Gamification Of The Enterprise – post SAP Teched 2011 thoughts and actions


I am a big fan of innojam – despite the pain of sitting through hours of mandatory speeches (after all the sponsors need air time in return for their money and time).  Once we got through the speeches, I had an idea for an enterprise game which I jotted down , and deposited in my pocket. And since I was pretty bored and hungry (ok..and thirsty)  by that time – I looked around, and readily found a bunch of mentors who were ready to go get some dinner. It was the best dinner I ever had at a Teched – and when dinner was over, we were all pretty much psyched enough to go make gamification work.

Actual software part took very little time – between the group we knew HANA, BI 4.0, ECC and so on. And we had some very creative minds who mocked up data, created facebook pages and so on. And then we went around the room,  giving a hard time to other teams. Despite my thick Indian accent, my team “gamely” put me up to go present in front of the judges. We did ok but did not win. I don’t think any one felt bad – we just had more beer, cheered for the winners and went on to the next fun Teched activity.

Once Teched was offer, I started thinking about the possibility of making gamification work in a real business scenario. Since we had more than 10 applications to choose from the innojam – and since we had it on video, and since the memory is still fresh in my mind – I thought why not use these as examples. So I actively checked with people who had an hour to talk to me. I let them watch the video,  explained in more detail – and asked them if this was in real life, will they do it.  Out of 6 people – 1 consultant, 2 power users, 1 IT manager, 1 Solution Architect  and 1 VP level executive –  I got 4 NO and 2 MAYBE as answer.  I tried to give them all the talking points that the gamification keynote speaker used – but still could not convince them that this is useful.  I will try to do this exercise for another week, and see if I can get 4 or 5 more people to sit down and talk to me .

In short – here are the general themes that came out. I am sure I missed a few since this was not a structured survey or anything.

1. I have real games that I like. Why won’t I just play those like I do today?

2.  I don’t want my employer using this to game me. Is this another way to exploit me?

3. Will this lead my team to have unhealthy competition? or will they get carried away and use it to skew real business results ?

4. What happens when they get bored with this game? will productivity drop? What will it cost to keep building new games etc? Can I measure ROI? Even if it works – is there a big upfront change management investment?

5. How can I define a game? I have colleagues in 4 continents and what appears like a game to me might end up as an insult to one of them. Is it worth the trouble to deal with it?

6. With economy not doing well, aren’t people motivated enough to do a good job now? Why bother tinkering with regular business models now and take a chance? Contrary to what consultants tell me – my business has not actually changed fundamentally. is this a way for you guys to skim more money off my company?

 

There are three possibilities I can think of here

1. I did a poor job explaining gamification to these people – since I only know what was conveyed to me a week ago at Teched.

2. The examples at innojam were not enough to resonate with these people

3. Gamification is just another buzzword, and even if I explained better with nicer examples, people will not buy in.

Till I talk to a few more people, I am not going to make any final judgment for my own case. But the questions that came up are all good ones in my opinion.  As always – I am all ears to hear what you folks think.

What does it take for execution success at SAP?


There is a prevailing thought in the ecosystem that SAP scores high on the strategy and vision, and where they need to focus is on execution. This came up in numerous conversations I had with Teched attendees this week. What is not clear is how exactly SAP is going to enhance execution capabilities. About 50% of all conversations I had in Las Vegas was on this topic.

For what it is worth, here are three thoughts on potential solutions, that were formed as a result of my conversations.

1. Cross-pollinate and learn from people who are good at it.

SAP has customers who make mission critical systems and on a deadline.  Why not request their help? Send developers and managers to watch how they work in their environment, and learn. SAP also has a bunch of SI partners, ISV partners etc who also have a lot of experience in delivery excellence.  Of course there are spectacular failures too from customers and partners – but it is a small percentage. It looks bad because headlines do not look as attractive for good news.  This is an easy route for SAP to enhance their execution capabilities.

Also, nothing stops SAP from hiring people from outside to inject new blood into the execution arm. Conversely I think others will benefit a great deal by getting some experts from SAP  into their teams.  The risk is that if not done properly – this could end up as unhealthy talent poaching which won’t help any one.

2. Include ecosystem in development and testing


Some variation of the APPLE model might work for SAP. SAP technologies have a big fan base. Current licensing models do not allow this really large pool of smart people to contribute to getting more and better SAP applications.  Sure there are legal and financial and infrastructure issues to be dealt with – but those can be dealt with if the leadership at SAP has the conviction and will to get it done.

SAP is quite good at working with customers on getting ideas for what products/features/functions etc are needed next. And they have a ramp up process which is quite good too.  However, there is a missed opportunity in using a vast ecosystem in testing.  And SDN is a great platform to get access to a large number of people who might be able to help with this, probably for free.  Why not allow software to be freely downloaded as trial versions? and if Cloud is the way SAP is going – why not host these and let SCN members play with it?

3. Industrialize innovation

Innovation should matter to the company in some measurable way.  Sure it is fun to do gamification innojams, and a couple of  apps in HANA a year. That will not add $$ to topline or bottom line. For that – innovation needs to be focused, and the process should be industrialized.

A good example is LOB on demand products.  Sales on demand, Career on demand etc are all very good – and have some of the best people at SAP doing their best to make it succeed. But they are too few to make it count. My gut feeling is that each takes couple of years to get to market, and then in another two years or so – they might make $100M or so. I could be wrong – and am glad to stand corrected. But at this scale – how much (and when) will it affect a $15 Billion company’s financials ?

Can SAP take the learning from first 2 or 3 OD apps, and get into  tens of applications being developed in parallel ? Can those be applied to HANA and Mobility applications too in some convergent fashion? I know SAP is big on agile and design thinking and other fancy ideas. Question is – do they scale to an extent that it moves the needle significantly for SAP?

As we recently joked towards the end of the HANA skills podcast with Jon Reed and Harald Reiter, we need some “action leaders”  to balance all the “gurus”, “thought leaders” and “visionaries”.

Some difficulties of making inclusion work


Yesterday, there was a terrific event at SAP Teched on inclusion, and design thinking. I was invited to be on the panel, but unfortunately could not make it in the last minute. This is just a short post to share my thoughts on that, since I could not discuss it live and learn from the panel and the audience.

 

When I started in SAP in the 90’s , Indians were a minority in this space.  I also remember the joy when I was included in teams where I felt excluded from. I have several accomplished women in my family (including my mother)  who did well in life, despite all the challenges life threw their way. As a result, inclusion naturally is very close to my heart. Even though I do believe inclusion is the right thing to do for many reasons, I see a few challenges to make it work effectively in an organization.

 

1. It is all about priorities

 

There is usually something else that is more important than inclusion for a given team. An example is the inclusion event yesterday – it could only be done with a small percentage of Teched attendees, due to budget, timelines etc.  Oranizations, teams and projects all have such constraints, and they might trump inclusion. This may be somewhat countered by mandatory inclusion by policy or law.  But laws might apply only to macro scenarios – a company might want something like number of women to increase by two times in next year. But does that mean HR, Finance and IT will all have twice as many women as they have today? Usually not. If not, then does it really help the whole organization despite championing inclusion?

 

2. Can you have ground rules? and who sets them?

 

Rules are the opposite of inclusion. Rules by definition, exist to exclude something or someone. But without rules – there will be chaos. So who decides which rules are inclusion friendly and which do not? Just by choosing someone to decide this – you are excluding some one else.

 

3. Inclusion for who?

 

Proponents of inclusion can have a bias depending on their own background. Women might think they are the ones that need to be included, racial or social or economic minorities might decide it is them that needs to be included and so on. It does not always end in a win-win situation for all parties.  And obviously, it is pretty darn hard to have every combination of inclusion work in a situation. So someone loses out and will feel they are not included.

 

4. What about the majority?

 

I have only seen opinion articles on inclusion – and not real conclusive research. I will continue to look for it. But there seems to be a thought out there that just by doing inclusion – will you decrease the effectiveness of a team?  Hypothetically – a team of people from one country that have worked together for a while, might not necessarily like a person from another country to be suddenly put in the team , even if he/she can do the job just as well. Over the long term, this will probably be ok – but there is a big risk that short time productivity will get a downward trend. How many managers and teams with short term deadlines will take this chance of decrease in productivity?

 

5. What is the link to design thinking?

 

Will inclusion help design thinking? I have some reservations. In general – if you have more ideas to choose from, you might get a better solution. But then again – what kind of inclusion will work?  Say you want a product that is designed primarily for men. Will a team of women be able to design it well? may be they could use a few men in the design process? That is inclusion – I agree. But inclusion can also be adding more Chinese and Japanese team members to the team. Would that inclusion make the design any better? I doubt it.  So it can be argued that inclusion as a general principle has limitations, and you need more filters. And once you filter like this – can it be called inclusion at all?

 

I am sure there are solutions to all of these – and I am speaking to a few people today to find out their perspective on this topic, and solutions they have seen to these problems.  It is way too important an issue to leave open for long.