 |
Leadership Online Labs (or how managers are honing their skills playing MMOG’s) |
| May 2nd, 2008 |
On January 31 of this year I blogged on The Gamer Disposition, from a past issue of the Harvard Business Review regarding an article that explained why today’s multiplayer online gamers possess five key attributes that they bring to the work place.
Now the May issue of the Harvard Business Review has yet another feature article entitled Leadership Online Labs. This article covers the tens of millions of executives and managers currently in the workplace who are sharpening their leadership skills by playing multiplayer online games. They subscribe to the theory that tools and techniques used to lead a raid, manage a guild or other such techniques allow them to function better in the RW of business.
Wow, this is very cool and in reality supports my beliefs about how superior gaming is for your brain. I encourage anyone interested, particularly those members of the press that regularly ask me if gaming causes violence, to read this article. Find the May issue at your newsstand or it can be download it for $6.50 at over at this link.
Here’s their article overview description:
Multiplayer online role-playing games are sprawling cybercommunities that offer a sneak preview of tomorrow’s business environment. Players who lead teams in these online worlds hone the skills that they will need as business leaders in the future. Games also provide an environment that makes being an effective leader easier and that today’s businesses might try to replicate selectively in their own organizations.
Those are the principal findings by Reeves, of Stanford University; Malone, of MIT’s Sloan School; and O’Driscoll, of North Carolina State. As part of an analysis conducted by Seriosity, a company that develops game-inspired enterprise software, the authors studied people who headed up teams in online games.
They also sought the insights of gamers who have led real-world business teams at IBM. The authors identified three distinctive characteristics of leadership in online games that, as workplaces and the overall business climate become more dynamic and game like, will be essential for tomorrow’s leaders: speed, risk taking, and acceptance of leadership roles as temporary.
The most important finding, say the authors, is that getting the leadership environment right can be as important as choosing the right leader. They point out two aspects of game environments that companies might consider adopting: One, nonmonetary incentives built into a game economy strongly motivate individuals to accomplish group aims.
Two, hypertransparency of information about, for example, team members’ capabilities and teams’ real-time performance makes it simpler to match people with tasks and to empower individuals to manage themselves.
 |
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:04 pm
So MMORPGS are a great thing to be involved with if you want to be a manager or some other kind of suit. But who wants to do that really?The cool jobs are in design & development.
May 3rd, 2008 at 3:52 pm
I think that online games are very popular becoause they offer an online substitute to the real life. In real life we need to cope with real problems, which can sometimes be very difficult and can do us a lot of harm. However online games allow us to deal with virtual problems, which are far from being harmful, therefore the virtual world is a kind of escpae from real life problems.
June 16th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
This is a really cool insight into the social dynamics involved in MMO’s. Games (including RW games like football) represent situations that have or had RW contexts and the strategies and solutions often reflect ones that are relevant in the real world. It’s no surprise that leadership roles translate from the virtual world to the real world because they are essentially the same thing, but its nice to see its recognized, especially in the hostile environment video games exist in today.
June 17th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Hello,very interesting article.Thank you.
August 24th, 2008 at 4:45 am
where i can found razer cap i cant found it anywhere of finland stores?