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Andrew Lau is the CEO and founder of Think Codex – a multiple award-winning Gamification Organization headquartered in Malaysia. He is also the current Chair of the International Gamification Confederation (GamFed) – which is a community of gamification experts, academia and professionals from around the world. During his university years, he averaged 16 hours of video gaming daily for up to 2 weeks straight only to repeat the pattern after 1-2 days break. Back then he was passionate about gaming, but now he is passionate about the science and art behind games – which is the whole area of Gamification.
Where we can find Andrew:
Links to episode mentions:
- Favorite game: Street Fighter
- Proposed guest: Cedric Pontet
- Recommended book:
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Zero to One
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Lets’s do stuff together!
Looking forward to reading or hearing from you,
Rob
Full episode transcription
Rob 00:39 Engagers welcome to another episode of the Professor Game podcast. Today we have Andrew with us, but Andrew, before we get started, are you prepared to engage?
Andrew 00:49 Hi Rob. Great to hear your voice. Yes, I’m all prepared to be engaged and to engage. Let’s do this
Rob 00:59 Because Andrew Lau, he is the CEO and the founder of Think Codex, which is a multiple award-winning gamification organization headquartered in Malaysia. He’s also the current chair of the International Gamification Confederation, so the GamFed, I know a past guest used to be Chair as well. You might remember Pete Jenkins. This is a community of gamification experts, academia and professionals from around the world. As you can imagine, Pete is from the UK. Andrew is headquartered in Malaysia, so you can see the whole around the world going from chair to chair during Andrew’s university years, he averaged 16 hours of video gaming daily for up to two weeks straight, only to repeat the pattern after one to two-week break. Back then he was really passionate about gaming, but now he is passionate about the science and art behind games, which is, you know, sort of idea. It is the whole idea or the whole area behind gamification. So Andrew, is there anything we should know before we get started on this interview?
Andrew 02:00 No, I’m really glad to be in this interview. So just fire away.
Rob 02:07 Let’s do this. So, Andrew, we are definitely still in this coronavirus times. So this question might, might come indifferent sort of flavors and however, you want to take it to what we’re happy with that. So we’d like to know what does a regular schedule look like? What does a day with Andrew look like in a day like today or maybe nine weeks ago or four months ago when things were so different in our lives?
Andrew 02:30 Sure. The hours are much longer nowadays for obvious reasons. So typically my day is usually about building treatings, right? So building connections, building capability, and building cash. So the whole area of building connections is all about spending time on LinkedIn, specifically looking for gamification professionals like yourself that I can connect with. So I usually tend to follow up with a call for certain people that I feel that I want to know a bit more. So we end up chatting and we make great friendships and I learned a lot from my people from all over the world. So that’s, that’s the first thing I tend to do. I look at LinkedIn to build connections. The second thing is building capability. Now, the organization I’m with or that I lead, we are a design company, so I spend a considerable amount of time with the design team. I function more as a sounding board to challenge the team and push them to always be exploring.
Andrew 03:25 And growing in their capability. And I tend to push them towards competitions as well, so that helps them to be on their toes. Right? They might not always like me in meetings, but it’s a necessary evil in that sense. So yeah, it’s kind of a love-hate relationship when I’m doing this whole building capability thing. The other one is building cash, right? So every company needs to have cash. So I interact with our clients almost on a daily basis, often just chatting with them to understand what are the problems, challenges they face. Then I bring this feedback back to the design team so that we can create solutions. That’s our value to the clients. And of course, we exchange that value with cold, hard cash. And uh, and that’s been a good formula for us so far and we’re quite happy with the results we’ve been getting. So yeah, building connections, building capability and building cash.
Rob 04:19 That sounds like a formula for success almost. So, Andrew, we’d like to sort of dive right in with these interviews and we’d like to learn a lot from our guests. And we found that one of the things where we can build a lot of that capability of learning and getting those experiences is when our guests tell us a story about what we might call, and this is the wording I took maybe from, I think I’ve said it before, but this wording is from Tim Ferris. Uh, you know, your favorite fail. And in this case, first attempt in learning of a time, again you, you went in to do something and it didn’t go the way you wanted it. We ended up in a failure. It was the first attempt in learning. What did you learn from it? How was that circumstance? We want to be there at sort of at the ground level with you. We want to live it. And of course, learned from that right experience that you had.
Andrew 05:03 Sure, Rob. So what we do in an organization is we develop business simulations for our clients. And what happens is in the earlier years as we were trying to find our own footing and go around our own intellectual property, we tend to over-engineer solutions, right? So it’s kind of like when you’re up on stage and you have stage fright, you tend to be talking too much and you know, not using pauses and stuff. We’ve found that in the design process we tend to over-engineer solutions. It’s like alright, more value equals to adding as many features into the simulation as much as possible. And what these costs was complexity and complexity creates confusion, especially when a lot of the participants tend to be senior and middle-level managers. So the whole area of complexity causes a lot of confusion for them. And simplicity creates clarity.
Andrew 05:58 So we had to learn the hard lessons where we built what we saw as really awesome simulations only to see a lot of the features that we have were not being used. And we have to strip things down. And what we found was the key is to create front end simplicity with back end complexity. So you have to just have a few elements in a game or a simulation, but create complex relationships with those few elements in the algorithms behind it. So for the player it creates a very simple layer of interaction either with the system or other players, but numerous permutations that they need to think about before making those decisions. Right. So nowadays our simulation tends to be simple but also complex and it has worked well a lot with corporate participants, especially the older ones. Yeah,
Rob 06:44 That sounds great. And what would you say, like you were mentioning that you started maybe with that sort of high level of complexity, do you have sort of a moment that you can remember like ah, this was a really, really tough moment and sort of what you realized after you went through that like, I would have done this differently and done these things. Can you sort of take us to that? Of course, you don’t have to reveal like any names of clients or similar because I know that’s very delicate sometimes. But can you tell us a story like put us in that general setting and we want to sort of feel that with you and you know, of course, learn from that experience.
Andrew 07:17 Sure. We had this particular simulation where we created a marketplace for trading or for certain elements within the simulation. And you know, we, we worked on it for, I remember for that particular part for about two months going back and forth arguing inside the design team, you know, doing a lot of playtesting and you know, just putting our heart and soul into it. And then there was our new shiny toy, you know, inside the simulation. And then we brought it to a, an actual session, the client and you know, we put it in and you know, the client saw I was and then the participants were playing with the simulation and we soon realized that they never even bothered to look at it or even bother to use it. And it was quite demoralizing for us because like I said, there was a lot of blurred arguments and tears that went into this, late nights, you know, going back and forth and then it looked well in play-testing and obviously because you know, we were the designers, of course, we try to put ourselves in the shoes of the participants, but you know, at the end of the day it never took off much less got any interaction at all. And that was a hot lesson that we learned. And then when we went back to debrief
Rob 08:31 that sounds like a pretty tough lesson.
Andrew 08:33 It was a very tough lesson. And so now we tend to call prototype and co-design with our clients. Yeah. So at a later prototyping stage, we always go to type live with our clients. We have certain select clients that we do that with and they’re pretty happy to be Guinea pigs together with us. Yeah.
Rob 08:51 That is actually a very, very good strategy and a very good way to solve for that problem. Not only you know, in the current clients, but of course also in the future, which is something that we always have to be considering as well. And so, so thank you very much for that story. I think there are many, many lessons to draw from that. But you, you put it beautifully in that sense of, you know, going for that cocreation involving the person who is going to be the client or the final user as much as possible in that co-creation so that you’re not surprised then by these surprises that are not the nice type of surprises. So the other thing we would like to do is go sort of take a complete spin on this question and instead of going for a difficult time and a failure, taking a, you know, a massive challenge that you’ve faced and actually solved that you have actually tackled it using gamification, game thinking, game-based solutions, these types of ideas that we’d like to talk about. So again, bring us there. If you want to mention the client, go ahead or you don’t, that’s fine as well. We want to sort of live that story with you and take those learnings, uh, take them home.
Andrew 09:52 Sure. There was this project where we created a sales simulation because sales training tends to be a lot of motivational talks, tend to be a lot of roleplaying. And a lot of just what we call here “ra-ra” I don’t know what it’s the same, they call it. So a lot of, a lot of motivational stuff, you know. But you know, at the end day there’s no results. There tends to be little to no results. So we came in and it was a Fortune 500 company. Uh, it was uh, a rollout for a financial company across our 40 branches at the customer service centers. So the customer service centers had turned from what we call a cost center into a profit center. So now they were expected to bring in sales. So they’ve been trying for about one or two years, but they haven’t been able to crack it obviously because all those that were hired there was hired as customer service personnel, never as salespeople.
Andrew 10:54 So we were brought in and then we created a simulation that helped them to learn in a safe environment to learn. And we use habit-building models so that in the space of two days they could build basic habits of what are the do’s and don’ts, the right things to do when engaging the customer from a sales perspective. A lot of them went for sales training before, but it never did take off because it tends to be like what we say motivational or very academic in nature. So that’s how it turned out. They really enjoyed the session. Basically they were different banks and they were fighting to become the best bank with the highest revenue. And so there were actual scoreboards and also leaderboards inside the simulations, who was the best salesman and then they had to create your own sales culture and stuff like that.
Andrew 11:41 Now as a result of this, the more important thing is we took a sales trend before the simulation and we took a sales trend three months after the simulation and their sales actually increased by 266%, So that is the power of gamification if used with the right science and art behind it. So it wasn’t really about the simulation or the games. I think that we put it in, but it was a lot more on the usage of the habit modeling that breaks down the things that they had to unlearn and so that they can relearn, but all this is done at the back end where did to them they are just playing a really nice simulation that is more fun but educational about what we are doing is we were breaking down all the bad habits and relaying them with new habits as well and that’s how we got 266% increase in sales across 400 participants. Yeah.
Rob 12:33 Wow. That is quite impressive. Is there, is there any sort of element or elements that you would attribute, again, not talking about game mechanics necessarily, but any elements that you introduced there, any design strategies that you utilize that you would say, well I think this would be where some of the keys to that success. Is there anything there you could call out?
Andrew 12:51 Yeah, I think we used two things. One is what we call iterative learning. So iterative learning is pretty straight forward in terms of, um, we use what we call habit loops. So you learn a bit, we break down the theory or the concepts into very small digestible chunks. So you have about 5 to 10 minutes of theory download and then you go in straight into the simulation for a few rounds and then you get feedback and then the feedback allows for what we call micro corrections. And then you continue with that loop again, you go in back again with a bit of theory, 10 to 15 minutes, then increase the complexity of the game and then they play and then they get feedback again. And then you keep looping this as they go along. And this iterative learning model helps them to improve and try what works and what doesn’t work for them.
Andrew 13:37 And as they get feedback, basically we find their skills, we find what is needed for them to move towards the other target competency or behavior. So that’s the first thing that we use. I think the second thing is don’t underestimate fun, right? Putting people in a fun and safe environment is critically important. They shouldn’t feel like they’re being, they’re being observed or they’re being assessed. But they feel like they are able to be in a safe environment because the brain physiologically learns best when it is in a state where it feels safe, right? So we created that safe but also fun environment. And as much as you see fun is there, they’re actually learning. And that’s how we got there. Some of the results that we’ve been getting with the client.
Rob 14:19 Absolutely. It sounds like a very exciting one and I hadn’t heard that approach in that way. Sort of iterative learning, which sounds very, very interesting. And I think it’s something that we could sort of just talk about the rest of the episode about, but let’s at least for now, maybe in the future, we’ll dive deeper into this. It could be a good topic to talk about, but let’s, I mean we’ve been talking about success and failure we can see definitely that you’ve been working with more than, than one client. So you probably by now you have some sort of approach when you’re creating the simulations is game-based learning, this gamification for your clients. Do you have a process, a set of steps that you can share with us? How do you approach a project when that comes in and what are the things that you do once a client comes up and says, look, I want this gamification thing, whatever that looks like.
Andrew 15:05 Sure. So one of the first things we do in our first meeting is we tend to look and question the customers, not just on the learning side of things. We tend to ask them: what’s the business strategy for the next one, two years? And then always the second question you ask, so how is learning, how is leadership playing its role in the context of the organization’s ambition? Right. So we tend to ask a lot, understand the organization from a business and strategic perspective and then we will go after that to understand a bit more of what are the training needs analysis that they might need. And once we get that. So what we do is we use a mix of their techniques. So we usually use for ideation, we use a fabric of our design thinking from Ideo. So as we are certified from Ideo, so to understand the business needs.
Andrew 15:52 Then for frameworks from the business side, we’ll use a lot of frameworks from Harvard Business School, consulting firms like McKinsey, conferee and Ben and co. So some of them our design partners as well. Right? So for actual game design, uh, we use a mix of Octalysis, Player Types to provide a check and balance of the design. Then of course we use a player journey maps. The usual ones to plot the workflow of the solutions. Now we also use behavioral economics, habit building models from Stanford and a few other Ivy League universities as well. And we are fairly well known to champion, habit the building among our clients. So we’re kind of well known for that around this region. So that’s what we do. And what we tend to do with all these models and concepts and methodologies is we add our improvisation to it as we learn.
Andrew 16:39 So we also have our own proprietary models that we use to develop our own IP. So like a certain thing which we call a logic engine for our business simulations. So logic engines, basically our engines that we use to put algorithms to determine how to create the right level of challenge for the participants. So you don’t want it to be too easy because nobody’s going to be challenged. If it’s too hard and everyone’s gonna fail it the first few rounds, then that’s not going to work as well. So it’s about finding that right level of tension. So we use things like our proprietary logic engine around our business simulations. So when it comes to consulting for platforms or you know, mobile apps and everything, we’ll also use a mix. So what we always believe is that you can’t just use gamification methodologies and tools when you’re designing for businesses.
Andrew 17:27 There’s always the business component, the people component, and then the gamification component. So you always need to use a mix of tools and concepts. Yeah. So that’s how we kind of approach. I know it’s a bit of a mixed bag of things depending on what we call upon all these different tools and methodologies and we found that it works best for us because you tend to need the buy-in from the business side and if you just use game-based tools like Octalysis or Player Types and such, you’re going to have a hard time trying to convince them, especially from the business side of the client. Yeah.
Rob 17:58 absolutely. Absolutely. It makes a lot of sense both from a design perspective but also from a client and sort of a corporate perspective as well. Cause I’m sure you’ve heard of this before, sometimes when you’re facing a client and you know even the word gamification, game-based solutions sometimes can be kind of a stopper, a turnoff for some clients and there are different approaches to this. There are different ways that people see it. I would say some are sort of trying to push this and say, well if you don’t want this, you know that that’s fine and well we can move on. Some others are trying to, you know, say it as much as possible to sort of grow the field. I think both are valuable sort of contributions on one side of you don’t if you don’t push for the word gamification too much but you still do it and then you demonstrate results there you’re definitely you know, sort of building trust in a client and in a, in a series of people.
Rob 18:46 And on the other hand if you sort of stand your ground and say no this is gamification, this is what we do. You’re also sort of sending a message out there, which I think both approaches can be sort of good at. In many ways I myself, what I do is is kind of what you were phrasing there. I always like to have sort of a mix between sort of standing upfront for this gamification, game-based solutions with a mix of, of course, yes this is gamification, game-based solutions, but this is to make sense for your business. It’s not just for having the nice words and you know, sort of having cars and races in your organization, which is definitely not even the objective. In any case.
Rob 19:45 So Andrew, we’ve been talking about interesting things. I think there’s a lot to take for the audience here, but this is sort of a point of reflection. I always like to have sort of around maybe a bit further down the middle of the podcast and it has to do with sort of best practices or an element that you would say, well when you think about these things this way or when you introduce these kind of elements or, or ways of analyzing things, this would always benefit your gamification strategy. Would you have some sort of best practice in that sense that you can name for us?
Andrew 20:07 Yeah. I think one of the reasons why gamification has not really taken hold in, especially in the corporate learning feel where I am in is mainly because people don’t read enough, designers don’t read enough, designers don’t research enough and designers are often far too happy with using whatever they have, you know, and at times is not enough. So I think if people research from a business perspective and not just jumping into the latest game-based terminologies or concepts, I think that will be one of the things that we should, we’ve been able to win quite a number of business learning awards, not from a gamification competition, but from the business side and from learning awards mainly because we tend to focus a lot of our efforts around depth and results. And that’s what businesses want. So I think a lot of game-based professionals should read more to listen more to, you know, like Professor Game.
Andrew 21:01 Uh, podcast. And I mean, I’m serious because, not because I’m here, but I’ve been listening to some of it and it’s just fantastic. Right? So these are the things you can find in books, in interviews like this. So that’s one of it. I think the second-best practice is always be exploring with new things. You should be playing games on Steam, you should be buying board games, you just should be, you know, getting every opportunity you can to play. And when you play, always think of these few things. You know, if I was the designer for this game, how could I make it better? Or how did I react this way? Why did I feel this way? Why did this game win these awards? So you’re kind of on a semi evaluation mode when you’re playing. And one of the things that our company does is that we have, as part of our almost biweekly ritual as per se, we tend to play board games. And so the company will buy board games and we also have access to Steam accounts where we play online games as well. So that becomes part of R&D in that sense. So you can’t be creating new content if you do not read and if you do not play. So those are the, uh,
Rob 22:09 That makes a lot of sense. There is this podcast I’d like to listen to as well, which is called entrepreneurs on fire or EOFire. One of the things that John has been very adamant about is on, you know, depending on the stage where you’re at your business, at your professional career, you might start off with a hundred percent sort of consumption. So you’re taking in a lot, you’re reading a lot, you’re listening to podcasts, you’re reading blogs, you’re, you know, doing all these things, taking courses. And then that percentage of dedication starts shifting and you’re also creating a lot more. But it is fundamental that you never forget about the fact that you need to be having a percentage of that. And he always argues that at the very least, it should be at least a 10% you’re still consuming and bringing in new ideas, new strategies, new things.
Rob 22:53 And again, this is a, from an entirely entrepreneurial, this has nothing to do with gamification. And I couldn’t agree more. So I have to say, I love your answer, Andrew. This is this, this comes very, very near and dear to my heart for sure. So Andrew, you said you’ve been listening as well to some of the interviews and thank you for those very, very kind comments as well. Is there anybody, when you listen to those interviews, when you, again, you experienced them yourself, the questions. Is there somebody that you would like to hear somebody you would like to listen to in an interview? In Professor Game?
Andrew 23:23 Yes. Uh, I would like to have this guy named Cedric Pontet as a guess. So he’s a founder of a global movement called Play 14 I’m not sure if you heard of Play 14 before. No, I haven’t. Yeah. So Play 14 is a worldwide gathering of likeminded people who believe that playing is the best way to learn, share and be creative. So I’ve to a Play 14 Eve event and it’s really great. So essentially we all go there together. Obviously you need to buy tickets to go get in and the tickets are really cheap because they are a nonprofit organization and then everybody just appears there. And the philosophy is simple. You contribute whatever you want towards the games there and there is no schedule. The schedule or the agenda of the two days usually to ask two days is created in the morning itself. And then everybody just volunteer says, Hey, I’ve got this game.
Andrew 24:15 Hey I’ve got this thing that I use or Hey I’ve heard of this, you know, I’ve brought this. Then if people like what they see, you just schedule it and then people just appear. And then the concept is all about if five people turn up for the game, then that’s the right amount of people that it is for the game. If 50 people turn up for the game that it’s just the right amount of people. So they have this whole concept of like letting chaos order itself and anytime, anywhere and any person is the right time is the right place and it’s the right person. So it’s a very unique movement. So I would like to hear Cedric content a bit more on this thing.
Rob 24:53 Sounds like a very interesting guest and approach of course. And you were talking a lot about researching and reading. You mentioned the word reading several times. Is there a book that you would recommend to the Engagers to this audience and why would you recommend that book?
Andrew 25:08 Okay, so I would like to recommend, of course I could recommend gamification books and I’m sure a lot of other guests would have recommended those books as well. But I like to recommend a book called Zero to One by Peter Thiel. So he’s the co-founder of PayPal and also a major investor in Facebook and SpaceX. Now it’s a book about how to build companies that create new things, right? So this whole part of it about building companies, but that’s also the whole part of creating new things. So this book is a book for creators. So if you’re interested about the creative process, understanding how to create and what to create and how to make your creations really make a difference. I like to recommend this book because you learn a lot on the mindset and psychology of a creator inside the book. Yeah, so it’s called Zero to One by Peter Thiel.
Rob 25:57 That sounds like a fantastic book. I’ve heard of Peter Thiel too, but I haven’t read or seen that book. I, well actually I think I might’ve heard of it, but I’ve definitely not, don’t have it or haven’t read it. Sounds like a great recommendation’s for especially for these creative endeavors that we’re on constantly. And you know, again sort of, we’re still kind of in a recommendation and this will sound like a maybe a little bit of bragging as well, but I think it’s good and I think we all have strengths and we can, we can talk about them as well. So I would like to know what is your, your strength, what is your superpower when we’re talking about creating these gamification solutions?
Andrew 26:34 Okay. So I think my strength is being demanding. That’s my superpower.
Rob 26:41 Being demanding on yourself, on your team and all these people, I’m guessing.
Andrew 26:45 So our team, we believe strongly in excellence and not settling for less when creating solutions. So once again, I think gamification has not taken as much traction as I think that it could because it has such a huge potential, but people are quite satisfied with whatever they have. So by striving and by being demanding, you can bring yourself or your team to a lot of places where you can find it. Gamification can break new grounds, of course it’s not something which is popular at times, but I think the team and I come to a certain understanding that I’m not being demanding for the sake of being demanding to push boundaries both for ourselves and also the industry as a whole. Yeah
Rob 27:27 Absolutely. I think holding ourselves to high standards is always very important to us. As long as you know, just holding your employees to high standards and you’re slacking off yourself leading by example, which has something I’m sure you do and I can feel that from you and from the times we’ve met in person, but those are two concepts that have to go together. You can’t be super demanding and be slacking off at the same time. And people, I mean, I don’t mean you have to be a 24/7 kind of person, but when you’re on, you have to be really on, you have to set that like lead by example, especially if, if, as, as in the case of Andrew, you are the leader of your organization and you’re demanding from people to sort of jump on that ship of being super productive or you know, pushing the boundaries and so on. You have to also be pushing your own boundaries in that sense. So absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So what would you say, and this, this put, talking about pushing boundaries. This is a difficult boundary to push through and it will be about what is your favorite game?
Andrew 28:23 Okay. It’s a, is this arcade game? Alright. So when I mention arcade games, so most of the viewers would know how I am. Uh, the almost nonexistent nowadays, uh, is this arcade game called Street Fighter, right? It’s the basic 2D version of Tekken or Mortal Kombat Ray. You have different, you can choose different, different out of fighters and then you, you slug it out, you know, using special skills. And such. So that’s, that’s my favorite game. I’ve played it when I was a teenager, you know, and I was really addicted to that and I spent quite a fair bit of money in the arcade and I mean I’ve even got myself into trouble with the law because the video game markets in Malaysia, you’re not supposed to enter unless you’re above 18 right. So, but yeah, I was there since I was 13-14 years old. So
Rob 29:15 you know, you know it’s now available on the NES classic as well.
Andrew 29:19 Correct. Yeah. So now I think they are available in simulators and also in a number of things that you can get in-app store as well already and similar and also like what you mentioned. Yeah,
Rob 29:30 Absolutely that, that it sounds like a very, very nice one as well. And we have a little bit, a few minutes and maybe three, five minutes tops. But I would like to take the chance, give you a sort of to have a stab at the question that comes from the audience. And I’m choosing a random question here. I think this would be great. I don’t think you expanded too much upon this one, so maybe it could be a good opportunity. This person is asking how do you make sure you understand the objectives of your clients correctly? Again, do you use some methodology? Do you use some sort of strategies or is there something that you can tell us about this sort of specific stage of understanding your clients as best as possible?
Andrew 30:08 Sure. I think asking the right questions is critically important. So some of the questions that you can ask with your clients as well to the person who asked this question is um, the first one is always talking about the business strategy. Always ask how the learning and development or whatever, whatever person they are talking to, how their department or their function correlates with the business strategy. Then we always tend to ask what does success look like? Right? So then they will tell you what success will look like this. Then you have an idea of what the client is looking for. We also ask what the business is being measured against. So what are they, what are their KPIs? What are the key results areas and such. And then from then on we will also try to understand what are the challenges that they face and how you frame it is also very important.
Andrew 30:59 So you can ask like what’s the problem you’re facing in the organization? So people don’t like to hear the word problem. So we tend to work around understanding the lingo of the organization and using the right type of words to approach it. So usually it’s all about where the organization wants to get. So the question’s all about, you know, that trajectory. Tough questions, strategy. Then where they are, all right, so where they are, so you know, what are they doing, how’s the function supporting it and then where, where they want us and then what are the challenges or obstacles they’re facing. And then from there, you can basically plot it. So if you look at it, it’s pretty much like a GPS. You need to know where you’re going, you need to know where you are. Only then you can throw out your costs. And of course, you need to know why the obstacles, right. You know, maybe there’s a cop clerking at the corner. So you do want to use that route, you know, in that sense. So that’s how we typically approach in understanding the customer and making sure we get the results because at the end of the day it’s not our results, but it’s the results that the customer needs. To justify to their stakeholders as well internally. Yeah.
Rob 32:03 Absolutely. And I love your answer especially because it’s not about this, it’s not necessarily something complex that you do. It’s just about asking these right questions and trying to draw as much from, the final user, the client, the customer that you are going to be having. And Andrew, before you go, is there anything you want to leave the engagers with any final advice? If you don’t or even if you do, please let us know where we can find you in the world of the internet to, to sort of continuing this discussion. There’s interaction with myself and the Engagers and while then we’ll say it’s Game Over.
Andrew 32:36 Sure. Up. I think for us and give, we should always strive because we are at the kind of a journey where there’s so much more potential. And I’ve heard before that potential is useless if you don’t realize it. Now we can say, Oh, this guy’s got the potential to be the president of this country or the United States. But if we don’t live up to the potential, then you know, the potential is used as everyone has potential. But it’s all about those who live up to the potential. And I believe gamification has great potential. It’s just waiting for each and every one of us to step our game, our step up our game, and make sure that we, you know, we push ourselves to make this industry and this discipline a force to be reckoned with globally. And I’m only in this whole discipline of gamification because I truly believe in it. And it wasn’t because I, you know, I had nothing better to do. So yeah, I really believe that we should be the people that push the industry forward. And as I said before if you want to find me, I look into LinkedIn a lot, so just send a connection request and if you don’t sound like a scammer or you know you have something outright to sell me straight away, then I tend to usually accept your friend, your connection requests. So yeah, that’s a, that’s how you be able to find, find me.
Rob 33:52 So you can, you can just go and go to that, click on add, add a note and say I heard you on Professor Game and I need to talk to you and I’m sure Andrew will kindly accept your request, right?
Andrew 34:03 Yeah. And if you say any and you say your friend of Rob, no before I wouldn’t look at your name. I’ll straight away just
Rob 34:13 that sounds great. That sounds great. Andrew, thank you very much for all this time, all this advice, all these kinds of words that you’ve had for the podcast, for the Engagers. However, at least for now and for today, it is time to say that it’s Game Over.
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