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How DirecTV Overhauled Its 800-Person IT Group With a Game
mattydread23 writes "Most gamification efforts fail. But when DirecTV wanted to encourage its IT staff to be more open about sharing failures, it created a massive internal game called F12. Less than a year later, it's got 97% participation and nearly everybody in the IT group actually likes competing. So what did DirecTV do right? The most important thing was to devote a full-time staffer to the game, and to keep updating it constantly."
It doesn't sound like a game. It sounds like Choose Your Own Adventure: Powerpoint Edition. At the risk of snarking with one of the oldest lines ever on the internet...
Pics or it didn't happen.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
We do not talk about those people.
The computer is your friend. Trust the computer.
Bullshit. I've seen plenty of articles like this, and I've worked at many companies that have made the same claims. All of them were bullshit. It is a condescending attempt to re-train employees. There is a Forbes article about this that is more detailed. It shows how they want employees ideas without paying them for those ideas or giving them any credit. My favorite is the quote "It is no longer enough for IT organizations to deliver and operate systems on time and on budget. Now, we must deliver competitive advantages". Well, you could knock me over with a feather. I didn't know that I should be delivering competitive advantages. I thought you were lucky if I got your email working. How about if a few Direct TV employees chime in and comment on what was in these videos that became the awesome F12 game that stirred competition between employees and increased productivity, or to quote, how management addressed your "fear of failure." I'm sure all that showed an increase in productivity earned a raise in salary.
Just make it fucking stop. As someone who works in a Fortune 100 company and deals with this bullshit - just stop. None of it is cool, and none of it helps the bottom line. It's just bullshit the higher ups think up to seem like they're doing something valuable.
I'll take a page from Office Space.
When you come in on Monday, and you sit down at your computer does anyone try to get you to play the most boring fucking "game" in the world to get you to do stupid shit that contributes to meaningless metrics?
No. No man. Shit no man.I believe you'd get your ass kicked saying something like that, man.
Ok, so you got 97% of your IT guys to watch videos in exchange for Hokey tickets and other, unspecified, incentives. That is really... sad
I'll tell you now that if I send my developers a video every single one of them will watch it. With no incentive other that an implicit "this will make you a better developer." If you have to pay people to read e-mails/watch videos that leadership sends your leadership has already failed.
More importantly though there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding about he role of IT which is to keep everything running all of the time. In other words, "fear of failure" or risk-aversion is a very good thing in your IT staff. Training them to be less risk averse is not a good thing and not something that you actually want.
Maybe I missed something here but this looks very much like kindergarten teachers giving "golden stars" to the eager beaver kids with the added edge that the overall scores are public and it is a work environment where "less golden stars" can quickly be perceived as (or abused as) a list of who will get fired first - which is the only reason anyone is doing it in the first place, not because it is "such a fun GAME" and not because the work culture and how fuck-ups are seen has actually changed.
They might as well have just told people it is mandatory or you can find a new job, because in effect that is all it looks like to me.
"Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." - Mark Twain
Happiness is mandatory!
Bottom line is, the worker drones still know they can be fired on a whim while they plaster a fake smile on their face.
I've had 15yrs experience as a blue collar labourer and 20+ years experience as a degree qualified "IT" professional. If you are a seasoned professional yourself and feel you are being treated as a "worker drone" then I'm pretty sure your boss is not to blame. Begging for respect on Slashdot isn't going to help you obtain it in the office, you have to earn it through your words and deeds.
And no that does not mean "sucking up to the boss". It's your professional duty to do what I wish every public servant on the planet would learn to do - speak truth to power without fear or favour. If your boss does not respect that then the arrogant prick is tarnishing the reputations of the individuals who make up his team, including yours..
Having said that, it does appear that some of the activities conducted at the board level of multi-nationals such as "mission statements" could be undertaken by a studious pre-schooler.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
My last job the district manager changed and threw out all the promises of the last one. Told me he did NOT care what the last guy said and that he did NOT care how good I was with the business that people skills were more important than being knowledgeable. Top it off he started a GOLD STAR AWARD where we got GOLD STARS for doing an excellent job where we got gold star stickers by our name on a post it board in the employee lounge. I complained about being treated like a kindergartener and that's when the demotion started. Took me off the top of the promotion list, moved me to part time and shifted my office to another one 45 minutes drive from my home vs the one I was working at that was less than 5 min from home.
Why would a GAME improve a situation? I had one employer who thought taking us IT department to a paintball match would be fun. Was told by a fellow employee DO NOT shoot at the boss, the last guy who did was fired for it. Boss shows up with this super expensive automatic paintball marker and rest of us get single shot pistols. It was management vs the IT dept. Wanna guess what happened to every IT guy who actually shot at management? I was let go and a friend who accidentally hit the foot of a supervisor was demoted for "demoralizing the company with his attitude" because he was actually firing AT the opposing team.
I guess that is what is "effective management" in todays world.
Now they should turn signal quality into a game. With their static bitrate feeds, a wall of text looks great but confetti falling at the superbowl creates pixels the size of cats. So, every time someone adds a channel to their 10 trillion channel lineup and wastes more bandwidth on something 2 people are "watching" aka fell asleep on the couch, they light your desk on fire. Every time someone launches a pathetically inept satellite that can support like 1Mbps per channel, crash it into that engineer's house. Then every time someone loses signal because of snow or rain, that customer is allowed 24 hours to hunt down the original installer of the dish with a crossbow. Eventually the game would make it so everyone wins and they wouldn't be such a complete joke of a provider.