Management acumen is a oft sought after but rarely found talent in all industries. The lack of available talent makes companies desperate and leaves many vulnerable to the shills. The company I work for decided to do something about this by creating a management training program. An expensive endeavor, it seeks to give the participants all of the relevant experience required for management in the real world of technology. Much of the “training” has to do with understanding customer needs, learning to manage laterally and vertically, and making rational trade-offs between features, design, and income. What is much more difficult to come by, in a company full of very smart and dedicated people, are the hardcore people management skills.
Enter World of Warcaft. A well know international phenomenon, WoW has gotten attention for being an addictive money making machine. You may have also seen it appear in Wired when, in an interview, it became a source of common ground and led (indirectly?) to a job offer. For outsiders, even with the well written explanation, it is difficult to conceive just how this game could really help you develop relevant skills for business. The Wired article compares Warcraft to other simulation games that have been used explicitly to train people (e.g. flight simulators). What interests me is something a little more subtle in the virtual world that Blizzard/Vivendi have created. They have created a virtual reality in which organizations (guilds) of upwards of 40 people are required for continued success, and simultaneously remove most of the barriers impeding an individual’s ability to change organizations (or quit altogether).
By way of confession, I have over 200 days played (200×24hours) in the world of WoW. I have two maximum level characters, and I am a member and officer of Bad Blood (a guild in the top 300 in terms of progression in the US). To get where we are, we raid 4 hours a night 5 days a week. In addition, to give us the best chance of success we have to put in additional time each week gathering materials and completing activities that give us access to progressively more difficult content. We are challenge junkies. A group of geeks who get their kicks from figuring out just how much additional damage, to the tenth of percent, they will be able to do if they pick up a particular piece of digital gear. For an idea of the level of complexity and coordination take a look at this video, prepared by another guild, designed to help people understand one of the encounters we recently mastered. At our level of play it takes 25 people, acting in unison, to get things done. If one person screws up, everyone fails. And we do this, without ever meeting each other.
Imagine for a moment, that you never had to meet any of the people that you work with. You have no opportunities to share passing conversations about the kids, your favorite sports team, or what you did last weekend. All of those informal measures of the quality of your co-workers being masked by anonymity. I know many of my colleagues, who have had experience with consultants, have an idea how difficult it is to get work done in this type of environment. Now take away the friction created by your, and your colleagues’, dependence on a salary, and reduce the cost of switching organizations to almost zero. It starts to give new clarity to the phrase “herding cats“.
It makes every moment that we spend together important. It means that frustrations and outbursts need to be managed carefully. It requires an increased sense of unity of purpose. It applies in immense amount of pressure to leadership, and forces them to identify and jealously guard talent. My experience has given me insight into the true value of positive feedback. When a kind word, spoken honestly, is basically the only currency that you have, other than success (which is unpredictable), you are forced to use it carefully. I have had to learn to listen carefully to what people mean, and not what they say, or type. I have been forced to learn to express myself clearly and concisely under pressure. If I can’t get an important message across quickly, it can mean hours of wasted effort. It is effectively the equivalent of condensing weeks or years of people management experience into 20 hours a week.
As remarkably unlikely as it may seem, I have tried to avoid exaggeration and hyperbole wherever possible. Still, I can imagine my readers’ incredulity. To that end, I will leave you with one more question that may help to highlight the value of this experience: how long does it take to explain a difficult concept to an audience of people you work with on a tele-conference, and how many people retain it afterwards? The limitations placed on communication on WoW make those skills extraordinarily important, and ultimately, a key factor to your organization’s success.
