Transcripts
Welcome back to Unboxing Logistics, everybody.
Lori Boyer:I have missed you.
Lori Boyer:It's been a few weeks, season four wrapped up, and we are on to season five already.
Lori Boyer:So hard to even imagine that that's happened.
Lori Boyer:I'm your host, Lori Boyer, and to kick off season five, we had to do something fun.
Lori Boyer:We had to make it amazing.
Lori Boyer:Of course.
Lori Boyer:So I have brought on two super fun guests to have a super fun topic.
Lori Boyer:So without further ado, I wanna introduce you to Katie Brown from Footlocker and
Lori Boyer:Dylan Telford from Summit Advisory.
Lori Boyer:We are gonna be talking about gamification today.
Lori Boyer:Dylan, can you introduce yourself and then Katie we'll hear from you?
Dylan Telford:Absolutely.
Dylan Telford:Hi everybody.
Dylan Telford:My name's Dylan Telford.
Dylan Telford:I am the omnichannel practice Lead at Summit Advisory Team.
Dylan Telford:Omnichannel always is a very ambiguous term and we like to laugh about that.
Dylan Telford:It's kind of intentional.
Dylan Telford:I cover post-purchase experiences, which includes customer
Dylan Telford:service, CRM, retail technology.
Dylan Telford:Very centered around order management.
Dylan Telford:So it's not exactly every single piece of omnichannel, but it is those touch points
Dylan Telford:that really come in, that dive deeper into the later fulfillment routes into
Dylan Telford:warehouses, and that are after all of the fun that gets all the inventory available
Dylan Telford:for us to be able to make those sales.
Lori Boyer:Dylan Omnichannel just makes you sound cool.
Lori Boyer:So.
Lori Boyer:I wanna be an omnichannel something.
Dylan Telford:I'll take it.
Lori Boyer:So it, I love it.
Lori Boyer:I love it.
Lori Boyer:Katie, tell us about you.
Katie Brown:Hi everyone.
Katie Brown:I'm Katie Brown.
Katie Brown:And I'm a senior director of product management at Footlocker
Katie Brown:supporting the supply chain space.
Katie Brown:So similar to what Dylan discussed, my role kind of actually starts
Katie Brown:on the inventory side of things with inventory availability.
Katie Brown:Through the order management cycle, indoor distribution centers, and logistics,
Katie Brown:and then also supports kind of the end-to-end post-purchase experience and
Katie Brown:customer service layer on top of that.
Lori Boyer:So super easy, basically.
Katie Brown:Yeah.
Lori Boyer:You know, inventory's easy, customer support's easy.
Lori Boyer:HR, no, the exact opposite.
Lori Boyer:I don't think you can put easy being with anything in supply chain.
Lori Boyer:There's a lot of complexity, so.
Lori Boyer:I kind of hinted at it.
Lori Boyer:I'm really excited.
Lori Boyer:We are gonna be talking about gamification.
Lori Boyer:You might not know this, our unboxing logistics fam, but
Lori Boyer:I'm actually a big gamer.
Lori Boyer:I like to play video games for fun.
Lori Boyer:So I, this is gonna be more like gaming in the warehouse, but I'm
Lori Boyer:really excited to hear about it.
Lori Boyer:So, before we do that, though.
Lori Boyer:One thing that we are doing this season is I am just asking
Lori Boyer:everyone to share somebody that they really admire in the industry.
Lori Boyer:There are some incredible people in this industry and it has been
Lori Boyer:so fun to hear a about them.
Lori Boyer:So Katie, why aren't you kick us off?
Lori Boyer:Who is somebody you admire and why?
Katie Brown:I love this question.
Katie Brown:I have had the opportunity to work under some phenomenal female leaders
Katie Brown:across the retail space and one of the ones that I have super appreciated
Katie Brown:is Sonia Singal, who was the CEO at Gap, Inc. When I worked there.
Katie Brown:I love the fact that Sonia's career started in the supply chain space,
Katie Brown:that she worked her way up into broader leadership and to watch her
Katie Brown:manage gap through COVID was a pretty incredible thing to be witness to.
Katie Brown:I always appreciated her ability to kind of see ahead of the next question.
Katie Brown:Having been able to present to her a couple of times and really put together,
Katie Brown:kind of the retail space end to end.
Katie Brown:So, she's definitely somebody that I look up to.
Lori Boyer:Oh, I love that.
Lori Boyer:And so happy always as a female in the logistics space to learn more about some
Lori Boyer:of these amazing women in supply chain.
Lori Boyer:So Dylan, what about you?
Lori Boyer:I know it's probably me, right, Dylan, but if it ha, if it couldn't be me.
Lori Boyer:Who would it be?
Dylan Telford:Yup, we had to take you off the list.
Dylan Telford:That would've gone too easy.
Lori Boyer:Oh, okay.
Dylan Telford:So I actually took a step back as I started thinking about
Dylan Telford:this and wanted to go a bit broader.
Dylan Telford:And so who I'm talking about is from retail.
Dylan Telford:But they're actually more from store end of retail.
Dylan Telford:And it's a gentleman I worked with when I was a district manager at Guitar
Dylan Telford:Center and his name's Rick Wallace and Rick really got me into people.
Dylan Telford:And when I say that, and I think that's very important for the conversation today.
Dylan Telford:How to manage people in a way that makes them want to follow you.
Dylan Telford:To really be people centric, to really be driving where the value is.
Dylan Telford:And we always used to say a good leader is somebody that you
Dylan Telford:would follow down a dark alley.
Dylan Telford:A great leader is somebody that you wouldn't even question that it's an alley.
Dylan Telford:You're just going wherever that they're going.
Dylan Telford:And he's one of those people, and he's all about just taking care of the people
Dylan Telford:first, having hard conversations, but having 'em in a way that's productive.
Dylan Telford:I learned so much from him about making people want to actually do
Dylan Telford:the work that everybody needs them to do to make the business successful.
Dylan Telford:And I can't be thankful enough for somebody like that being in
Dylan Telford:my life and, and really guiding.
Dylan Telford:He's just a magical person.
Lori Boyer:That is amazing.
Lori Boyer:Shout out to Rick and all of the other leaders out there who are amazing.
Lori Boyer:Honestly, they are gems.
Lori Boyer:I think all of us have had plenty of leaders that.
Lori Boyer:Maybe we wouldn't even follow down a dark alley because, you know, they were subpar.
Lori Boyer:So those leaders who are inspirational, I mean, that's just amazing.
Lori Boyer:So love it.
Lori Boyer:Shout out to Rick.
Lori Boyer:Shout out to Sonya.
Lori Boyer:So excited.
Lori Boyer:I'm gonna have to look you up and connect with you.
Lori Boyer:Okay.
Lori Boyer:Let's jump into our topic.
Lori Boyer:We're gonna be talking about gamifying supply chains today.
Lori Boyer:Let's take supply chain and make it a little bit more fun.
Lori Boyer:I'm gonna throw this to Dylan to start.
Lori Boyer:So, Dylan.
Lori Boyer:Let's go over basics.
Lori Boyer:What is gamification?
Lori Boyer:What does it mean and how would it look, like in, in our, you
Lori Boyer:know, supply chain industry?
Dylan Telford:Sure.
Dylan Telford:I, and it's a great question because there's a perception and then there's the
Dylan Telford:reality of what gamification actually is.
Dylan Telford:The perception being, gamification is simply showing people
Dylan Telford:competitive performance stats.
Dylan Telford:And kind of letting them, you know, to their own devices, discover
Dylan Telford:where they wanna be on that list.
Dylan Telford:The problem with that thought process is it's, it's single threaded, and
Dylan Telford:it's not incentivized in any way.
Dylan Telford:It's incentivizing pretty much only,
Dylan Telford:the, those that are highly competitive and we'll get into what that means,
Dylan Telford:some a little bit later as well.
Dylan Telford:But, when you're really doing gamification, you think about
Dylan Telford:when you actually sit down and you play a game, right?
Dylan Telford:You have a desire to be playing that game.
Dylan Telford:There's something that is hooking you in there, whether it's an incentive, the fun,
Dylan Telford:the fund, and I guess the fund could be an incentive itself, but there's some.
Dylan Telford:You know, a, a positive feeling or interaction you're trying to get after.
Dylan Telford:You're trying to get those chemicals going that you know everybody loves having.
Dylan Telford:And that is a position if you're doing a game well where you're really
Dylan Telford:getting people energized and they have a very positive outcome coming from it.
Dylan Telford:There needs to be a win at the end of a game too, right?
Dylan Telford:And games that don't end, even Monopoly ends, right?
Dylan Telford:You play Monopoly, it might go multiple days, it might get really intense.
Lori Boyer:Does it end because you threw the board?
Lori Boyer:'Cause that's what happened when my brother played.
Dylan Telford:Well, that's some of the fun sometimes too.
Dylan Telford:You always have the people that, and again, this is probably a topic for later.
Dylan Telford:We always have the people that sneak dollars outta the bank
Dylan Telford:and all sorts of fun stuff.
Dylan Telford:And I guess, and that makes it reality in the end.
Dylan Telford:But, there's an end to that game.
Dylan Telford:There's a winner.
Dylan Telford:There's people who are not winners, and we're not gonna call them losers for the,
Dylan Telford:for the base of this conversation because.
Dylan Telford:Everybody who's attempting to get to that win in the end is
Dylan Telford:successful in playing the game.
Dylan Telford:And they should really acknowledge that they're successful in playing the game.
Dylan Telford:There's a positive that you put an effort forward in there.
Dylan Telford:You don't have to win every game.
Lori Boyer:Yeah, I love that.
Dylan Telford:You can level up every time that you play those games.
Dylan Telford:So you really have to have a reason for people to get in there.
Dylan Telford:You have to have something that persists it, makes it enjoyable,
Dylan Telford:and really again, gets those good chemicals, positive chemicals going,
Dylan Telford:and then you have to be able to end and show results coming out of that.
Dylan Telford:When we put that into business context, there's a lot of layers that you have
Dylan Telford:to uncover to truly gamify something and get all of those behaviors that you're
Dylan Telford:looking for and repeated coming after it.
Lori Boyer:Yeah.
Lori Boyer:Katie, do you have anything to add to that?
Lori Boyer:Or, or just why do you think.
Lori Boyer:So I, I've read some, some studies that say gamification is great in this
Lori Boyer:space, and I'm curious why you think that is, why do you think it works?
Lori Boyer:And also, if you just had any other comments to add to what
Lori Boyer:gamification means to you.
Katie Brown:It's usually hard to follow a Dylan answer to a question.
Katie Brown:But, I think when we talk about the supply chain industry, there's a, a
Katie Brown:couple reasons why it works very well.
Katie Brown:Number one, the options are endless for employees, right?
Katie Brown:Like I think about living in the Columbus area.
Katie Brown:The number of distribution centers and spaces where people can, you
Katie Brown:know, look for work is massive.
Katie Brown:And so being able to set aside or kind of have that differentiator for why to come
Katie Brown:work for you versus anybody else on the market, I think, you know, gamification
Katie Brown:is a huge way to attract that workforce.
Katie Brown:I also think it's a very measurable industry, and so, being able to have
Katie Brown:metrics and data behind something like this when you're gamifying
Katie Brown:helps build the credibility.
Katie Brown:It helps build the trust.
Katie Brown:It, it kind of locks people into the, you know, whatever you're
Katie Brown:doing to gamify the process.
Katie Brown:And so for me, those are kind of two major reasons why it works in
Katie Brown:this space is you've got a lot of competition to differentiate yourself in.
Katie Brown:And then also you got a lot of data to back up the work
Katie Brown:behind the, the gamification.
Lori Boyer:I love that because in the, in this industry as well,
Lori Boyer:we struggle with labor, right?
Lori Boyer:It, it can be a difficult industry to retain and, and keep
Lori Boyer:your labor and hire originally.
Lori Boyer:So I love that you pointed out that differentiation of, of being
Lori Boyer:something that makes you stand out, that the job's a little bit more fun.
Lori Boyer:Anything else you had Dylan on, why you think it works here?
Dylan Telford:Not without piling on, I mean, in the end, get the advantages
Dylan Telford:of the carriers and everything else you're gonna be in geographic area.
Dylan Telford:A lot of other warehouses and and that becomes a competitive
Dylan Telford:market just for people.
Dylan Telford:And so I think the differentiation is a huge call out within there.
Lori Boyer:Yeah, I was, I wonder about rote work as well.
Lori Boyer:Like sometimes in a warehouse specifically, you can get a lot of
Lori Boyer:rote work and, and maybe that ties into making it a little bit more fun.
Lori Boyer:You know, when I have my kids and I try to make cleaning up their room
Lori Boyer:a little bit more fun that could be another element I would think.
Lori Boyer:Okay.
Lori Boyer:So I wanna hear from both of you.
Lori Boyer:Where have you seen gamification?
Lori Boyer:Katie, we can start with you, but where have you seen it?
Lori Boyer:Have you experienced it yourself in your own, you know, work history?
Lori Boyer:How have you seen it done in work?
Katie Brown:Yeah, absolutely.
Katie Brown:Fun fact, my very first job coming out of college was writing engineered
Katie Brown:labor standards for Gap as they were standing up their incentive pay program.
Katie Brown:So from the start, that was, you know, something that was kind
Katie Brown:of near and dear to my heart.
Katie Brown:They have, from my perspective, a very well built out program around
Katie Brown:incentivizing people in the warehouse to be more productive and paying
Katie Brown:them based on that productivity.
Katie Brown:And so that pay-for-performance model, when Dylan mentioned.
Katie Brown:How do you have a win or what are people looking for at the end
Katie Brown:of the tunnel to win the game?
Katie Brown:It was a really around incentivizing performance with a pay structure that
Katie Brown:enabled employees to kind of earn up to their potential and really,
Katie Brown:you know, drive their own destiny.
Katie Brown:And that's something that I loved about that program is, beyond the
Katie Brown:competition with other people, because that's not always something
Katie Brown:that everybody is super driven by.
Katie Brown:It's the competition with yourself and being able to kind of own your own destiny
Katie Brown:there, and I thought that was something that made their program really successful.
Katie Brown:Is that they, you know, it was kind of me, me against me in terms of
Katie Brown:competing to get to that next level and really own and earn my salary.
Lori Boyer:Oh, I love that.
Lori Boyer:So it wasn't an example then where you would see yourself in
Lori Boyer:comparison to your coworkers.
Lori Boyer:You would see just yourself comparing to yourself, or how did that work?
Katie Brown:At the end of each month, they did have kind of a board that
Katie Brown:showed top performing departments and top performing individuals.
Katie Brown:So there certainly was that aspect of, you know, being in the top five,
Katie Brown:across the distribution center and being able to see your name up on the board.
Katie Brown:But I think what made them successful and really turning it into something
Katie Brown:that benefited the organization as well as the individual is the, like,
Katie Brown:you know, the pay-for-performance component of it, really driving
Katie Brown:productivity in the warehouse as well.
Lori Boyer:Oh, so Dylan, how do you know?
Lori Boyer:So let's take, let's say that we took Katie's program at at the Gap and, and.
Lori Boyer:How do we know it was successful?
Lori Boyer:Maybe people are doing it and they're having fun, but how do we
Lori Boyer:know it actually like kind of had an ROI or paid off for the company?
Lori Boyer:I think it's a company we kind of wanna know about if it was successful.
Dylan Telford:Sure.
Dylan Telford:I mean there's something to be said about the, I, I believe Katie it was
Dylan Telford:the first distribution center you rolled it out to, being the top performing
Dylan Telford:distribution center in the network.
Dylan Telford:So there's definitely something to be said there.
Dylan Telford:But you can't, you can't play in this game very well in the warehouses without having
Dylan Telford:a great labor standards program set up.
Dylan Telford:So you need to be able to measure.
Dylan Telford:Otherwise you're playing a game with no goals, right?
Dylan Telford:You're kicking, throwing whatever you're doing with balls all over
Dylan Telford:the place, but there's no net.
Dylan Telford:There's no, no, no goal to capture anything in.
Dylan Telford:So you definitely have to have targets needs to be important for people
Dylan Telford:to see where that target is too.
Dylan Telford:You want to know where the race ends.
Dylan Telford:And I think the measurement piece on that monthly basis is great too because
Dylan Telford:you give enough time for recovery.
Dylan Telford:You give enough time for adjustment, self adjustment.
Dylan Telford:You give enough time for coaching, you give enough time for all of
Dylan Telford:the pieces that come together to change the performance in the
Dylan Telford:case that you're seeing less than desirable performance for yourself or
Dylan Telford:potentially for somebody on your team.
Dylan Telford:We have to remember, again, and Katie touched on this a little
Dylan Telford:bit, I mean, it's a very physical job working in distribution.
Dylan Telford:And when you're trying to incentivize people in, that are doing physical
Dylan Telford:work, it's natural to want to do the most comfortable, I don't wanna say
Dylan Telford:least 'cause it's not always the least, but the most comfortable level of
Dylan Telford:work, within what you're getting paid.
Dylan Telford:So that when you're doing a physical job, you're not going home and your
Dylan Telford:day's ruined because you're just physically worn out completely, right?
Dylan Telford:You wanna go home and have a life when you get home, and some people
Dylan Telford:make such a big separation in that you gotta make it fun to be at work.
Dylan Telford:You gotta go through all these different pieces.
Dylan Telford:But having those targets is important to be able to get that win.
Dylan Telford:To be able to measure the success of this.
Dylan Telford:In the end, you're gonna have to take some time.
Dylan Telford:I think as well.
Dylan Telford:You're gonna have to iterate on your program.
Dylan Telford:You're gonna have to see where the measurements are are
Dylan Telford:growing, but where they shrink.
Dylan Telford:Sometimes we do things that have unintended consequences such as
Dylan Telford:we end up, you know, as an extreme example, you can end up boosting your
Dylan Telford:productivity with picking so much that you're not replenishing fast enough.
Dylan Telford:Right.
Dylan Telford:And it's not any individual's fault for that.
Dylan Telford:It's just the program was set up to have a gap if you're not really covering that
Dylan Telford:and having appropriate targets for it.
Dylan Telford:So you wanna think about the total ecosystem.
Dylan Telford:What is the win for the total ecosystem?
Dylan Telford:What is the win for the individual teams contributing to that ecosystem?
Dylan Telford:The impacts they can have on each other and the individuals themself then.
Dylan Telford:And once you have that, it's just like any good organization that's
Dylan Telford:goal oriented, that's really starting from the top down, creating goals
Dylan Telford:that cascade into goals down to individuals and those goals accomplish
Dylan Telford:what the company goals are in the end.
Dylan Telford:Same thing here.
Dylan Telford:Setting up those standards is what's going to be the ability to measure
Dylan Telford:and then giving it time as well.
Dylan Telford:So if you're giving a financial component, you wanna be able to be budgeted for
Dylan Telford:that so that you can give it time so that you can actually quantify the
Dylan Telford:results and you're not just going based off of what you know one period
Dylan Telford:looked like and saying yay or nay with, with little data to back you up.
Katie Brown:I was gonna say, I think Dylan's point around coaching
Katie Brown:is super important here too.
Katie Brown:When we think about gamification, we usually think about like.
Katie Brown:Who's winning and who's the top performing individual.
Katie Brown:We don't think about the fact that the same program gives us the
Katie Brown:opportunity to find those folks that are struggling and to coach them.
Katie Brown:And sometimes bringing up the bottom is almost more impactful
Katie Brown:than raising the top of the bar.
Dylan Telford:Yeah, great point.
Lori Boyer:I love that.
Lori Boyer:And so, Katie, gimme an example in the warehouse just so I can
Lori Boyer:like wrap my mind around it.
Lori Boyer:So let's say you were implementing a gamification.
Lori Boyer:What might that look like?
Lori Boyer:Like.
Lori Boyer:Try to speed up your picking process or, or I guess, give me some
Lori Boyer:examples of how you would use it.
Katie Brown:A lot of it is tied to speed of an activity.
Katie Brown:So it's your units per hour, your cartons per hour processing.
Katie Brown:I think it's important though, in a lot of spaces to make sure that you're
Katie Brown:tying in some component of quality or safety in that as well, though.
Katie Brown:A lot of times when we only incentivize productivity, we lose some of the
Katie Brown:other aspects of what's important across the supply chain industry too.
Katie Brown:And so it's a combination of, you know, making sure that from a picking
Katie Brown:perspective, if we take that example, I'm reaching a certain units-per-hour from
Katie Brown:a picking perspective or exceeding that.
Katie Brown:But at the same time, the units that I pick are within 95% accuracy of what I was
Katie Brown:supposed to pick or something like that.
Katie Brown:So being able to connect those two pieces.
Lori Boyer:Oh, I love that.
Lori Boyer:I can make my bed in like half the time, but it probably
Lori Boyer:isn't gonna look very good.
Lori Boyer:So.
Dylan Telford:Yeah, we always use likes to say it's not
Dylan Telford:efficient, just doing it faster.
Dylan Telford:It still has to have quality to it as well.
Lori Boyer:I love that.
Lori Boyer:So any that seems like a common mistake, we may think like,
Lori Boyer:oh, we'll just do it faster.
Lori Boyer:So are there any other common sort of mistakes people make when they're
Lori Boyer:implementing a program like this?
Katie Brown:I've seen a couple things from my perspective.
Katie Brown:Number one is making sure that you have buy-in across all levels of leadership.
Katie Brown:A lot of times this is something that folks at the top can sit and
Katie Brown:say, Hey, this is a great idea.
Katie Brown:We're gonna do this.
Katie Brown:But if you don't have.
Katie Brown:The right level of buy-in, I would say, all the way down to the
Katie Brown:supervisor level, that can be really impactful because they're the folks
Katie Brown:that are out on the floor every day communicating with the employees,
Katie Brown:answering questions, helping coach them.
Katie Brown:And so I think making sure that you have buy-in across all levels of the
Katie Brown:organization is really important.
Katie Brown:And then the other thing I think is trying to over complicate it too quickly.
Katie Brown:You know, I've seen companies try to go in and put in all kinds of rules about.
Katie Brown:In department versus out of department performance and layering
Katie Brown:on a bunch of different metrics, and if it's not something that you
Katie Brown:can easily explain, it's probably not gonna be successful, especially
Katie Brown:with the workforce in this space.
Katie Brown:You know, that simple acronym.
Katie Brown:Keep it simple, right?
Katie Brown:I think
Lori Boyer:Yes, yes, I was thinking of that.
Katie Brown:It's super important.
Katie Brown:The more you complicate things, I think the more you put yourself
Katie Brown:at risk for being successful.
Dylan Telford:One thing that I want to add to what Katie was just saying
Dylan Telford:is not just buy in from all levels of leadership, but from the team
Dylan Telford:themself to actually play the game.
Dylan Telford:It's, we've all have.
Dylan Telford:Played games that we weren't interested in.
Dylan Telford:I'll give you my examp-- I, I have no interest in playing tennis, and
Dylan Telford:when I play tennis, you can't get me to play in a meaningful way because
Dylan Telford:I have no interest in playing tennis.
Dylan Telford:I might participate because that's what we're doing right now.
Dylan Telford:But if anybody's seen the movie Bachelor Party with Tom Cruise
Dylan Telford:or not Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks.
Dylan Telford:And he's playing tennis, and he's trying to hit the ball as far and as hard as
Dylan Telford:he can and not really playing the game.
Dylan Telford:He's hitting it over the fence.
Dylan Telford:That's me.
Dylan Telford:And it's not fun for anybody else because there's no way to actually
Dylan Telford:play back and forth with on the tennis court because the ball just goes into
Dylan Telford:oblivion if it comes anywhere near me.
Dylan Telford:That's the same kind of behaviors you might get from people or just like.
Dylan Telford:They might be do less performance if you're forcing them into a game
Dylan Telford:that they're not interested in.
Dylan Telford:So you need to be sure that they understand and are
Dylan Telford:bought into the game itself.
Dylan Telford:Right.
Lori Boyer:How, how do you guys go about the buy-in process?
Lori Boyer:So I know it's a little bit of change management and whatnot, but do you,
Lori Boyer:either of you have tips for, let's say you are, you know, let's say one
Lori Boyer:of our listeners out there thinks, okay, Katie and Dylan are geniuses,
Lori Boyer:I'm gonna implement something.
Lori Boyer:How do they start with the buy-in?
Dylan Telford:Carry on with this and hand over to, to Katie for it.
Dylan Telford:But you hit it the nail on the head when you said it's change management pieces.
Dylan Telford:It really is.
Dylan Telford:It's, it's back to core of what change management is.
Dylan Telford:We don't want people to feel like things are happening to them.
Dylan Telford:It's you want people to be part of the journey that they're taking.
Dylan Telford:Your acceptance is much higher.
Dylan Telford:I think about the results pyramid, the experience is at the bottom.
Dylan Telford:The belief comes out of the experiences that you have, that feeds into the
Dylan Telford:behaviors and then the end results that you want, that moves up to the top.
Dylan Telford:That experience at the bottom of being part of the conversation, A,
Dylan Telford:is good for the employee because they could feel like their voice
Dylan Telford:was heard, that there's this thing.
Dylan Telford:Somebody's gonna ask me to do more work, and I'm coming again
Dylan Telford:into a physically demanding job.
Dylan Telford:What would make me feel good about doing that and and what would make my day feel
Dylan Telford:like it went by faster, potentially if I was participating in some way within this.
Dylan Telford:It's also great on the other side, too, because now you have feedback from the
Dylan Telford:actual people, and sometimes I think in the supply chain space, we lose track
Dylan Telford:of getting to the end user's feedback.
Dylan Telford:Which is indexed very highly in places like e-commerce.
Dylan Telford:You know, they'll survey customers for, for days and days and days
Dylan Telford:to make a decision on something that they're gonna change on an
Dylan Telford:eCommerce site and the experience.
Dylan Telford:But then sometimes we're just like, here's a new program for people
Dylan Telford:to, to operate within and have fun.
Dylan Telford:And they're like, the what?
Dylan Telford:You know, and it's--
Lori Boyer:And they roll their eyes and they're like, what the heck is this?
Lori Boyer:Yeah.
Dylan Telford:So if you're gonna roll it out, ask, you know, solicit
Dylan Telford:information, make them feel like they're part of it and make them part of it.
Dylan Telford:In the end.
Dylan Telford:The people that come years later.
Dylan Telford:Still need to be able to have a voice.
Dylan Telford:You still need to have a point.
Dylan Telford:Maybe it's at the end of the game every time the game ends, every month, maybe
Dylan Telford:you say, okay, soliciting feedback.
Dylan Telford:What worked, what didn't work?
Dylan Telford:When we think about agile processes and going through your retrospective
Dylan Telford:and continually changing to be more eff effective in what you're
Dylan Telford:doing, you gotta ask the people who are doing the work again.
Lori Boyer:I, I think, I always think of buy-in as, you know, I'm a leader myself.
Lori Boyer:I have my own team.
Lori Boyer:I think of like, oh, I should get them involved before.
Lori Boyer:And I think my mind was like, oh, I should keep asking for buy-in as time goes by.
Lori Boyer:Really smart.
Lori Boyer:Probably everybody else out there was like, yeah, hello Lori.
Lori Boyer:But completely makes sense.
Lori Boyer:Katie, any other tips for buy-in here?
Katie Brown:Yeah, I mean I love Dylan's comment about getting
Katie Brown:feedback early on and understanding what incentivizes your workforce.
Katie Brown:I think about that like meme or GIF of, you know, thanks for all of your
Katie Brown:feedback and what you actually want.
Katie Brown:Here's a pizza party, right?
Katie Brown:Like.
Katie Brown:We wanna make sure that the incentive actually ties to the workforce and
Katie Brown:what is going to make them work harder.
Katie Brown:So understanding that upfront.
Katie Brown:And then the other thing thing that I would say, it kind of ties into Dylan's,
Katie Brown:you know, agile feedback processes.
Katie Brown:Be iterative.
Katie Brown:You don't have to roll it out across your entire organization in one big bang.
Katie Brown:Right?
Katie Brown:Pick a specific department.
Katie Brown:Pick a specific team, and start to get that feedback in small chunks so
Katie Brown:that as you roll it out, you've got more experience that you can lean on.
Lori Boyer:I love the idea of going with a certain team because I was thinking
Lori Boyer:like, oh, I feel like I'd roll something out and there's gonna be one or two team
Lori Boyer:members who are like, eh, this is stupid.
Lori Boyer:And then you're like, Ugh.
Lori Boyer:But you could even pick teams who are more enthusiastic to kind of get it going
Lori Boyer:and rolling it out and then other people see they're enjoying it and having fun
Lori Boyer:and, and that can help with that buy-in.
Lori Boyer:Maybe as we trickle down a little bit.
Lori Boyer:Okay.
Lori Boyer:I have some questions.
Lori Boyer:I actually sent out sort of a little questionnaire of any questions that
Lori Boyer:some of the people in my network may have had around gamification
Lori Boyer:and, and how it would actually work.
Lori Boyer:So I'm gonna throw those at you guys and then we'll come back and make
Lori Boyer:sure we haven't missed anything else.
Lori Boyer:Okay.
Lori Boyer:So my first question was said, we've got a small team, like, just like 10 people.
Lori Boyer:Is gamification even worth trying at a small scale, or is it always work
Lori Boyer:better if you've got a big operation?
Dylan Telford:Anything that you can do to be more effective is worth the time.
Dylan Telford:So if you feel like you can, you know, work with your small team to come up
Dylan Telford:with a way to gamify their work that they're aligned to, that will be more
Dylan Telford:perfective and or, or effective, and you are going to measure manually, right?
Dylan Telford:Go through all the, the little bit of pain up front to be able to feel
Dylan Telford:that and to iterate and go through.
Dylan Telford:There's nothing wrong with trying it and stopping.
Dylan Telford:There's something wrong with sitting there and being like, at
Dylan Telford:our size with lacking X, Y, Z, this is just not practical right now.
Dylan Telford:But that allows you then to say, I'm gonna set a different goal.
Dylan Telford:I do wanna get more effective, but I need to find a way to do it that is
Dylan Telford:potentially outside of the direct people.
Dylan Telford:Right now, maybe that's through, you know, small bites of augmentation.
Dylan Telford:You know, automation ends up being expensive down the road.
Dylan Telford:If you're that small of a team, I, I'm.
Dylan Telford:Likely that there's not a lot of automation, but are there things
Dylan Telford:within the rest of the supply chain that could potentially make that
Dylan Telford:process in the warehouse easier?
Dylan Telford:Are there things that you can physically change around that you can
Dylan Telford:end up making some bites that justify the growth to grow the team to then
Dylan Telford:start, you know, putting something in, but you don't know until you try.
Lori Boyer:Okay.
Lori Boyer:I love the truth bomb there.
Lori Boyer:I wrote it down.
Lori Boyer:There's nothing wrong with trying and stopping.
Lori Boyer:That is so important in so many areas of just us in work in general.
Lori Boyer:Because, a lot of times we don't wanna track for like,
Lori Boyer:oh, what if this is a big fail?
Lori Boyer:And, and that shouldn't matter.
Lori Boyer:So Katie, I'm gonna ask you my next question.
Lori Boyer:How do you make sure gamification doesn't encourage workers to just cut corners?
Lori Boyer:We're a little worried about accuracy, safety.
Lori Boyer:We kind of addressed that earlier, but what would you say about that?
Katie Brown:Super critical to have some sort of component there,
Katie Brown:but make sure it's something that you feel comfortable measuring.
Katie Brown:You can stand behind.
Katie Brown:Because one of the things with gamification is when you give folks an
Katie Brown:incentive, they're gonna care more and they're gonna ask questions, right?
Katie Brown:And so making sure that you have the data to back up the incentive, the,
Katie Brown:the incentives and, you know, the, the process behind things, super important.
Lori Boyer:Oh, I love that.
Lori Boyer:Dylan I had a question that kind of I was thinking of as well.
Lori Boyer:You mentioned it earlier a little bit with like, some people are competitive.
Lori Boyer:So they said we already have a little bit of tension between our top
Lori Boyer:performers and the rest of the team.
Lori Boyer:Is there a chance that this is gonna, you know, blow up in our faces?
Lori Boyer:I had a nephew who was so competitive, he'd do anything just to win.
Lori Boyer:But then when he was six and he would win, he'd go around saying, I beat you.
Lori Boyer:I beat you, I beat you.
Lori Boyer:And my sister would say, oh, so how, how do we manage kind
Lori Boyer:of that potential for tension?
Dylan Telford:You gotta cut the isolation from there.
Dylan Telford:If you are only pointing out on an individual level who's
Dylan Telford:successful, the only competition they have is everybody else.
Dylan Telford:And I know there's an oxymoron there saying only everybody else, but you, you
Dylan Telford:gotta be able to measure all, all these things that you typically would with
Dylan Telford:employees that you have on the team.
Dylan Telford:You might have an employee that is even more extreme than that and
Dylan Telford:they are your top performer, but they're toxic to the environment.
Dylan Telford:Right?
Dylan Telford:There might not be any incentive that's gonna help with that, but with
Dylan Telford:everybody you wanna work through and you want to coach to get them into the
Dylan Telford:right place, bringing them together and forcing the impacts of others onto
Dylan Telford:other people as part of the game, right?
Dylan Telford:We work together, we win together.
Dylan Telford:Having the team as part of it, you start requiring people to think differently.
Dylan Telford:Now, some of those people are going to make the decision that that's
Dylan Telford:not the way that they want to think.
Dylan Telford:And that they wanna act, and you can make your own decisions on how
Dylan Telford:you wanna move forward with that.
Dylan Telford:But, one of the incentives that I've always thought about within these programs
Dylan Telford:is how, how does this add to my growth?
Dylan Telford:If you look at people who are very competitive in the workplace,
Dylan Telford:a lot of them are also very ambitious on growing their career.
Dylan Telford:So if you're able to sit and say, Hey, every time that you win against
Dylan Telford:this, just like an award you would get issued at the company or anything
Dylan Telford:like this, it's something that is looked at as you're considered, as
Dylan Telford:you move forward with the company.
Dylan Telford:That may be a good incentive to say when you also pair it with, 'cause
Dylan Telford:you don't just want to take people who perform well and take them out of the,
Dylan Telford:the performance pool and have them unable to get others to perform well.
Dylan Telford:When you pair it with, how well did you influence your team to
Dylan Telford:grow their performance as well?
Dylan Telford:That's an ideal candidate that's able to influence the performance of the
Dylan Telford:team and maintain their performance to grow into a supervisor or a
Dylan Telford:manager or any other role that they're gonna want to go into in the future.
Dylan Telford:So you have to create that environment though for people to work within.
Dylan Telford:Again, once you have the feedback from them on what's gonna work for them, at
Dylan Telford:least to start with, as you start to iterate, you bring the team together
Dylan Telford:and you say, this is a team win.
Dylan Telford:We will call out individuals because we all want you to see where the,
Dylan Telford:you know, top performance is, because that's where you potentially could be.
Dylan Telford:But it's also about where everybody else, Katie's point on the bottom rising up.
Dylan Telford:The bottom rising up is it is a huge value.
Dylan Telford:It makes people feel better about the job that they're doing.
Dylan Telford:It's not just about what the company's getting.
Dylan Telford:You can leave at the end of that day and be like, I actually
Dylan Telford:got better at what I do.
Dylan Telford:Overall, I feel more comfortable in my role.
Dylan Telford:I've, I've got all these other intangible kind of values that come out of this.
Dylan Telford:You're not gonna get that.
Dylan Telford:If you are constantly having, again, if you bought a software that has
Dylan Telford:performance metrics you can put up on a screen, it's not gamification.
Dylan Telford:That is, if anything, incentivizing people to work as individuals.
Lori Boyer:I love that.
Lori Boyer:I just, I gotta say I love that so much.
Lori Boyer:It made me think, 'cause I mentioned at the beginning, I love gaming, and I
Lori Boyer:have this kind of group of friends about once a week we get online, we game.
Lori Boyer:But we've learned over the years of doing it, we just play co-op games
Lori Boyer:where we're on a team together trying to win, because it does become a
Lori Boyer:little bit testy and people's feelings get hurt when it is lining up.
Lori Boyer:Katie, I kind of, something Dylan was saying there at the end, he mentioned
Lori Boyer:like the software, so one of my questions was, is there an easy way to test it
Lori Boyer:without getting a bunch of new systems or software or tools or anything like that,
Lori Boyer:do you have recommendations for that?
Katie Brown:So things that'll probably surprise folks is that
Katie Brown:at Gap, and hopefully they don't get mad at me for saying this,
Katie Brown:but they did their whole incentive program built on an access database.
Katie Brown:So you talk about whether you need, you know, any technology to
Katie Brown:be able to support something like this, an organization of that size,
Katie Brown:and with that number of employees.
Katie Brown:Was able to do it all in very simple tooling.
Katie Brown:So when you think about it, you know, don't feel like you need to
Katie Brown:go over the top super expensive tools to be able to support this.
Katie Brown:There are ways to be able to, you know, get the data and support your programs
Katie Brown:without having to have crazy technology.
Dylan Telford:Yeah, and, and I, I'll add into that the the
Dylan Telford:smaller teams, right, that might not have a robust labor management
Dylan Telford:technology available to them, and they may be doing things a bit more manual.
Dylan Telford:As I said earlier, as long as you can measure, as long as the metrics are
Dylan Telford:there, the targets there, you can measure.
Dylan Telford:You can measure manually if you got a small enough team, if you got 10 people in
Dylan Telford:a very small workspace that are fulfilling orders all day and they're doing every
Dylan Telford:job, right, they're taking it from, from soup to nuts, or maybe there's only two
Dylan Telford:departments of things that work through.
Dylan Telford:If you're manually measuring in there, you can still gamify, you might say.
Dylan Telford:Hey, I'm going to start this doing it once a week over a four to six week period,
Dylan Telford:and I'm going to go to the team and I'm gonna say, Hey, I'm trying to come up with
Dylan Telford:a gamified way to incentivize the team so that we can be as productive as possible,
Dylan Telford:because we all wanna see the company grow.
Dylan Telford:To do that to begin with and make at least impact, but something so
Dylan Telford:valuable to you, I will say, we need to hit this many units in a day.
Dylan Telford:And we will do this once a week so that we can, we can keep our thoughts together.
Dylan Telford:We're not just buried in games every day that are ill-defined.
Dylan Telford:And I'm gonna buy the entire place lunch based on, and my measurement
Dylan Telford:of increase is based on that.
Dylan Telford:Then you've got a week of retrospective shift.
Dylan Telford:Then you can do it again.
Dylan Telford:You can do it again.
Dylan Telford:Once you get to a point where you're like, I think I know this is a
Dylan Telford:pattern I wanna follow, or it's not, if you decide to follow the pattern.
Dylan Telford:Don't become the meme, change it from lunch and go into an actual incentive
Dylan Telford:program potentially at that point.
Dylan Telford:But--
Katie Brown:Unless your team really wants lunch, right?
Dylan Telford:Unless your team, unless the team's like lunch is great.
Dylan Telford:Absolutely.
Dylan Telford:But.
Dylan Telford:You take that, those small bites, you move in that way, and you
Dylan Telford:inform them from the beginning.
Dylan Telford:This is all about total company growth.
Dylan Telford:Not, not just this little piece of work that we're doing here, but
Dylan Telford:I'm going to experiment with this, and I need your participation in
Dylan Telford:the experiment to move forward.
Dylan Telford:And make it, it can be slow.
Dylan Telford:No, you don't have to make decisions today and execute tomorrow.
Dylan Telford:You need to create a strategy with all the data that you have
Dylan Telford:available to make informed decisions.
Dylan Telford:You take insights from others to drive those decisions a bit further.
Dylan Telford:You take the insights internally so that you can be, you know,
Dylan Telford:well organized and collaborated.
Dylan Telford:And then you build out the program, you grow from there.
Dylan Telford:And then again, if you hit the end of your testing period,
Dylan Telford:and it really didn't work out.
Dylan Telford:And the consensus from the team is, it really didn't, we love getting
Dylan Telford:lunch, but it really didn't work out.
Dylan Telford:Maybe you buy them more lunch and then you say, okay, we're gonna go back to other
Dylan Telford:things, go back to the drawing board.
Dylan Telford:We'll, we'll come back when there's a new idea.
Dylan Telford:You know, don't lose money just to test something in the end.
Dylan Telford:Make the investment upfront in, in the most responsible way.
Lori Boyer:Okay.
Lori Boyer:I have one final question be just 'cause we're running low on time, but.
Lori Boyer:Somebody said, I can imagine it would get a little stale after a while.
Lori Boyer:So let's say that you rolled it out, you were doing the lunches, you
Lori Boyer:maybe, you know, what do you do to kind of keep the excitement going?
Lori Boyer:You mentioned iterating earlier, Dylan.
Lori Boyer:Let's start with you, Dylan, and then we'll end here with Katie.
Lori Boyer:What, what are things to keep it going long term, that, that keep it fresh?
Dylan Telford:Yeah, I, I'm gonna bury the horse as far into the ground as you
Dylan Telford:can with the iterating piece on this.
Dylan Telford:Let's just talk about the word stale, right?
Dylan Telford:We're making a comparison to food going stale, right?
Dylan Telford:Like you take a piece of bread, you leave it out, and you do nothing with it.
Dylan Telford:What happens?
Dylan Telford:It gets stale.
Dylan Telford:Right?
Dylan Telford:It gets moldy eventually too.
Dylan Telford:That's a bad thing.
Lori Boyer:Yeah, gross.
Dylan Telford:Like you, you can't just sit there and allow stale
Dylan Telford:bread and moldy bread to be the comparison for what your business is.
Dylan Telford:If you have a program, it needs to change with the times.
Dylan Telford:It needs to change with the people.
Dylan Telford:You need the feedback.
Dylan Telford:You need to iterate.
Dylan Telford:You might not make massive material changes.
Dylan Telford:You might not say, okay, here's how we're measuring now, and it just.
Dylan Telford:Moves out there.
Dylan Telford:But, you know, macroeconomic headwinds may limit the ability to
Dylan Telford:hit hard numbers that you, you have.
Dylan Telford:So maybe you move to a percentage based improvement.
Dylan Telford:You may have some areas that were not thought about originally.
Dylan Telford:All of your departments are covered.
Dylan Telford:All of them are being incentivized.
Dylan Telford:But again, something was a catalyst to open the door for some other
Dylan Telford:challenge that's presented itself that's impacting everybody.
Dylan Telford:And now you wanna say, do we reorganize the teams?
Dylan Telford:That's maybe too big.
Dylan Telford:Do we put into the incentive a way to mitigate this challenge?
Dylan Telford:Maybe let's talk with everybody about it and let's move through it.
Dylan Telford:If you're not iterating, it will get stale.
Dylan Telford:And that differentiation you got amongst the 30 warehouses around you
Dylan Telford:to get people to start working with you is now antiquated and nobody cares.
Lori Boyer:Yeah.
Lori Boyer:I love how you said it doesn't have to be big.
Lori Boyer:You know, most companies, if, people probably don't even notice, but every few
Lori Boyer:years, most of the biggest companies out there switch their logo up a little bit.
Lori Boyer:And it's exact same thing you were talking about, Dylan.
Lori Boyer:It gets stale, right.
Lori Boyer:And it's not like a big giant change, but small changes to keep things going
Lori Boyer:and, and moving and updated and fresh.
Lori Boyer:So, makes sense.
Lori Boyer:Katie, anything from you on tips to keep it fun and exciting?
Katie Brown:Yeah, I mean, Dylan absolutely crushed that one,
Katie Brown:but I would just add, you know, look at what people are doing.
Katie Brown:Around you as you're iterating, right?
Katie Brown:Look at the, the other companies that are in your area that they have programs.
Katie Brown:Look at, you know, when you hire employees, if they have feedback around
Katie Brown:why they choose you, and they maybe went somewhere else, use, I would say
Katie Brown:like the industry as an opportunity to find those little pieces of information.
Katie Brown:That you could, you know, slightly tweak and, and transfer program with.
Lori Boyer:I love that.
Lori Boyer:That's exactly right.
Lori Boyer:I also love from you, Katie, just really good advice on figuring
Lori Boyer:out what incentivizes your people.
Lori Boyer:We did a big quiz on a team I was on once and it was really surprising how some
Lori Boyer:people were really motivated by money.
Lori Boyer:Some people were really motivated by recognition.
Lori Boyer:Some people were really motivated by, you know, something like a
Lori Boyer:lunch or a a, those types of things.
Lori Boyer:And so I love Katie that you've had that focus on the individual
Lori Boyer:and seeing what motivates people.
Lori Boyer:So we're totally out of time.
Lori Boyer:I feel like we could have like 10 more hours talking about
Lori Boyer:gamification and then we could have tried a game, but we have no time.
Lori Boyer:So if people wanna connect with you, how can they connect with you?
Lori Boyer:Are you on LinkedIn?
Lori Boyer:If they have questions or if they just wanna learn from you?
Lori Boyer:Katie, we'll start with you and then Dylan, let us know
Lori Boyer:where we connect with you.
Katie Brown:Absolutely would love to connect on LinkedIn whether it
Katie Brown:be to chat about the gamification or anything else in the supply chain space.
Lori Boyer:Dylan, what about you?
Dylan Telford:LinkedIn is a absolute great way to get ahold of me.
Dylan Telford:You can also see if I am attending any conferences that come up.
Dylan Telford:So I'd be there with bells on to many of them.
Dylan Telford:And if not me, somebody else from Summit Advisory Team, I will likely
Dylan Telford:be there, especially if it's supply chain oriented, and you can always
Dylan Telford:catch in other perspectives as well.
Dylan Telford:We talked about trying to get the perspective of many, and we are two,
Dylan Telford:so we are two of many, and those other many have a lot of other ideas.
Dylan Telford:So find us and, and ask away.
Dylan Telford:And if you really are dead, set on me again LinkedIn.
Dylan Telford:And there's a group within LinkedIn that I'm part of as well.
Dylan Telford:It's called the Order Management Gurus, OMG.
Dylan Telford:You can always join that group too.
Dylan Telford:There's a lot of great order management feedback that comes through there.
Lori Boyer:Love it.
Lori Boyer:Love it.
Lori Boyer:Okay.
Lori Boyer:Community out there, family.
Lori Boyer:Let's make peak season 2025 a little bit more fun, and I'd love
Lori Boyer:to hear what you're doing to add gamification into your processes.
Lori Boyer:So thanks again, Katie and Dylan.
Lori Boyer:It was so awesome having you here, and we'll see you all next time.
