Is Your Optimization Team GAMIFIED??

INTENDED READING AUDIENCE – DIRECTORS AND ABOVE

CLIENT: I am about to pull the plug on our Optimization program. I don’t want to do this, but I don’t see any other options here. We’ve been at it for two years, and we are constantly running low on test ideas. How do I keep the Optimization ideas flowing so that I can maintain a healthy backlog of ideas to prioritize?

ME: Get as many employees as possible actively engaged in your Optimization program as soon as possible!

CLIENT: Seriously, that’s your answer? Do you know how busy everyone is already? Ok, I’ll bite. How do I get everyone engaged?

ME: Gamification! Not only will it not take up much of their time, most of the them are already in a position to help in a big way. And let me tell you that once gamification is in place, your Optimization program will constantly be fed with high-quality test ideas. As a bonus, you will be introducing a bit of FUN into their work life!

Merriam-Webster

I think it is fair to say that the majority of us, if not all of us, have played a sport at some point in our lives. This could be anywhere from kickball at recess, a game of PIG with the kids outside on the driveway, a high school rec basketball game, or even a college lacrosse program such as Air Force (hint hint that’s where I was a starter for 4 years!!).

And, we all know what the most popular questions are during these games….

“What’s the score?”       “How am I performing?”     “How is our season going?”

That’s right, the players in the game want to know how they are performing. They also want to know how the team is doing. They are engaged in the activity. They are actively participating. They feel part of a bigger picture. They’ve got skin in the game!

One of the best parts of incorporating gamification into your Optimization program is that all levels of employees will be involved. And, each one will now have skin in the game for your team’s Optimization program.

Think about how impactful it would be if employees from all levels of your organization – new hires to SVPs – were engaged and submitting test ideas. And, those employees cut across all departments. Your Optimization team will receive so many new, fresh test ideas that have never been thought of before. Also, many of these ideas will be directly tied to business objectives!

So….game on!!

Here are some game-like elements to help kick start your strategic thinking.

Gamelike Element #1 

Email Voting

This is one of my favorite gaming elements to introduce into an Optimization program. The reason it’s my favorite is because, if done properly, the number of employees who become aware of and engaged in your Optimization program will increase dramatically.

Here’s how the process works. Have someone on your team create an email template that will be filled out and sent to everyone in the organization. It could start something like this…

You may even be able to pull the email voting results automatically into your company’s wiki or SharePointe site and post them there. Have your team keep a file that tracks the voting for each test launch, as it will be used again below.

Finally, over communicate in the beginning. Let everyone know where to find the voting results. Let them engage and comment on the votes!

Gamelike Element #2

Monthly Batting Averages for Voters

This can be a very fun and exciting time for both your Optimization team and the entire eCom organization. Every month, have someone on your team send out a communication with the monthly voting average for each employee and the YTD average. Keep in mind that some employees may not want their voting average made public, so please be sensitive to that fact. Always keep in mind that the purpose of introducing these game-like elements is to increase Optimization program engagement which will lead to more and higher quality test ideas for your team’s backlog to prioritize. 

Here's a template to start from:

MONTHLY WINNING PERCENTAGES

Gamelike Element #3 

Monthly Scorecard Review for Senior Leadership

As I’ve mentioned before in previous articles, successful Optimization programs need support and advocacy from senior leadership in the organization. And providing these senior leaders with a stake in the game is a great way to approach this element. When a senior leader is required to show bottom line business impact from Optimization, you can bet that he or she will be asking their team for test ideas on a weekly basis.

There are a few ways to go about scoring based upon a team rollup approach.

One method is to use the monthly batting averages for each senior leader’s team to keep the score. As you can see below, the Design team had the best voting average in April, while the Data analytics team is leading the group for the year.

Trust me on this one, I’ve been in many high-level meetings where the conversations and gaming around this get fun and exciting! Most of these leaders are extremely competitive, which ties in very nicely with this concept.

SENIOR LEADERSHIP SCORECARD – WINNING %

Another scoring method is to use a downstream funnel metric such as Revenue. With this method, your team will estimate the annual revenue lift that was generated by test ideas from that senior leader’s team. To learn how to estimate that revenue lift, check out the article I wrote on that topic, it’s a good one!

I like the idea of tracking and competing using Revenue, however with one caution…

NOT EVERY OPTIMIZATION IDEA WILL HAVE A DIRECT CAUSAL EFFECT ON REVENUE!!!

To take this into account, you can also add “Learning Rate” to the leadership scorecard. The Learning Rate is the percentage of Optimization tests run that produce an ACTIONABLE business insight. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if one of these metrics – Revenue or Learning Rate – trumps the other one in the event of a tie breaker!!

SENIOR LEADERSHIP SCORECARD

What is not to like here with gamifying your Optimization program?? You’ll pick up so much more engagement from the broader organization. This in turn will lead to more and higher quality test ideas that can be bubbled up for prioritization. And….

Everyone has a little bit of fun each week and month because of your TEAM!! 

I would love to hear what you implemented from the above and how it is going!

Hit me up on LinkedIn to chat!!

HIGH LEVEL TAKE AWAYS

• Many Optimization programs underperform due to lack of test ideation

• Gamification engages more employees leading to more high quality test ideas

• Employees want to have a bit of fun at work – make it happen for them!

💡Last Tip – Devote 60 minutes this week to research gaming techniques that may work at your organization!

As always, I hope that you were able to take away an idea or two that you can share with your Directors of Optimization and Analytics and their teams.

Happy Working!!!

 Jason