Write me a story!
Recently, I’ve been reading books on Google’s culture, and more pertinent, their hiring practices. I even got to experience their culture 2nd hand. I shan’t explain, as it wouldn’t make sense here. But, let’s look at an aspect of Google’s hiring practices that may help you build a set of questions to ask a prospective employer or team member about their job.
Before I begin, I’d like to refer you to 3 TedX talks:
Building a Fictional World
What makes a hero?
What makes an anti-hero?
UnReal World Problems
In the previous blog post I discussed what prospective employers are looking for when they interview you. Not just your creative ability, but how you use that creative ability to solve problems. Why is interesting from Google’s perspective, because this is what they are asking you to do.
Drop away all the mundane day to day knowledge you have, and imagine a world where the laws are different. A world were cause and effect are different. Time travel is possible. You have super powers. Or, you’re your just plain ordinary. The world is whatever you choose to create it at this point.
You’ve been shrunk to the size of a nickel and thrown into a blender. It’s about to be turned on. What do you do?
The first assumption that could be made is that the physics of this world work the same as the physics of our reality. But, someone was able to shrink you. We don’t have shrink rays. “Honey, I shrunk the kids!”, doesn’t quite work here. But, what if your reaction was to use another super power.
I use my laser vision, to cut a whole in the side of the container and jump out.
And, now we begin building the new world!
Building Your World
Who are your characters?
What are their particular capabilities?
What situations are they dealing with?
What do they learn while over coming various obstacles?
What resources are available for them to use?
From who’s perspective is the story told?
How do they over come their situation?
Are characters lost in battles?
How do characters meet each other?
There are just a few questions to help get you play a game that will allow you to learn more about your future co-workers, and how they interact.
When building out your characters, think Dungeons and Dragons. These series of books describe 1000′s of characters with different characteristics, capabilities, ability to do damage, abilities to deflect damage, ability to recover from damage, and so on.
If you’re clever enough, you could create a fictional world that even mimics the companies product line, yet masks it in such a way that only you know during the 30 minute interview that it’s actually their product line. Then you can see how quickly they catch on.
A good source of material for building and solving fictional world problems are dreams. Another is Buddhist koans. Another is Magic the Gathering. And, another is limericks from the sphinx. Many of the worlds problems are solved through lucid dreaming. It’s a place between being awake and asleep where you are aware of your surroundings, but they don’t follow any known laws of physics. It’s also a place where things tend to morph quite frequently, based on your ability to focus.
Real world problems in Make Believe
This company has chosen to solve a real world problem with their product. Do you know what that real world problem is? Do you know how their product solves this problem? Do you think it’s effective? Do you know of competing solutions that are present or coming?
From time to time, people are thrown into a blender and they have to react quickly to get out of harms way or perish. Are you the mouse caught by the trap or Jason Borne who sets up a fight and keeps going till he’s victorious. Or are you Neo, trying to figure out how to achieve peace, such that everyone lives, both in and outside the Matrix? Or are you just a plain farmer fighting off zombies with GMO plants.
If you look at Apple, it is building the simplest interface for their clients, such that 90% of the populus can use their technology without an instruction manual. Another designer put it succinctly, “When you walk up to a door, you should know intuitively how to operate it.” If you need a manual to operate a door, you’ve failed in your design.
So you’re job is to review the mouse, the mouse trap, and know about all the mouse traps available. Now, can you describe the mouse trap as another invention. Can you describe the customer as something other than a mouse. Can you describe competing mouse traps differently? If you can, you’re already well on your way to building an exciting world for them to play in, that doesn’t revolve around their work life.
As I pointed out in a previous blog, many members of the organization may not be comfortable talking about how their company operates. But if they are playing a game in a fictional world, with pieces that might represent their company, might not, they will be more likely to open up.
The easiest way to hide specific details is to use nouns and meanings for things that have similar properties but could also mean something else. A good example of this is “The Quickening”. Are we talking about the process through which a cake thickens. Or, are we talking about a process through which time speeds up and things happen faster? Or, is there another meaning?
Playing the Game
Let’s keep the game play extremely simple. It will help you drill with friends, and build additional elements as needed to make the game more fun, and interesting to play.
Choose 5 characters and identify their attributes
Choose a problem specific to their world to solve
Be as creative as possible within the worlds physical limitations
Be as detailed as possible about steps you would take
You’re not exactly writing a novel, but you also don’t want the problem to be solved in 5 minutes either. It should take 30 minutes. And, it should give everyone several rounds to add to the story in intervals.
Creating a situation
If you’re in medical situation, then a viable scenario could be, you’ve just come across a car crash. A lawyer, a banker, and a child are trapped in a car that’s sinking into the mud. Who do you save first?
A women walks to the river every day with two clay pots attached to a board slung over her shoulder. Children near by are playing rock baseball in the abandoned field launch a rock that cracks one of her pots. She chooses not to replace it, even though it’s leaking. Why?
A man drops off a bag of gold at a temple abbott. Two apprentices witness the gift and begin fighting over what to do with the gift. How does the abbott end the quarrel?
The world you’re working doesn’t have a defined cause and effect relationship. Thus a character could do something in one moment. But the effect might have already happened, or will happen later. But doesn’t happen in that moment. And, only happens after 2 or 3 other events have been triggered first.
Taking Turns
The Game of Life has some simple rules.
Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if caused by underpopulation.
Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.
Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overpopulation.
Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction.
Monopoly uses dice to determine how many moves you get, with different cards and board options. In Rummy, each player takes a turn drawing from the deck or discard pile, and laying down sets of 3 cards, till there are no more cards left. In Chess, each player takes a turn moving a piece. In Magic the Gathering, each player takes a turn activating various cards, playing attacks, and defending. And so on ...
The easiest set of rules to follow:
Each person gets to choose 1 of 3 different pieces to respond to
Move a character
Collect or discard a resource
Use a resource
Pretty simple, yes?
The Goal
Every game has to have a goal. That would be how they know they have won the gold, succeeded in their quest, completed their challenge. Without a goal, what is the sense of playing. What purpose is there to go on a quest. Why would anyone choose to put themselves in harms way to achieve something greater?
Just living, is not Thriving.
Life has to be Exciting!
I don’t know who said this, but if you’re not having fun solving puzzles, then you’re in the wrong job. Or, you haven’t understood what it is you find exciting about your type of job.
In the game of life, it’s about creating a sustainable ecosystem that lives for ever. Alabate, it’s just repeating a series of simple or complex transformations that make it appear as if the ecosystem is perpetual. For monopoly, it’s when all the other players are bankrupt. In Dungeons and Dragons, it’s when the quest is complete. What is that goal?
Maybe the goal is to collect small bits and pieces of information that build into a larger whole, and releases the Kraken.
Evaluating the Game
How did the contestants in the “Price is Right!” do? In a simple marshmallow test, children who held off the longest were considered to be more successful in life overall. Their method of staving off eating the marshmallow, was to distract themselves for 15 minutes. Mind you, 15 minutes for a 5 year old child is a life time.
Let’s look at a few questions that could be quantized here:
Choices
Are they, mediocre, average, or above average in the choices?
How quick was their choice?
How well thought out was their choice?
How did they use their choice?
Moving Pieces Together
Did the contestants figure out how to use the pieces?
Where they able to use the pieces together?
How complex did their use of the pieces become?
Working in Concert
How did they work together to achieve their success?
How did they work against each other to prevent reaching the solution?
Was one of them willing to sacrifice themselves for the rest to succeed?
Success
Did your characters make it through their struggle?
Where they worried about the struggle?
Where they more concerned with achieving success?
Personalization
Did the players take on or give a personification to their characters?
Did their personal beliefs about what was right and wrong come out?
When faced with a choice, what motivated the players choice?
There are hundreds of questions that could be asked here, and many psychologists have examined a lot of them. For example, if someone takes a leadership role, what characteristics did they display.
If the game play took their real world problem and created a fictitious problem, how well did they solve the problem? Did they come up with any new solutions to the problem? Was their solution the same as the companies or a competitors?
As you can see, the evaluation and game play can get quite interesting.
The SandBox Test
You were young once. You played in a sand box with other kids. You built whole cities and pushed cars around from little house to house. Were others allowed to play, or did they have a propensity to play GodZilla?
The final questions, you should ask during your evaluation is, “Do I want to work with this group of crazy people?” If you have fun playing the game, then the answer is, “Yes!” If they were stalwarts and unwilling to play, then the answer is probably, “NO!” In which case, I don’t blame you ..
The sandbox test was presented through Anne Hathaway's latest production, called “Colossal”. I shan’t explain the details of the movie, though suffice it to say, there’s a great battle that takes place in a sandbox, and is fueled by the imaginations of children. Mutant Ninja Power Strangers has nothing on it. =)
“Skyfall?” “Done!”
If you’ve been paying attention, this method is akin to Agile Project Management. Here, stories are used to help the team fully understand the problem that the end user is having, and the feature(s) they need to solve their problem. The team is then left to brain storm solutions, and implement one.
Good Luck.
