Gamify Your Mind; The Secret Sauce to Delivering Success, Continuously Improving and Having Fun

Games are powerful teaching tools, fostering hands-on engagement and fun. But they require careful consideration to succeed. Join me to explore factors in running and selecting games, ensuring they serve as effective teaching tools. Learn to maintain focus on learning objectives while playing, and how to measure the ROI of gaming in education. Discover strategies for pitching gaming to leadership. This session offers insights, tips, and examples for coaches, team leads, and enterprise leaders seeking to teach from simple to complex concepts.

1. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
Gamify Your Mind;
The Secret Sauce to Delivering Success, Continuously Improving and Having Fun

Shahin Sheidaei

2. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
●Trouble Maker
●Problem Solver!
●Entrepreneur
●Coach

Who Am I?
Shahin Sheidaei
Founder & Principal Coach
Elevate Change Inc.
LEAN AGILE NETWORK LEAN ON AGILE
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3. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
What are we going
to talk about?
●Games
●& how to benefit from them
○3 (or 2) games
■Simulate Playing them &Debrief
○And a Pattern for Games
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4. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
Disclaimer & Logistics
●Be Open
●Ask Questions
●The more you put in …
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Past Performance is not
Indicative of Future Results

5. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
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Is It a sandwich?

6. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
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What did stand out?
Anything you like to share? Anything you learned?

7. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
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When to Use It? (Expected Outcome)
●To have some Fun (amongst the team
mates)
●Getting their energy up (specially after
lunch times)
●Ice Breaker (get to know new people)
●Flexible Grouping (Randomize selection,
Random size 3-1 …)
●Engage cognitive load (Get them out of
their current mind zone)
●…

8. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
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Anything Better … ? (Similar ones)
●Impromptu Networking (Liberating
Structures)
●60 Paces
●Farthest person sitting from you
●Least person you know
○Longest hair
○Most Colorful
●1-2-4 All (Liberating Structures)
●…
●Depending on which expected outcome
○5 expected outcomes

9. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
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How Many?

10. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
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slido.com/gamify
●Go to slido.com/gamify
●OR go to slido.com and enter gamify as
code

11. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
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Something to Share?
Anything you like to share? Anything you remembered of it?

12. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
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When to Use It? (Expected Outcome)
●Estimation Education
●Understanding differences in views
(precision)
●Different ways people estimate
○Different approaches people take in for
estimation (volume, size, relativity, …)
●…

13. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
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Facilitation Notes (Alternatives)
●Virtual + In Person
○Guaranteed everyone has a phone/laptop
to enter
○If you are forced to run Hybrid (if you can
avoid it, much better to avoid)
Estimation Game 2.0
●Teamwork (group to estimate)
●Penalizing over estimation
○You overestimate why?
○Run in iteration, one iteration normal,
second iteration with penalty, compare the
results
●Re-estimation with a relative size given
○# of iterations
●And no-estimation
○A more in depth approach needed
○Why you are doing estimation, use that,
and then without that and compare

14. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
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Which one is Conflict?

15. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
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What did stand out?
Anything you like to share? Anything you learned?

16. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
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When to Use It? (Expected Outcome)
●Education on conflict
○Touching the surface
○Going deep in it
●Realizing the potential difference in
opinions
●Dealing with a real conflict at hand
●Assumption: people can be color blind
●A very quick mind refresh (from daily
challenges)
●…

17. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
3 Games So Far
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We Are All Set Then, Shahin!

18. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
Many Many More Games …
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GetKanban
Game
Marshmallow
Challenge
Product
Box
XP Game
Human
Knot
Failure
Toy

19. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
How to Use Games then?
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20. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
What Problem Am I Solving?
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●What are we using it for?
○Education
○Just Fun
○Team Building
○Changing habit
○Combination of above
○Or …
●Overcoming an obstacle
○Obstacle is due to emotions
○Obstacle is due to logic

Why?

21. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
Which Game to Chose?
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●Chose based on the expected outcome of
the game!
○Choose getKanban for teaching Kanban
○Choose XP Game for teaching XP
○…
GetKanban
Game
Marshmallow
Challenge
Product
Box
XP Game
Human
Knot
Failure
Toy

22. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
Which Game to Chose?
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●Chose based on the experience you have
with the game, and pivot
●XP Game, for example
○Tweaked it to teach Scrum, or Kanban
○Tweaked it to showcase CFD
○…
●GetKanbanGame
○Tweaked it to show multitasking works or
not

23. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
How About Leadership Buy in?
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●Leadership in our context
○The person(s) funding the team.
●If you were paying for a team, what
makes you pay for them playing
games?

24. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
How About Leadership Buy in?
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ROI +
ConvincedNot Convinced So - So
●Urgency is there to listen to you
●E.g. two day agile training
●You include some games in it
●Not supporting, not discouraging
●Lots of responsibility on you, NPS
●Very hard to have some games in
●You need to be very careful on
what to introduce and how
Not RiskyToo Risky OK Risk
ExperimentThink Twice Rely on your
Experience

25. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
Gamify Your Mind
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Problem

What Problem Am I solving?
Risk Tolerance

What level of leadership
support do I have?
Experience

What games I am
experienced with?
Game Begin

Figure out logistics and
Have fun!
Fit for Purpose

How shall I customize it to
solve the problem?
05
01
02 03
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Putting it All Together

26. Shahin Sheidaei | [email protected] | © Elevate Change Inc
Last …
Resources
●tastycupcakes.org
●GameStorming
Practice, Practice, Practice
○Peers
○Volunteership
○Other departments
○Anything you can get your
hands on or like
○Anyone willing to play
○Facilitation is key
○Innovate and Create

Follow those who are
Experienced and
learn from them
linkedin.com/in/sheidaei
twitter.com/sheidaei
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Shahin Sheidaei
Founder & Principal Coach
Elevate Change Inc.