The book TRIBAL LEADERSHIP lays out 5 stages of culture. The 5 stages are basically stories that people tell themselves…and others.
Here are the 5 progressive stories:
- Life Sucks
- My Life Sucks
- I’m Great!
- We’re Great!
- Life is Great!
What I have come to realize is that the content of this cultural self-talk is related to games.
Games have 4 properties:
- A goal/set of goals
- Rules
- Ways to get feedback on progress
- Opt in participation (you can opt-out)
My current belief is that the 4th property, “opt in participation”, is an absolutely huge factor. It is highly correlated with levels of joyfulness, satisfaction, feelings of well-being, and overall life quality.
When you are forced to play a game, it is almost never fun.
When you opt-in to play a game, things get interesting!
Here is a summary of what I think is going on with these stories. These five stages of TRIBAL LEADERSHIP are actually stories and related self-talk, and are actually about the ability to make choices, about game structure, and about control, progress, belonging and meaning:
TL Stage | Your Story | The GAME connection |
Stage 1 | Life sucks! | I’m forced to play games I do not want to play and/or do not understand. I have no options. I have absolutely no sense of control. |
Stage 2 | My Life Sucks! | Some people play enjoyable (opt-in) games, but I don’t. I’m forced to play and cannot opt out. I get it, yet I have a low sense of control and almost no sense of progress. |
Stage 3 | I’m Great! | I’ve figured out how to win. Further, I now define MY game, and now you have to play it. You ARE playing it! I’m now in control & now making great progress! |
Stage 4 | We’re Great! | I opt-in to play a bigger, cooperative, goal-seeking game, with others. I now have a sense of belonging. |
Stage 5 | Life is Great! | I opt-in to play a bigger, cooperative goal-seeking game, with others. And this time, we play big and intend to change the world. I now have a sense of higher purpose. |
Summary
In my book THE CULTURE GAME, I explain the concepts and facilities available to create a good-game structure at work, a game where the enjoyment is so great that the distinction between work and play is minimal.
My current belief is that we are not nearly focused enough on using know-how about game mechanics to debug the problems we face at home, and work and in the wider world.
Culture, as it turns out, is a game.
Jane McGonigal gets it right: Reality IS Broken. And Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh also gets it right in his book, DELIVERING HAPPINESS: we all want to experience a sense of control, a sense of progress, a sense of belonging, and a sense of higher purpose and meaning. Good games deliver substantial happiness. The 5 stages of culture as described in the book TRIBAL LEADERSHIP do appear to confirm this hypothesis.
The Relationship to Effective Agile Adoptions
Agile adoptions are typically implemented as a mandate. This is acceptable so long as leadership sets out the clear direction and stops short of mandating specific practices. My current hypothesis, which appears to be valid based on experience, is:
- Mandates of practices in an Agile adoption amounts to a game without the essential opt-in feature
- People have needs. The mandate quickly reduces the feelings of control, progress, and belonging that are basic human needs
- Resentment and disengagement are the natural and predictable results;
- Disengagement is death to any attempt at a rapid and lasting Agile adoption.
The solution? Check in on what people want, what people think and what people feel BEFORE embarking on the journey of Agile adoption in your company. Open Agile Adoption is one way to do that.
Resources
For a deeper dive into these concepts, you might consider taking a look at these resources:
Blog Post: How Games Deliver Happiness And Learning
Blog Post: Open Agile Adoption
Audio Book, absolutely free download: Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan and co-authors
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