Everywhere invocations are flourishing: be happy, be motivated, be involved, be responsible, be happy, happiness chief blahblah. But this cannot be decreed. Concerning engagement, concerning involvement, it’s not an injunction that can be responded to. You cannot decide to make a certain person motivated. But you can create a framework, a context, that allows these people to be motivated, involved. We regularly see this message come back: a very small portion of employees in the world feel involved.

In the agile manifesto there is a principle where it is written: build projects with motivated people. Generally we chuckle at this moment. Naturally projects work with motivated people. What an idea! So forget everything else, focus on the idea of engaging the people you work with.

Some explain that between an engaged person and a non-engaged person the difference is enormous. In the Mythical Man Month the author (Fred Brooks) expresses the idea that a person (in his case, a software developer) has a productivity ratio of one to ten depending on the context. Their capacity would thus fluctuate from one to ten depending on the context. My observations - on myself and others - tend to confirm this information. And I think the large part of this gap comes from the person’s involvement. Observe yourself performing a task in which you don’t feel involved, and one in which you feel involved, that you’ve taken ownership of. Personally I go from dejected nonchalant uninspired to frenzied bulldozer greatly productive.

We cannot decree motivation, nor involvement, nor ownership. Yet there is a domain, subject of studies, where we discover involved, engaged people. With a high level of demands. When something fails, they try other ways, don’t let themselves be discouraged, they love seeking alternatives. Even the most introverted among them call friends for help or go read the documentation. Because – must we mention it? – online documentation is plentiful: “newbie” guides, videos, support, wikis, forums. But what is this domain? The people I’m talking about spend several hours per week there, even several dozen hours, and, cherry on the cake, they pay for it…

It’s about video games, and rather video game players. Why such involvement in this domain? It’s exactly what we’re looking for in our organizations. All these online game players who pay to fail, restart, learn, redo, provide quality documentation, couldn’t we have the same engagement in companies? The video game industry is flourishing, understand that it involves enormous sums of money. So before we ourselves draw lessons from it for the organization, it questioned itself because its success is linked to the involvement it will generate. The observations that flowed from this research are a goldmine for us. To watch: Jane McGonigal and to read: Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by the same person.

But as I bring up this subject, I receive my eldest son Mathieu’s report card. Mathieu has good school results but the report indicates that if Mathieu were involved he would have very good school results. I look for Mathieu:

• Mathieu? Mathieu?
• (from the other room) Yes dad?
• Can you come so we can talk about your report card.
• Wait, I can’t right now, I’m building the fourth tower of my castle in Minecraft and it doesn’t have exactly the same decorations as the others, nor the same iron construction, I can’t leave it like this.
• Yes that’s exactly what I want to talk to you about…

In other words Mathieu is very involved in his game, and his results are very good. What is the school missing to collect this same engagement? What are organizations missing to have this same type of involvement?

It’s already not competition or the desire to win that will make this difference. I don’t believe that we really win at Tetris or Candy Crush Saga, nor really at any of my son’s online games, he loses as much as he wins, that’s not his real quest. What we need and what these studies on video games teach us is desperately simple to state, but devilishly difficult to implement.

A clear objective

First a game that engages has a clear objective. Try testing whether your project, your product, your organization has a clear objective. Easily statable. Remember this famous quote from Einstein: “if you can’t explain it to an eight-year-old child it’s because you don’t know what you want”. Your job as leaders, as managers, is this clarification.

Clear rules

I can’t cast a spell if I don’t have any more mana points, I can’t combine the power of these two weapons, but hey I could use houses to protect my tower and not the reverse. To take this space that will make all the difference, it’s appropriate to clarify the target, the objective, but also to delimit the framework in which we can flourish, surprise, imagine, take ownership. You must clarify the rules of the game. Naturally if your rules are too constraining the space you propose will be small.

Feedback, a look back

If I kill this monster I get 100 points, if I take this city I earn 10000 crowns, oh darn there was nothing in this dungeon. In the game we constantly know the benefits (substantial or catastrophic) that our actions bring. In the organization it should be the same. I delivered this feature but it received no favorable reception, whereas the other one did, but not in the expected way. Yes this action was received positively, that one wasn’t, this one triggered that, the other that. No matter the result of your activity, you should measure and know it, make it known. Without this your involvement will diminish. What’s the point of working if we don’t know what becomes of the fruit of our labor. The first step toward meaning, it’s this feedback.

Invitation

More difficult. None of the video game players is obliged to play. Ideally none of the organization’s members should be obliged to come get involved, work. Not easy. We run into another reality, that of Maslow’s pyramid, we must first have a roof, food, in short… have an organization and a salary before thinking engagement. It’s a vast debate. But difficult today to invite to work, in any case not simple depending on contexts. So how to use the notion of invitation?

Let’s take a few examples. Jim McCarthy, the very one of the core protocols was leading Microsoft Studio at one time. Facing all his teams he tried invitation: here are 15 projects*[1]*, “propose the teams you want so the projects will be successes”. Turmoil among the managers. People will do anything. But no. We are living systems insists Harrison Owen (the inventor of openspace), we are naturally responsible. It’s by removing responsibility from people that you sometimes get completely absurd behaviors. In this framework and following the clearly stated objective: “that the projects be successes” people intelligently mixed socialization (group dynamics, friends) and skills. But above all crucial effect of invitation – of transparency about the reality of things: no one will volunteer for certain projects. If there are two projects “that stink”, they will end up with nobody. It’s very good news. We discover that there are complicated subjects in a blatant way, perhaps with surprise. Not that we shouldn’t do these projects, but it becomes clear that we must give them other means.

Another example, inspired by Dan Mezick, use invitation in your meetings. Imagine the big boss who proposes a meeting really by invitation. This big boss, we’ll call him Mesmaeker (Gaston Lagaffe…), invites twelve people. First option: no one shows up. And it’s good news because it really was a useless meeting. Everyone saved time. Second option: no one shows up but it was a useful meeting. The learning is clear for Mr Mesmaeker, he must rework his communication to make people understand the importance, the stakes of this meeting. There, manifestly, his communication is ineffective. Third option: no one shows up but it was a useful meeting, and its importance was understood. But maybe the priority wasn’t clear. Important things we all have to do. Mr Mesmaeker should have specified: and “it’s a priority”, or “it’s more important than…”. Another question, communication problem made visible by the invitation. Fourth option: four people show up out of twelve. It’s the four “right people” because they’re the ones who understood the importance, who are ready to invest themselves, who prioritized the importance in a way to put this subject forward (those who have time). Fifth option: the one you all know, it’s not a real invitation, the twelve people are there. They say yes “as they should”. But we don’t know which ones have time, understood the importance, integrated the right priority, we make no necessary effort on the format of the meeting since everyone is forced to be there. And everyone says yes but we don’t really know what that means.

You’ve understood invitation is key for engagement (and therefore change management). But for our organizations it’s especially also a formidable tool for transparency.

Invitation is also one of the pillars of the open agile adoption or openspace agility approach. The idea is to invite everyone to an open forum cyclically, an open forum that has an objective and a framework (well well), to invite everyone to give the how of implementation. We thus obtain something very engaging and very respectful of people and organizations. I refer you to openspace agility/open agile adoption: here

Thus again, you don’t have a time and money problem. You have a question of involvement and engagement. And under these quite simple precepts: clear objective, clear rules, feedback and invitation, hides a spectacular lever. But for leaders, managers, leaders, it’s a constant work of clarifying, supporting, evolving, accompanying these clear objectives, these clear rules, this feedback and this invitation.

That’s for the first part on engagement, the second soon.

In the series:

• being agile
• being engaged - part 1
• being engaged - part 2

[1] I no longer remember the details of this conversation very well at ALE2012 in Barcelona. The numbers are ballpark but that doesn’t change the point.