Research assistance for this article was provided by Bo Burlingham, Brendan Case, and Phaedra Hise.
IF BOWLING WERE BUSINESS . . .
Work is a lot like bowling, except there's a guy called a supervisor who stands in front of the pins with a curtain.
He can see the pins, but the bowler can't. The bowler throws the ball, hears something, and says, "How'd I do?" The supervisor says, "Change your grip."
The bowler says, "But how did I do?"
The supervisor says, "Move your foot." The bowler changes his grip and moves his foot and throws another ball.
He hears the pins fall and asks, "How am I doing?"
"Don't worry about it. We've got a review coming up in six months. We'll let you know then."
-- Charles A. Coonradt, The Game of Work
QUICK HITS
Want to start playing games tomorrow? Think first, say game players, about whether you're prepared to reveal the numbers that make games into something more than trivial exercises in employee manipulation. But if you are, it isn't hard to get started:
Heating-system manufacturer Heatway Inc. ($6.5 million in revenues, 48 employees, in Springfield, Mo.) sponsors "Guess-the-Gross" contests. "We circulate a form like a racing form at the start of every month," explains Dan Chiles, one of two brothers who run the company. "At the bottom is a tip sheet -- last month's gross, this month's gross last year, our forecasts, what's on the projections we give the bank." The winner gets $25 -- but the real purpose is "focusing people's attention on the bottom line," says co-owner Mike Chiles.
Consumer-product distributor Manco Inc. ($100 million in revenues, 190 employees, in Westlake, Ohio) is running a game called Formula 10. On its face it's no more than an elaborate employee-suggestion system: propose a way of saving sales or administrative costs and get a little plaque. But the name reflects a critical goal, which is to get Manco's selling, general, and administrative expenses down below 10% of sales. The Achilles' heel of competitors, explains company president Tom Corbo, is their high overhead levels. Manco's is low -- and Formula 10 is "our secret weapon" to lower it still further.
Missouri Home Care ($7 million in revenues, 450 home-care workers and 70 staff employees, in Rolla, Mo.) attacks its huge workers' compensation liability with not one game but a series of games. Game #1, a while ago: prize drawings for workers who stayed injury free. Game #2, ongoing: managers go into the homes of randomly selected clients with a safety checklist; workers get a $50 bonus for achieving a 100% score on the safety procedures. Game #3, still on the drawing board: some sort of bingo, with safety issues on every square. "It's very important to keep the games fresh," says CEO Margaret Cossette.
Zingerman's, a delicatessen that sells everything from homemade chopped liver to imported clotted cream ($7 million in revenues, 150 employees, in Ann Arbor, Mich.), recently ran a game called "30/30 gets you 60." The objective: exceed sales projections for the month; hold labor costs to budget. If sales rose by $30,000 (that's the first 30), the company would divvy up 30% of the gain among employees, giving them $60 apiece. Alas, the employees didn't win: the labor-cost goal turned out to be too ambitious. But losing didn't dampen too many spirits. Employees are now drawing up a new profit-sharing plan, and cofounder Ari Weinzweig is teaching a class in basic deli finance.
Southwest Airlines ($2.3 billion in revenues, 15,833 employees nationwide, headquartered in Dallas) shares more information than most big companies: chairman Herb Kelleher's quarterly letters to employees describe the big picture, and weekly updates give detailed reports on costs. To get employees focused on the information, the airline recently sent out cards with a quiz on costs. Employees filled out the answers, sent in the cards, and thereby entered a drawing for free trips. "We really didn't care where they got the answers from," explains Ann Rhoades, the airline's "vice-president of people." "We just wanted them to understand the costs."
Bill Palmer, CEO of a cabinetry company called Commercial Casework ($5 million in revenues, 70 employees, in Fremont, Calif.), describes the effect of one seemingly trivial managerial move. In the past the company had budgeted a certain number of labor hours for each step of a job but had never told employees what the budget was. A few months ago Palmer began posting those labor-budget numbers on the bulletin board. "Rather than someone telling them, 'Hey, we want you to build this table as fast as you can,' we were saying, 'We have 40 hours in the estimate.' "
Before the change, Commercial Casework's jobs averaged 6% over budget. Afterward, they averaged 2% under budget, an 8% swing.
OK, SO DON'T CALL IT A GAME
Published Image Inc., in Boston, doesn't use the word. "It's not a game," declares Nancy Cohen, senior vice-president of the $4.5-million, 26-employee newsletter-publishing company.
Fine. But Published Image does have teams (with captains), coaches (instead of managers), and scoreboards (by which team members monitor their progress), all of which may indicate that the essence of game playing lies not in the word but in the concept. For Published Image, at any rate, it's a whole new way of doing business.
Last year, says founder Eric Gershman, the booming young company was in danger of growing itself to death. Newsletters-in-process moved laboriously from edit to art to production, hitting bottlenecks along the way. "People were working till one or two in the morning -- but they were often sitting around waiting for other departments to do their jobs." The CEO decided drastic measures were in order.
