Thread by @rdonoghue

Nerdthing: Whatever your opinion of Gamestop redditors, I feel it's worth pointing out that they were very nearly the definition of a self-organizing team.

Worth noting in case you think that self organizing teams can't be effective. They obviously can - what's stopping yours?

Aw, man, something @MultipleManArmy said just got me thinking.

So, I'm going to answer my question for you. The answer is (probably) that your teams are not as interested in solving your works problem as the redditors were in screwing with hedge funds.

Motivation and focus make for real barriers to teams self organizing. There needs to be a certain amount of clarity, buy in and enthusiasm for things to work. (There also needs to be structural space for it, but that's a separate problem)

But the thing that just resonated in my head is that....that's a game mastering problem.

The things which players do in a game (talk, write, read numbers off plastic) are not intrinsically interesting. The traditional role of the GM is to *make* them interesting, to provide the clarity and engagement to spur the party to self-motivation.

And, critically, there's give and take here about what "should" be done. A railroady GM can still make a good game, but not as well as one who *finds* their tables enthusiasm, and *connects* the game to it.

So, I'm not saying this in the "Use lessons from GMing in Agile!" way (though that's a fun topic) but rather to ask myself "Would it be possible to run a project like a game, with the goal of helping the team get *itself* enthusiastically pointed at the problem?"

I can't say "yes" without experimenting, but It *feels* like there would be a lot of fruitful lessons in that approach. I don't have the hubris to think it would work out of the box, but I feel like it would be the foundation of something effective.

Anyway, so that's gonna be rattling in my brain for a while.

Just ran the mental exercise of how I'd run the first meeting of this, using short-term event like hackathons as my basis.

A group of devs who are in a hackathon but don't know what to do, and a group of players who are waiting to be told to play? EXACT SAME CONVERSATION.

Literally. Whether as GM or facilitator, you ask a few questions to try to find interest, float ideas to see what sparks, grab the threads created by any response and use them to build up enough enthusiasm that the group starts taking initiative.

Genuinely identical pattern.