Whenever I talk with my friends in the working world one thing keeps coming up again and again. They're all like me, fresh out of college and new to the professional world, and they're all experiencing culture shock in the same way. It's not going from a couple of hours of classes a day to an eight-hour daily schedule and it isn't the different nature of the work they're doing. Psychologically we've all long since acknowledged that these will be major differences we're just going to have to get used to after making the transition out of school. The big sticking point, the one area where they haven't been as able to easily adjust, is the lack of feedback.
This is something I'd realized a while ago but it was only yesterday that I burned through Daniel Pink's Flip, which so succinctly and accurately addresses the issue and gave me the title for this post. Section 12 is entirely about the idea that our generation is being asked to make a stark transition from a world of instantaneous feedback to one where performance reviews are something that traditionally happen just once every year. As Pink points out, our generation is one where we've grown up with video games that instantly give you a score to judge your performance, where sending a text is met with a prompt acknowledgement that the message was delivered and then read. Even in school grades are constantly meted out, offering a tangible metric of ability.
About a month ago I picked up Splinter Cell: Blacklist, and since then I've sunk more hours into it than I thought I would. It's a fun game to be sure, but beyond the interesting asymmetrical multiplayer and the satisfying nature of its stealth it offers something else that triggers the endorphins in my brain like you wouldn't believe. Every takedown, every objective completed, every secret path found, is met with a message at the bottom of the screen acknowledging your action and awarding you points towards one of three styles of play. On average you'll get probably ten to twenty of these messages a minute.
This feedback not only isn't present in the working world, it isn't present in most aspects of life. Learning about the electoral college is one of the best ways to become disenfranchised with the current system of selecting presidents. A lot of the dissatisfaction with Congress stems from the feeling that the concerns of regular citizens aren't being heard over the din of money being thrown around by huge lobbying firms and corporations. Senators and representatives are perceived as being disconnected from the rest of the country, and this lack of feedback has led to staggeringly low approval ratings, if not outright disenfranchisement with the whole endeavor.
People want to feel like they're having an impact. It doesn't necessarily have to feel like a positive one, so long as it feels like our actions have contributed something. All I'm doing when I get an achievement in a video game is affect a number, a gamerscore that no one but me cares about, and yet this is one of the most popular features of the last generation and it prompts me to play in ways I might not have otherwise considered. It's a way to look at all the games you've played at a glance and the things you've done in them, a more tangible sense of accomplishment.
As I see it, addressing this lack of feedback is one of the biggest challenges faced by my generation as it enters the "real world". It helps explain why gamification has found such widespread application and acceptance, since it seeks to rectify precisely this problem in areas as disparate as purchasing decisions and personal fitness. Doing so will accomplish more than offering a sense of constant and contrived satisfaction. Effective feedback can foster motivation for those doing well, and can offer insight into how those who are struggling can improve.
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