The Game of Work: How to Enjoy Work as Much as Play

Foreword

Human nature is a powerful thing. Yet our lives seem to be littered with initiatives that encourage us to go against our nature—our human nature. We try to lose weight by eating the right foods and avoiding those foods that are not good for you. In our elementary schools we expect a ten-year-old boy, full of energy and curiosity, to sit still for hours performing repetitive tasks. In business, we all say that our people make the difference. The strategies we pursue talk of innovation and out-of-the-box thinking. Yet we reward predictability and those who get along.

There is a saying in Japan that the lone nail gets hammered down. I find that to be ever so true in my twenty-five years of business experience. Seminars, workshops, on-the-job training, and countless other programs and processes are all geared toward improving our collective performance, while often pushing our individual identity further into obscurity. The net result of this process is that we begin to view ourselves through the lenses of what we do. Our business card soon no longer defines what we do, but who we are. I believe this conventional approach is the most difficult path to sustained corporate and individual performance because it conflicts with our human nature.

Nearly twenty years ago I came across Chuck Coonradt. One of the most talented managers I have ever had the pleasure to work with, Gary, encouraged me to come and see Chuck’s approach firsthand. I was an executive at Pepsi-Cola at the time and in the midst of a series of bottling acquisitions throughout the West. I had assigned Gary to lead our newly acquired operations in Utah, and in a very short time I noticed that his performance clearly stood out. Though extremely competent and creative, he was also very cynical of consultants and other outside experts.

I met Chuck for the first time in Phoenix. I was immediately a little suspect when Gary told me that Chuck would lead off the morning session with a two-and-one-half-hour presentation. Up to that point, I had never experienced anything instructional that took over two hours that didn’t bore me to death!

Let me tell you, I have never been so wrong about something in my life. For nearly three hours Chuck had me and the other forty or so people there on the edge of our chairs. Essentially in that time, through his presentation, he brought to life this book The Game of Work.

This book and Chuck’s approach is all about making human nature work for you, rather than against you. The fundamental concept is simple, yet so insightful when applied to our everyday work life. That is, people in general would much rather play than work. I find the concepts in this book work not just in the context of business, but just as well in our day-to-day lives. It is a wonderful tool to help anyone leverage how people naturally react and behave.

Rewarding the behavior you want repeated is obvious, but we often don’t do it. I have found that knowing the rules, or the field of play, empowers people to innovate and take risks, without worrying if they are putting their job or career at risk. People like playing games because they know the rules and the score. We play games to win. When we don’t know the score or the rule, which is unfortunately the situation all too often for most people when they are at work, we tend not to want to play or we play safe.

Just think of how many companies fail because their employees are just playing safe—playing not to lose. Or even worse, how many of us have associates that show up every day, but really don’t want to play.

This book provides simple tools that anyone can take and easily apply tomorrow to get more employees to play. It is a quick read unlike most business books. The concepts are simple and often analogous to the games we play as kids or adults. I also find it modular in nature, meaning I can take a chapter and apply a tool independently.

I have applied this book and its concepts for over twenty years. Thus I find that The Game of Work has sustained the test of time. It has been used in all types of companies in all types of environments with equal success, from small work groups to literally the largest company in the world. From the lowest level frontline associate to the most senior executive, it works. I have found it is the one concept that, even without any direct support on my part, managers within the organization independently seek Chuck’s help. And for those skeptics out there (like me), I have seen this adoption process happen long after the initial sponsor has left the organization.

Life is about how we interact and motivate people, whether it’s with family, friends, co-workers, or the countless others we depend on in our daily lives. Imagine if everyone we encountered was motivated and approached their work life with the enthusiasm they have for their favorite game. The fact is that most people want that.

Business demands measurable results. Sales, costs, return on investment, and customer service are measured by most companies in excruciating detail. Though there will always be debate about cause and effect, most business experts agree there is a positive correlation between employee engagement and results. I must admit it has been easier and more fun to drive these key business metrics with the help of a turned-on workforce. This book from the oracle from Utah does just that.

The Game of Work is a powerful, yet simple book that can transform any team to work with the same passion with which we play. When people work like they play, the results tend to exceed expectations. It is just human nature!

—Lawrence V. Jackson

June 25, 2006

Acknowledgments

No great work is ever accomplished by the writer alone. Just as Plato had Aristotle, the concepts developed in the following pages are based on the efforts, at least in part, of those who have gone before. Napoleon Hill, in his book Think and Grow Rich, was the mentor for us all, and my involvement with Success Motivation Institute and its president, Paul J. Meyer, was a springboard for many of the concepts developed in this volume. Since 1971 his programs have had a profound impact upon my life and accomplishments. I have endeavored in this book to identify specific material borrowed from all sources and wish to express an overall appreciation to the pioneers who made it possible for books like this one to be written.

The testing, modifying, and continuing evolution of this book has been and is being done by all the members of the Game of Work. I owe special thanks to our officers and staff, for their ability to put wings on these ideas and make them fly.

Introduction

The Game of Work works. Since its first press run in 1984, The Game of Work has helped thousands of companies and hundreds of thousands of managers and employees experience increased job enjoyment while producing extraordinary results. It still works today.

It works because it speaks to the human need to be better—better at home, better at work, better at life in general. No one wants to be managed, and we all want to be fulfilled. Our desire to do a job well, and to be recognized and rewarded for that job, is part of the basic human makeup. The conventional management by exception theory is contrary to that basic human need. When most of our people are doing their job correctly most of the time, it is inappropriate to have them receive mostly negative feedback. No news is not good news, it is simply no news and is too often interpreted as bad news.

Coach John Wooden said, It is what we learn after we think we know it all that really matters.

What we’ve discovered is that human nature doesn’t change and our proven methods are not trendy, or the latest management consulting style, or the latest best seller by the newest management guru. The Game of Work is not a silver bullet or a magic potion that can be swallowed or experienced in one evangelical weekend. The Game of Work requires a leader’s dedication to his or her team members and a willingness to change behavior to produce better results.

Zig Ziglar said, You can get anything you want if you help enough people get what they want. That is the bargain of life. The methodology and thought technology captured in the Game of Work gives each leader the keys to unlocking that unlimited human potential.

From baby boomers to Generation X to the Digital Generation of the twenty-first century, it is more important to find the similarities in people’s job expectations and experiences than to focus on the differences.

The five principles of the Motivation of Recreation are:

Clearly defined goals

Better scorekeeping and scorecards

More frequent feedback

A higher degree of personal choice of methods

Consistent coaching

Adventure travel is expanding each year; marathon participation is at an all-time high, with seniors as the fastest-growing segment of runners. Fantasy leagues exist in every professional sport in our country. Title IX has produced a generation of female athletes at the college level and contributed to record attendance for the LPGA and WNBA unheard of at women’s sports events twenty years ago.

During the same period of time, worker satisfaction levels remained stagnant, if not slightly declining. Clearly the need to elevate our people’s satisfaction with their at-work experience remains a challenge today as it has throughout the industrial age. The Game of Work addresses, in a fiscally responsible way, the challenge of on-the-job satisfaction.

As qualified people become increasingly difficult to attract and retain, the implementation of the five principles in this book, which creates a culture of appropriate feedback in organizations, is the one key factor to improving results, retention, and recruitment. It has long been accepted by psychologists that people stay where they are treated well and leave when they feel unwanted or underappreciated. That is true, has been true, and will always be true in marriage, family, and work.

This works because the Game of Work does not require the team to learn some new vernacular and dictionary of terms to be successful. It is written in the familiar language that we hear every day. It works because it is inclusive of all backgrounds and experience levels.

You cannot reduce manufacturing costs in a hundred-year-old consumer package-goods company by 21 percent over the prior year without gaining engagement from all of the team members. The Game of Work works because it is a process we do WITH team members not TO team members.

You cannot improve advertising effectiveness rates in a national real estate company by 400 percent until the person facilitating that program changes her perception from being just a clerk to understanding how she can win every day and scores that improvement.

You cannot take labor cost per piece in a large national retailer’s return department down by 14 percent vs. budget (and 22 percent versus the prior year) without the engagement and the enthusiasm produced by selecting which scorecards matter and getting true team member ownership.

When a CFO in the last decade of his career and a director of marketing in her first decade of work from the same company both select scorecards that allow them to win at their jobs, and deliver double-digit improvement, I know we are touching fundamental human needs to achieve.

I believe in the human desire to succeed more strongly today than when we first published this text. Our obsession with recreational pursuits is driven by that need. We know the length of our longest hike, the time of our best marathon race, even the amount of time we take off, is a clear statistic. The competition for most of us is not against others, although that certainly plays a role when it is chosen, but rather against our own previous best.

When leaders in companies can embrace the Motivation of Recreation that produces such natural highs of engagement, enthusiasm, and energy, and bring it to their area of responsibility, then results will be there with the twenty-somethings, as well as with those in the twilight of their careers.

Why today? Because since our earliest history mankind has been committed to better, and because the Game of Work continues to teach leaders to recognize and celebrate being better. That is the key, regardless of age and background. When we teach people how to win every day they reward us with the results we desire.

Let the games continue.

—Chuck Coonradt

1: The Game of Work

People will pay for the privilege of working harder than they will work when they are paid.

—Chuck Coonradt

In the frozen-food business, people are hired to work in refrigerated warehouses in terrible working conditions at near-zero temperatures. But the unions and OSHA have done much to make conditions bearable. Companies are required to provide insulated clothing and boots. In fact, an entire industry provides clothing specifically for companies with refrigerated warehouses. These companies are required to provide hot drinks within so many feet of cold work areas. Workers must have a ten-minute break every hour. It’s tough to get people to work in those kinds of conditions. People dislike working in the cold.

Yet whenever a winter snowstorm passes over my home in the mountains, followed by clearing skies and plunging temperatures, there is a sudden jump in employee