LEARNING  |

Gamifying learning

The IT department of Terrena was facing a growing discontent from its internal clients on a number of levels : efficiency, reliability, customer centricity, etc. The newly appointed CIO asked us for a training program to allow the employees of his department to fully understand the need for change and switch mindset from a support-oriented paradigm to a customer-oriented one.

We decided to co-design our approach with the IT managers and a limited number of clients. We first organized a one-day workshop to identify the expectations and the levers for change. Building on the insights generated during this session, we then designed a one day training course aiming to help people recognise and embrace the need to change both mindset and ways of working. Early in our design process, we agreed that to be impactful, the course would need to be experiential and playful. We designed a serious game, immersing participants in a complex fictitious situation in which they needed to interact collaboratively. The session itself consisted in playing the game for about 3 hours and then debriefing the behaviour, giving feedback and underlining parallels with their day-to day situations with the customers.

The participants embraced the game and the debriefs were often profound, highlighting how different behaviours led to different outcomes. The most collaborative players painted an attractive picture of what the organisations could look and feel like. Over 120 members of the IT department had the opportunity to engage in the course and apply the learnings from their experience to their day-to-day activities. They all agreed on the changes needed and extracted best practices from their peers’ experiences to define new standards in their day to day ways of working.