Value Driven Data Science: Boost your impact. Earn what you’re worth. Rewrite your career algorithm.

[00:00:00] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Hello and welcome to Your Value Boost from Value Driven Data Science, the podcast that helps data scientists transform their technical expertise into tangible business value, career autonomy, and financial reward. I. I'm Dr. Genevieve Hayes, and I'm here again with David Cohen, a data and AI strategy consultant and founder of Super Position to turbocharge your data science career in less time than it takes to run a simple query.
[00:00:31] In today's episode, you'll discover gamification strategies that will transform how you engage with stakeholders and get them genuinely excited about your data science work. Welcome back, David.
[00:00:43] David Cohen: Thank you. Happy to be back.
[00:00:46] Dr Genevieve Hayes: In our previous episode together, we discussed how through your work at Superposition, you've effectively flipped the traditional data science script by using visual storytelling at the beginning of projects to create better stakeholder engagement.
[00:01:02] A key theme that came through during that conversation was the use of fun and games to make stakeholder requirement gathering, which many find to be very dry and tedious, a lot more interactive and enjoyable. You can also clearly see this through the mid nineties video game visual aesthetic of your work, and you've also applied this to your new podcast, which you've structured as a game show.
[00:01:27] Gamification probably isn't something that comes naturally to most data scientists, but from our previous conversation I can definitely see its value. So today I'd like to focus on how our listeners can take these techniques and apply them to their own work. David, what are the key elements that make gamification work in a business setting?
[00:01:50] David Cohen: Yeah, the primary ones , that we try to focus on is always ensuring that the games are done for a reason, so that from a business perspective that we're not just doing games for the sake of doing. Wing games, the purpose of gamification in the first place is, as you said. To essentially simplify a very complex and tedious concept, which is typically, requirement gathering, understanding needs, understanding use cases, and making it simple enough that people in a group setting can work off of each other as opposed to against each other.
[00:02:22] What normally happens in large, complex organizations that many of us work in is that when you separately gather requirements or understanding from people that they tend to talk. Sort of diametrically opposed to each other. They don't agree with each other, and often they work against one another rather than collaboratively.
[00:02:42] So the whole point of gamifying, the experience of doing that is to bring them all into the same room, metaphorically or literally, and then helping them work off of each other collaboratively to define how the path forward looks like for them.
[00:02:56] Dr Genevieve Hayes: One thing that struck me when you've been talking there and when we're talking previously in the other episode, is this isn't about setting up dodge ball for managers where they're literally trying to wipe each other out. This is more like a puzzle room type experience where you are trying to work together in order to reach a common goal, which in the case of an escape room would be escaping from the room here.
[00:03:22] It's getting the optimal business requirements. I.
[00:03:26] David Cohen: Yeah, and I don't try to overcomplicate the games, the activities are really just a Trojan horse for a conversation starter, essentially. So giving everybody in the room the opportunity to speak up, no matter the level or seniority or importance that they have in the team, making sure everybody has a voice to have their opinion heard, and essentially creating a vehicle to ensure that.
[00:03:51] All those opinions are considered in creating a cohesive and collective view of how to solve a data problem. The games themselves are I don't wanna say unimportant, but rather secondary to the conversation, which is the real value in the gamification aspect.
[00:04:08] Dr Genevieve Hayes: So it's sort of like hiding vegetables in a meal. You're hiding what you really wanna do in this game.
[00:04:15] David Cohen: Yeah, that's an interesting analogy, I think that's very apt in the work that we do, especially in capturing those requirements and understanding use cases is very much like eating vegetables is something that you have to do to be able to effectively do your work as a data person.
[00:04:30] But nobody likes doing it, so it's tough. And so the gamification aspect is. Essentially hiding those.
[00:04:37] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Can you walk us through a simple example of how you might gamify a typical stakeholder meeting or requirements gathering session?
[00:04:44] David Cohen: Yeah. So as I said in the longer episode, imagine that you have a group of stakeholders that don't like each other or don't have the ability to communicate with each other or are not in the same place typically. So the idea would be to set up a series of activities like the ones I mentioned in the longer episode.
[00:05:02] That are short bursts of ingenuity, design, brainstorming to solve a narrow business problem for them. So after defining a business problem, which is what all the games start with, it would be asking them to brainstorm potential solutions to that. It would be asking them to play off each other sort of role, play different roles or understanding different perspectives in the room to come up with a collective answer for those problems.
[00:05:30] And then essentially. Thinking ahead and sort of taking it step by step to understand how their decisions, how their answers, how their perspectives come together into a prioritized plan to solve those issues.
[00:05:45] Dr Genevieve Hayes: And the end goal of that game is to get that prioritized plan.
[00:05:49] David Cohen: Correct. So one of the more important perspectives of the games or activities is to understand priority. The reality of group settings and of large organizations as a whole is that there's a lot of voices, so defining that. Not just the bosses. Voices matter is a critical part of it as I said earlier, everybody in the room should always have a voice, and that maybe even the least senior person or the least experienced person has an idea that it's not only worth listening to, but worth pursuing from a.
[00:06:23] Enablement standpoint. So the whole point of the games and of the structure of the games is to give everybody a voice so they can participate in being part of the solution as a whole.
[00:06:34] Dr Genevieve Hayes: So it's like if you're playing Monopoly, everyone gets a go at rolling the dice and moving their tokens.
[00:06:39] David Cohen: Correct. And one aspect that I like to build into my work is intentionally making sure that whoever the most senior person is in the room is the one that speaks the least. So that. Essentially the dynamic changes from a decision making standpoint because it's not influenced to the decision of whoever the most senior person is.
[00:06:59] It's just whatever the collective voice of the team is and how they see the problem, how they interpret the solution to that problem, that then the leader can react and. Adjust to what we often find in the workshops or in the activities and games is that the leaders of the teams that we work with are often surprised by what they hear.
[00:07:19] They hear things they were not aware of before. They hear perspectives that kind of make 'em think about their problems in a new way, and that unlocks new solutions for them.
[00:07:28] Dr Genevieve Hayes: Do you ever encounter pushback from stakeholders who think they're too cool for games?
[00:07:34] David Cohen: Oh yeah, all the time. I think there's a technological challenge to it. A lot of the workshops that I build are online. So there's sort of an aspect of being able to use the tools and being able to navigate you know, not. Putting stickies on a wall, but rather on a virtual board.
[00:07:49] So there's that aspect and then there's definitely some degree of is this really worth my time? That happens as well. So a lot of it is prevented on my end, at least by significant pre-work to get people to buy in and understand why we're doing that activity and that we're not just playing games to play them, but rather that the games are gonna get us to a place that enables the organization to move forward.
[00:08:12] Dr Genevieve Hayes: What's the simplest gamification techniques our listeners could use in their next stakeholder meeting to get started down this path?
[00:08:20] David Cohen: So an easy thing on day-to-day activity is just to think about. Making things fun in a very direct way. So engaging everybody to have a voice in a meeting. So if you have a team meeting, is how do we set up a virtual whiteboard, for instance, that everybody can answer a simple question that we're trying to solve as a team.
[00:08:39] So we get everybody's perspective and then we take a simple vote. So something as simple as getting everybody the ability to answer one question that would normally be answered by only one participant in the meeting is the easiest way to bring that through the games don't have to be complicated or abstract or anything crazy.
[00:08:56] They just have to be something that enables everybody to have a voice.
[00:09:01] Dr Genevieve Hayes: So it's about interaction rather than anything fancy. I.
[00:09:06] David Cohen: I don't think it has to be anything like, we're gonna create this insane game that gets all the different details from what we need data wise. It's just ensuring that everybody has the opportunity to participate in a conversation about how to move forward with a data problem, really
[00:09:21] Dr Genevieve Hayes: So it's about, giving everyone a voice.
[00:09:23] David Cohen: correct.
[00:09:24] Dr Genevieve Hayes: And that's a wrap for today's value boost. But if you want more insights from David, you are in luck. We've got a longer episode with David where you'll discover how to flip the traditional data science process by using visual storytelling at the start of your projects, not just the end to increase stakeholder buy-in and deliver more successful outcomes.
[00:09:47] And it's packed with no onset advice for turning your data skills into serious clout, cash, and career freedom. You can find it now wherever you found this episode or at your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for joining me again, David. And for those in the audience, thanks for listening. I'm Dr. Genevieve Hayes, and this has been Value-Driven Data Science.