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."

I call

[networkzombie]

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.

wtf

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Kindergarten mentality?

[HnT]

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.

Re:Not just business...govt. too

[TapeCutter]

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.

I have a game for them

[slashmydots]

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.