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The Game Changer: How to Use the Science of Motivation With the Power of Game Design to Shift Behaviour, Shape Culture and Make Clever Happen

ISBN: 978-0-7303-0764-8
240 pages
May 2014
US $21.00 Add to Cart

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Business & Finance, Self Improvement


March 21, 2014
Melbourne, Australia

The Game Changer: How to Use the Science of Motivation With the Power of Game Design to Shift Behaviour, Shape Culture and Make Clever Happen

Motivation in the workplace is crucial to ensure progress, collaboration and innovation. But the classic strategies of rewards and fist-pumping just don’t cut it anymore. According to Dr. Jason Fox, author of new book The Game Changer, there is a science to getting more done and making things happen in the fast paced world we live in.  He believes this can be achieved by thinking like a game designer.

Having extensively played and studied online gaming, TEDx keynote speaker, and motivation strategy and design expert, Dr. Fox realised that by taking the best elements of game design and combining these with motivation science, the future of work and progress can be dramatically transformed.

In this book, Dr. Fox demonstrates how to use motivation science and game design to influence behaviour and shape culture.

“Over 500 million people spend more than 5 billion hours each week playing online video games[1]. And they’re doing it with a level of focussed, creative, collaborative and adaptive engagement that we just don’t see in the workplace. With this insight, we can redesign the ‘game of work’ to unlock progress and make work, work,” says Dr. Fox.

“Many people don’t realise that games are simply the interplay of goals, rules and feedback. Work is much the same. It has goals, rules and feedback, but most often they’re poorly designed. This book unpacks a new approach to get the game right, and make progress happen,” continues Dr. Fox.

Having worked with forward thinking leaders and multinational organisations to help them elevate their culture and set multi-million dollar projects back on track, Dr. Fox is in a highly unique position to advise in this space. His client list includes major brands such as Pepsi, Commonwealth Bank, Telstra, Toyota and NAB.

The Game Changer offers practical tips and insights to help leaders and managers implement strategies that will maximise productivity and progress. Examples of these include:

  • A new meetings structure that gives everyone a sense of optimistic urgency about the work ahead. This might take the form of regular 9 minute stand up meetings rather than a monthly meeting. In this way, progress is more visible and reporting is made more immediate. Resultant progress will happen in real time.
  • Tackling impossible challenges without relying on incentives or rewards. This can take the form of ‘hackathons’ or innovation ‘hack days’ where whole teams work on important jobs that would otherwise never get done such as redeveloping the business’ website or service innovation. Dr. Fox shows readers how to make this type of intense work inherently motivating.
  • Increasing collaboration by minimising a competitive culture based on individual performance and shifting dynamics to support more organic collaboration. This can be achieved through sharing TED videos in monthly meetings, 2 minute innovation story sharing and ‘fail’ festivals where staff share details on what went wrong and what they’ve learned from this.

“Research has shown that progress is the most powerful motivator. Our behaviour at work will naturally default to the environments and work that provide the richest and most immediate sense of progress. If you want to fix motivation, fix the work. Change the game, not the player,” concludes Dr. Fox.

The book also features cartoons created by Dr. Fox to illustrate the principles of the book.


[1] Dr Jane McGonigal author of “Reality is Broken.”