HBR: Leading by Gaming
The idea that leading a guild in an MMORPG like World of Warcraft could result in some important skills has been around for a while. Joi Ito has done a couple pieces on it, including one in his blog and one in WIRED. But HBR’s got a “conversation starter” that puts some teeth into the idea, or the idea behind it.
The literal idea — that you should pay serious attention to candidates who run a game guild — still seems kind of silly to me, but this article highlighted some points about these folks:
- they are adept at email, IMing, and forum conversations as vehicles for making decisions, resolving/preventing conflicts, persuasion, etc. This one is near and dear to my heart. I’ve been in companies that consider walking to someone’s desk for answer to be a simple-minded waste of time, and where relying on emails for even the simplest question is considered to fraught with peril.
- they manage complex workstreams. It’s almost embarrassing to talk about it, but organizing and strategizing for a raid (a mission to kill a baddie which requires 20 or more people), is pretty complex and requires a lot of coordination and communication.
- they create or imaginatively use communication tools. A lot of organization needs to happen when players can’t all be on the game at the same time, so most guilds have a website, a bank, email lists, auto-alerts, etc. I’ve heard one person say he uses 37Signals tools for his guild.
- they are good at handling difficult personalities. Let’s face it, nerds and game geeks are big pains in the ass, frequently over-reliant on logic, and often the most effective but most difficult person on our teams (even non-tech, non-web teams).
- they understand temporary leadership. They know how and when to step into something and how and when to have or let someone else step up.
This last one is the most interesting to me. My industry (advertising and marketing services) has some very stale notions of leadership: the singular leader who owns it all; the creative genius who calls every shot; the moving lead between disciplines (IA -> Visual -> Copy -> technology) that leads to waterfall. Attempts to model leaders above a waterfall process can get you into tedious, theological discussions about delegation, abdication or back to the “everything bubbles up to me.” Temporary leadership implies ongoing judgment, continual shifts in primacy of thought, constant responsiveness and self-re-organization.
Worth a look (or a listen on HBR Ideacast #92).
[…] HBR has another good article breathing new life into stale concepts (the first one is blogged here). Right now, it feels like that the “MFA is the new MBA” is stuck in a squishy or puddle-thin space. For some, it’s a call to be a right-brained thinker — take a drawing class, learn an instrument, write a short story! A little more intelligent, but kind of thin, is the argument that the MBA teaches you decision-making, the MFA teaches you synthesis. Not bad, but it doesn’t unpack into actionable ideas. Katherine Bell, who got an MBA, worked in business, and then got an MFA at the highly selective Iowa Writer’s Workshop, has a “conversation starter” that gets deeper into the skills and attitudes that MFAs can acquire. It goes deep enough, in fact, that it feels actionable. Her points, which are also covered in the ideacast, are: […]