My fellow PowerPoint jockies, we have been outdone by ROCHE LIMIT, a surrealist point and click horror adventure that was created (and is played in) Microsoft PowerPoint.
The current build of ROCHE LIMIT takes around 20 minutes to play through and features one of the multiple planned endings to the full game. The actual narrative is quite Lynchian and appears to revolve around you accepting your (and possibly the human race’s) inevitable demise and a higher power’s ambivalence towards it. It’s a fun, quick little game, with excellent audio design and pixel art animation throughout.
Our PowerPoint presentations have a new standard, and that standard is this wild little game.
People learn and solve problems when they are having fun, stress is low, and the environment encourages discovery. A core part of psychological safety.
I’ve talked before about bringing playfulness to work, about exuberance and excitement. These personal approaches can be turned to the wider organization.
Quality as a profession – not so known for fun. So we need to look for opportunities for fun, whether in our training programs, through initiatives like Quality Days, or any other place we can find it.
Here are some ideas for organizing fun to drive a quality message.
Activity
Name
Description
Cost
required
Effort
required
Impact/
Learning Opportunity
Learning
Outcome
Video
Competitions
Contest
of team videos with stories about how they transfer quality or outline
continuous improvement projects. Teams may also record a best practice
to be shared with the organization.
Medium
High
High
-Video and
poster viewership helps transfer quality behaviors and values to others.
-Employee-created
messages are more credible, giving them a stronger impact on transferring the
culture of quality throughout the organization.
Poster
Signing
Teams can
sign a poster to make a commitment to quality. They can hold a contest for
designing the best Quality Day poster.
Low
Low
Medium
Employee
Idea Demonstrations
Make peer
idea generation (quality ideas) visible to all employees through the use of
regularly refreshed public “progress boards” and idea showcases
where projects are publicly evaluated.
Low
Medium
High
-Shows
employees that quality focus is something that peers around them prioritize
and benefit from.
-Provides
employees a benchmark for what behaviors are expected from them and
encourages the ones whose ideas are recognized.
Quality
Awards and Recognition
Publicly
recognize individuals and teams with a trophy/certificate for consistently
embodying quality in their work. Awarding behaviors, not just outcomes,
increases employee engagement.
High
Medium
High
-Helps engage
employees in quality improvement efforts by demonstrating that despite other
objectives and priorities, quality remains important to leaders.
Client/
Customer Visit
Invite your
clients/customers to visit and talk about their experience with the
product/service and the importance of quality.
High
High
High
-Helps
employees understand how a high-quality mindset avoids customer-facing
mistakes and leads to greater customer satisfaction.
Games
Word-Play
Games: A group of employees can play games like Scrabble and Bingo with
quality terminology.
Low
Low
Medium
-Quick games
help employees become aware of quality terms, tests, standards in a fun way.
Trivia Games:
Employees can play games such as “Jeopardy” and beer pong with quality
standards, tests, tools to educate themselves.
Low
Low
Medium
Articles
on Quality
Share blogs
and articles on quality.
Low
Medium
Medium
-Increases
quality’s visibility across the organization and promotes awareness.
Quality
Quiz Competition
Employees can
take quizzes on quality-related concepts.
Low
Medium
High
-Tests
employees’ awareness and creates a healthy competition to know more.
Quality Merchandise
(swag)
Distribute
T-shirts, mugs, badges with quality quotes to employees. Reward contest
winners with goodies such as chocolates with quality phrases written on them.
High
High
Medium
-Provides
more visibility to quality and imparts a sense of pride in employees.
Leveraging fun is a good way to help build a culture of quality.
Building moments of planned fun is work, and should be part of the overall Quality Plan, with activities and milestones clearly marked and executed towards.
The tendency of employees and managers to identify themselves with their “group,” (i.e. their department or area of specialization) is a engrained instinct that a lot of us grapple with on a daily basis. A big part of systems thinking, of quality thinking, is seeing the big picture – to be able to analyze and integrate the parts and the whole.
For some reason this comic has me thinking of strategic vision and shared fate and questions of alignment and congruence.