74 Ducere Est Servire: THE LEADERSHIP JOURNAL OF DALLAS BAPTIST UNIVERSITY Gathering. Take, for example, this story of three builders. When asked what he was doing, the first builder replied, “I’m stacking bricks.” The second said, “I’m building a wall.” But the third said, “I’m building a cathedral.” All three were performing their duties as required, but only the third man had caught the vision. All three were executing the same set of functions, but only the third understood those functions in terms of the flavor the architect had provided. That vision, that common goal, that ubiquitous flavor is what can transform the workplace from something we must do into something we choose to do. And just like that, the job’s a game. If, therefore, there indeed exists a demonstrable alignment of good game design principles and good leadership practices, then the implications for teams and organizations are multitudinous. For one, this alignment should encourage leaders to build organizations for their team members, not for their customers. Often, CEOs, presidents, entrepreneurs, and the like begin their companies with a singular vision and particular audience or market in mind. Resources (including human resources) are then gathered and leveraged toward the fulfillment of that vision, always with the customer as the most important person in the equation. But, if workplaces are games and workers are players, then the organization should be constructed around the needs of the workers, as described in detail above. Paradoxically, this is likely the path toward customers’ highest benefit and organizations’ best profit, since teams which are inspired, engaged, well-resourced, and well-trained are astronomically more likely to perform well and exceed customer expectations. This, in turn, lends practical credence to the arguments of authors such as C. Gene Wilkes on the concept of “servant leadership,” which he defines as “passionate service to the mission and to those who join the leader on that mission.”62 Wilkes makes his arguments for servant leadership from a Christian perspective, encouraging his readers to put their team members first because this is the good, right, and moral course to take, but the research cited above strongly suggests that this course might be the most profitable, as well. A second implication of this apparent alignment would be that leaders would do well to write their job descriptions in terms of both flavor and
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