. Community Centers — at least in Canada — have long been a place of togetherness, even collaborative spirit. Does the Executive Director of this particular (but nameless) Community Center need to have such a sign adorn the parking lot? What message does it send to those in the community? What message (and reinforced culture) does it send to the Executive Director’s team? Do you care for irony? The parking lot consists of over one hundred spots. Even if the Executive Director had to park in the one furthest away from the Community Center, he/she would be adding a total of three minutes to his/her daily commute. (That’s in total, back and forth between the building and the parking spot in no-man’s land.) Of all organizations on the planet, the last place I thought I’d see a sign denoting a flaunting and arrogant display of hierarchy (for the sake of hierarchy) would be at a community center. I mean, c’mon … it has the word community in it. It’s supposed to be a center full of community, isn’t it? Throughout my career and life, I’ve witnessed such a sign (and displays of hierarchy) in the usual spots such as the high school parking lot, the industrial park parking lot and the dentist office parking lot. There are plenty more spots out there. I’m certain you’ve seen it in action as well. In this the era of disengaged organizations, must we publicly display ‘hierarchy for the sake of hierarchy‘ or might we remember we’re all human, with legs, and are each capable of walking a few meters to get in the front door of our workplace? Yes, you may be the Executive Director of this particular Community Center … but judging from the fact the sign still exists, the lack of respect you show your team members and the community itself demonstrates something so familiar, it’s rampant in our organizations today: You possess both a lack of self-confidence and a jarring misrepresentation of what it means to be a leader. Start playing for the logo on the front of your jersey with the rest of your teammates and stop looking in the mirror to see if they spelled your name correctly on the back of it. Better yet, rip down the sign. Show some leadership courage. Buy an umbrella while you’re at it.   Dan's Related Posts:You Will Never Be PromotedAn Ode to HierarchyAfter Five Years In My Role We’re Hiring My Replacement. Are You Interested?How B Corps Just Might Eliminate the Foolishness of Maximizing Shareholder ReturnOpen Leaders: My #TChat Experience

As part of a large organizational change effort, a client of mine ("John") was having a lot of trouble working with an external consultant ("Robert") who was hired to assist with some technical aspects of the change initiative*.

Virtual meetings are here to stay — and so is the challenge of keeping people engaged while they multitask during meetings.

I can recall with fond memory many of the class projects I worked on while attending elementary school. The exploding volcano might have packed too much of a punch for poor Mrs. Guyatt though. I’ve never seen grey hair instantly turn white like that. Perhaps my favourite one had me researching and writing a speech about Canada’s Inuit. The politically incorrect book titled, Eskimos in the North served as my guide. Wikipedia was two decades away so physical trips to the community library were necessary to peruse and research from … dammit, what were they called, oh right … encyclopedias. I loved studying about the Inuit because it was during my preparations for my speech when I was introduced to the Inuksuk. (pronounced in-uk-shuk) From one of my favourite galleries and art shops in Vancouver via Granville Island comes a little more explanation about the Inuksuk: Inuksuk, the singular of inuksuit, means "in the likeness of a human" in the Inuit language. They are monuments made of unworked stones that are used by the Inuit for communication and survival. The traditional meaning of the inuksuk is "Someone was here" or "You are on the right path." In other words, inuksuk (in the Inuktitut language) means "to act in the capacity of a human." It’s quite literally an extension of the word inuk which is defined as "a human being." Life is an uncertainty. One never really knows what may be thrown at you. Cancer. Job termination. Flooding. The paradoxes of a rich life can overflow, out-duel and even dampen the spirit in us all. I wear both my heart and head on my sleeves at all times. I don’t know how to be any different. It can get me into trouble, particularly with those who fail to see the bigger picture. This has happened, happens and is happening in my place of employment. I suspect it will always occur, rightly or wrongly. I empathize, sympathize and can understand someone’s differing point of view but a myopic mindset isn’t something I’ve ever been comfortable with. I’ve never been in it for ‘the money’. I’ve never needed riches. My riches come in the form of family, friends, fun and freedom. It’s my frabjous life! I simply seek a life and a career with purpose. Getting paid is important but millions of dollars is not my goal. In times of trouble or concern, however, I look to the Inuksuks I’ve left scattered across the lands of my life and career. Now is such a time where I recall the Inuksuk. I have been here before. The Inuksuk reminds me. I have felt this experience before. The Inuksuk reminds me. I am on the right path. The Inuksuk reminds me. I am acting in the capacity of a human, although my foes are not. The Inuksuk reminds me. I am a human being. The Inuksuk reminds me. Last week I had the fortune of speaking to a group of up-and-coming leaders in Ottawa, the capital city of Canada. I really enjoyed my time with them, however brief it was. The day before, I was being fed to the wolves in a situation that forced me to pause, ponder and reflect my overarching purpose. I sought out my Inuksuk. As luck had it, when I was gallivanting around Parliament Hill the bells of the Peace Tower went off at 6pm. It was an audible sign. Snap out of it Dan, go find your Inuksuk. A block away from Parliament Hill in Ottawa was an art gallery. Naturally, I bought four Inuksuks. One for Denise and I … and one for each of our children. The Inuksuk is a beacon. Over time, I hope the goats learn the importance of the Inuksuk. They will receive the Inuksuk lesson (and their first Inuksuk piece of art) this coming Christmas, for it’s an important lesson. I am a human being. The Inuksuk reminds me. Always. Dan's Related Posts:We Are All BostonOur Three Young Children Blog … Here’s WhyFor every fall there is a spring in our stepCan Humanism Replace Capitalism?Goodbye Team of Five Years