Create an Early Win with Mine Games
Having identified your Critical Number and the Right Drivers that influence it, you now can give your team a chance to create an early win with MineGames. With targeted day-to-day improvements that add up to long-term success, MineGames bring a laser focus to those small, everyday wins that put us that much closer to the big win.
Not a day goes by that we don’t hear someone in The Great Game of Business community telling us a story about how their frontline people have astounded them with creativity, innovation, and dogged determination to achieve a goal. Most of this praise surrounds one of our favorite practices: MiniGames.
Once you’ve seen the transformational power of The Great Game of Business, your team will begin to grab on to the gamification aspects and, along with them, the language. Words like Huddles, Scoreboards, and so on will become part of the vernacular of your organization.
MineGames are a powerful example of gamification
Effect a Change
The primary reason for playing a MineGame is to strengthen the business by driving results through improved performance. MineGames help companies boost work-group, departmental, and corporate performance by focusing on an operational or financial number that represents a weakness or an opportunity. MineGame teams are challenged to find solutions to current problems and take advantage of current opportunities—whatever it takes to get to the goal! The best MineGames effect a change in a system, process, or behavior that will stick long after the MineGame is over.
Reinforce Business Education
MineGames are one of the most effective tools used to build a business of businesspeople. MineGames provide the opportunity for employees to practically apply the business education they receive and to learn even more as they play. Since many (or most) employees are unfamiliar with reading and acting on financial information, MineGames focused on nonfinancial drivers or measures are the key to teaching managers and employees how to connect their work to the financial outcomes of the company. MineGames also reinforce key principles and practices of The Game. Employees learn to set goals, keep score, run effective Huddles, practice forward forecasting, and hold each other accountable, experiencing The Big Game in a microcosm.
Build Teamwork
MineGames provide the people on a team (workgroup or department) with a shared common goal. While individual contribution is valued, individuals must unite as a team in order to reach the goal. MineGames rewards are based on the success of the team. The shared reward gives each player a vested interest in helping the team achieve its goal. MineGames underscore the concept that we’re all in this together. It’s the number we are competing against, not each other. Through MineGames, employees learn that a united team is vital to success at every level of the company.
As a short-term version of The Great Game, MineGames also reinforce key components of team success—goal setting, mutual responsibility, and performance management—by teaching players to track, measure, and report team activity by showing them how they can contribute to team success and by rewarding them when they do.
Create a Culture of Winning
Face it—most people don’t wake up feeling like winners. Life’s hard. Maybe, just maybe, we could create a winning environment at work in which people are recognized and results are rewarded. MineGames instill the desire to win and, if used often, can help create a culture of winning. The more MineGames are played, the more opportunities employees have to win. The more employees win, the more they want to win. Why not make winning a habit?
