A few weeks ago I tossed up a post asking the question "whats next" for the gaming industry. Well as it turns out, a little company known as IBM has been asking their own version of the whats next question, and gaming may be part of their answer.
IBM's question: where do we turn to find the leaders of the future? That is to say leaders who are capable of working with and managing people in environments that transcend the walls of an office building or the borders of a country, and accomplish complex, rapidly changing tasks in an increasingly digital world.
Then it dawned on the good folks that IBM that there are already leaders doing this every day. Not only are there people doing it, but they are doing it (brace yourself) for free, for no other reason than fun. Right about now your skepticism is probably kicking in. For free? For fun? Surely you jest oh wise Stub of the mountain? There is no place on earth where people would undertake the stresses of global leadership for fun. Well, you're right. There is no place on earth...
Because the answer, or at least the beginning of an answer for IBM is that the virtual world's of Massive Multiplayer Online Games may hold within their 3D rendered lands people who are no stranger to the challenges of leadership in a digital world. So IBM decided to take a look at this MMOs and the secrets they may hold, and the results of their investigation have recently been posted. If you arent familiar with MMOs or if the thought of gamers being leaders forces you to run to the medicine cabinet, then these two reports are defiantly must reads =)
The idea that online gaming might translate into real world leadership potential isnt a revolutionary one - back in '04 for example, Yahoo hired one Stephen Gillett to a senior management position, in part due to his experience running a "World of Warcraft" guild. Other companies, such as Sun Microsystems, have even gone as far as to create positions like Chief Gaming Officer (How someone snags a job like that I will never know). Even still, IBM's stance on the potential benefits of online gaming leadership is still a relatively progressive one as far as big business is concerned.
The timing of IBM's reports is almost uncanny, as just last week I had started writing a blog post with the title "Everything I Need to Know I Learned From Warcraft" -basically describing my own experiences with exactly the sorts of things IBM describes. Funny how things work out sometimes, eh? =)
From my own experience, I can tell you that IBM's findings are pretty much spot on. Managing people and personalities, performance assessment, quick decision making, managing multiple communication channels, event organization, recruitment and downsizing, motivation, recovering from failures, structuring community goals and in the end, producing results all come with the territory of leading a guild. And I do think that a lot of the experiences that one could take from leadership in an online game have the potential to transfer professionally. In fact, if you wanted to, you could probably minimize every corporate leadership job function down into some sort of gaming equivalent. Thats not to suggest that leadership in a corporate setting is little more than a game, because nothing could be further from the truth. But I think that there are some major parallels between corporate business leadership, and virtual gaming leadership.
I will say however, that there is at least one enormous difference between gaming leadership and business leadership - the stakes. Leadership may be leadership, but a game is still a game (Yogi Berra would be proud). Making mistakes in a game will never cost your company millions of dollars, or cost your employees their jobs. Games are sandboxes, where mistakes, even big ones, are not only expected but often times encouraged. Depending on your environment, the real world can be far less forgiving.
I think IBM's findings have a lot of merit. But I do think there is still a huge jump from a game world to a corporate world, and quite a few variables that would need to be looked at before IBM starts planting recruiters in MMOs.
But educationally... well then... thats another story entirely...
The monkeys in my head just started banging their pots together. I think Im having an epiphany.
Image from http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/www_innovate.nsf/pages/world.gio.gaming.html/$FILE/gamingreport.jpg
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