dis⋅grun⋅tled
[dis-gruhn-tld]
–adjective
Synonyms:displeased and discontented, sulky, annoyed, bad tempered, bellyaching, crabbing, crabby, cranky, disappointed, discontent, discontented, displeased, dissatisfied, griping, grouchy, grousing, grumpy, irritable, irritated, kicking, kvetching, malcontent, malcontented, peeved, peevish, petulant, put out, sulky, sullen, testy, uncontent, ungratified, vexed

After the storm passed by and the dust has settled it is time to put the pieces back to gather and look at what has happened from different ankles angles.

Some of you might have seen the stories online in the news.
I developed a board game based on the snakes & ladder theme enhanced with action cards which was reflecting on funny project situations me and the team faced during the 4 month we worked on that project together.

What was intended to be a farewell email to close colleagues ended up in a small media storm.
And sometimes your legacy becomes bigger than anticipated as I am now mentioned in newspapers here, here, here and here, discussed in Forums here, here and here and blog posts are written about the game here, here, here, here and here.

I would like to look at it from different ankles angles (thx to Margot for the correction) as there are some great lessons to be learnt out of this as well as experience that I gained that I would like to share with you. So, please do not expect a whingeing post or a justification or anything like that. It will be analytical and looking at facts and at key lessons everybody could learn from.

I will have a series on that split in four parts.
Part 1 - What has happened - a timeline
Part 2 - Putting things into the right perspective
Part 3 - What does media attention do to you?
Part 4 - Lessons learnt and the experience

I will call the Story “TNGDG” - “The NextGen Decision Game“

It all started almost two years ago when I started with a company here in Australia.

22 February 2007 - Started in a role as Manager Program Office based on a 12 month Fix Term Contract (like a full term employee but limited to 12 month).
22 February 2008 - 4 month Casual Contract and nominated to run a specific project.
17 July 2008 - Contract finished and leaving from employer in good faith.
19 July 2008 - Heading of to the US to do the John Muir Trail (230 Miles and 46.000 Feet Ascend)
During the John Muir Trail the idea developed to create a game that is reflecting on a project. I always wanted to do something like this. Everybody who ever has done projects will remember funny situations you faced that either put you a step forward or backwards. Remember building a house and you are having long debates with your partner about the colour in the living room. Those kind of situations would end up in action cards “Long debate with your partner about colour in living room - go to 2 steps back”. And while I was walking, some days I had to stop every 2 hours to empty my head and release all the creativity and put it on paper.
17 August 2008 - returning from the US
from that point on I was working on the game for about 4 weeks. I had to sharpen the idea, develop the concept and build it in Power Point.
10 September 2008 - approached by former employer and encouraged to apply for a specific role
So my seat I left behind was still warm and many people have been aware about this. Therefore I refused to send the already finished game and also a farewell message.
20 November 2008 - informed that application will not be progressed any further
21 November 2008 - Farewell message including the game sent as a legacy to former employees I was working with, to have a laugh about the situations we faced together during that project
Now the ball started rolling and the storm started to form
Of course, the game created some momentum and excitement therefore it has been passed on to others without control
26 November 2008 - Approached by the press, the email including the board game as pdf attachement has been anonymously passed on to the brisbanetimes.com.au and I was asked whether I would like to comment. After getting advice I declined to comment.
It went quiet after that but on December 2nd the storm has formed and was breaking loose.

02 December 2008

• 04:01 Article Published on brisbanetimes.com.au
• 08:00 I was checking something on the internet and found the article
  It was the second biggest headline on the front page and the most read article on the website already
• 08:05 shocked, surprised and excited
• 08:10 first colleagues were calling
• 09:00 Article was available on Sydney Morning Herald and on The Age
  all on title page and almost same article
  SMH published a photo on the title page with the face of Richard Branson in front of the game
• 12:10 First Online Forum starts discussing topic
  others are following
  Article also published on Western Australia Today
• Afternoon First Blog Post published
• End of day, this article remains the most read article on that day for brisbanetimes.com.au

03 December 2008

• After a rough day, things were settling down and the storm has passed

04 December 2008

• Things have settled almost completely and nobody is talking about it any more

Bottom Line:
Was that big? Not at all, but it shows the momentum and it makes you feel what others are going through that are mentioned in the press far more often. Where messages are tweaked to attract readers and from one day to the other you become a “disgruntled ex-staffer playing games with your former employer”

So lets look at the article a little bit closer and get things straight.

I am not going to comment on every little thing in the article, just 2 to 3 items that need to be sharpened.

1) … A disgruntled staffer of …
I had to look up the word in the dictionary (as a none native sometimes you have to do this) to understand what it means.
I am not disgruntled about anything related to that work relationship. I had a great time.
I have left because my contract was running out.

2) … Torsten Koerting worked for the budget airline in its Brisbane headquarters until last month, when he was knocked back for a promotion and subsequently resigned …
As mentioned in part 1, I finished up in Mid July because my contract ran out. I wasn’t knocked back for a promotion. I applied for a job that I didn’t get, that’s it. I haven’t resigned subsequent to that unsuccessful application, I finished up 4 month before that.

3) … criticises the company’s decision making process …
We had great and fun situations during a specific project I was pruning for 4 month. The game is picking on these situations. Not a generalisation about the company and its processes and behaviour and culture. Everyone is taking a hit in this game including myself.

4) … 50 squares to the decision square …
Actually its not that far. Just 49 squares if you include the hangar. So everybody playing the game (and I highly encourage to print it on A3 hard cover and play it) should be able to make it to the decision square. Please let me know how long it took you.

Bottom Line, it was fun, lots of people had a laugh, especially the ones that worked in the project as there are lots of internal jokes in there that make it even funnier.

So to put it in words of the Management book “Do it yourself”

Fun is not a flashing bow tie.
Fun is being irreverent or tongue in cheek.
Fun is being human, not corporate.
Fun comes from working together.
Fun doesn’t behave unprofessionally (we get the job done).
Fun is real.
Fun comes naturally, it’s never forced or put on.

So lets look at what media attention did to me during the last days.
Well I am still alive and my head has not be chopped off. That’s a good thing.

Working according to a motto from a German Minister:

Do not worry. Check whether your name is spelled correctly. Move on. Tomorrow is another day with a new newspaper.

So lets see what happened that day, December 2nd 2008.

1) My name is all over the place in many online newspapers:

• Brisbanetimes.com.au
• Sydney Morning Herald
• The Age
• Western Australia today

and some more

Update (5th of December 2008)

• The Travelmole

2) Some Airline Forums have picked up on it

• Professional Pilots Rumor Network
• Frequent Flyer Forum
• Airliners.net

And all of the above with some great comments

Wow. That put a smile on my face. Unprofessional perhaps, but I give him props for creativity.

Very ‘Imaginative’!

Well done for having a go, an original way of having a gripe at company culture.

They should hire him back for being so creative!

Laminate it, and put it in every seat-back pocket!

And I like especially this one from “Standby”

… so he missed a promotion and this is the response ..me thinks he needs to go back to school to do an engineering degree so he can Build a bridge and get over it.

3) Blogs are posting about it. Found one so far

• Purple Pawn - Modern Board Games

The game plays something like Snakes and Ladders with cards, and the first to actually make a decision, which means reach the last square, is the winner. Apparently, this could take some time.

Update:

• Jaunted - Snakes And Ladders: Disgruntled Virgin Blue Edition (5th of December 2008):

But the fact that the airline employed staff who are this creative and clever in the first place is probably a strange pat on the back. Play the game at your own peril–there are a lot of nasty rescue slides to fall down.

• The Melcrum Blog (6th of December 2008):

It’s all quite a giggle for a “Friday funny”, but what company benefits can be gained from it? In the news article, the reporter says that Koerting took ideas from colleagues to create some of the action points, so chances are, he’s not the only disgruntled employee - the difference is, he spoke up about it.

If I were one of the managers or communications staff at the company, depending on the circumstances, I might use this example as a chance to have transparent discussions with employees about the issues brought up in the game. Or make sure that there were mechanisms in place for staff to air their concerns/irritations in a fair, open environment without fear of reprisal.

• The Both Benchmark (11th of December 2008):

The question now is what is Virgin Blue going to do about it? Will they use it as an opportunity to have a frank discussion with staff and find a way to make sure that convo is constant? From the outside looking in, Virgin Blue in Aussie and Pacific Blue in New Zealand have always seemed to exude a fun, funky culture – perhaps that was so at the beginning but it has dwindled now?

4) The numbers of visitors to my blog exploded that day
See the following graph from Google Analytics

Which is incredible if you think that no link was placed to my blog from the articles mentioned. Everybody visiting the blog had to google me (go to google page, type my name, search, go through results and click on blog).
Several hurdles that usually are higher than you think and users really have to interested in finding out.

5) My Profile on Xing got accessed by many unknown users.
Its a business network similar to LinkedIn and you can track there how has looked at your profile over time.

So you can see what happens after a single mail to some former colleagues, papers are writing about you, forums discuss your topic, blogs are posting about you, your own blog is been flooded with visitors and your social network profiles are accessed by unknown visitors.

After looking into the timeline, the things that needed to be straightened and the momentum that was created, lets go to the final part, the lessons to be learnt from that plus the experience.

1) How to create a great title to attract readers
A single mail and a great funny game had to be put into a title that will be published on the title page of a online newspaper. So it has “made to stick” and it has to attract the potential readers.
It is one headline amongst others and is fighting for clicks. Clicks that create page impressions that create money for the oneline newspaper.
The title that was used in most of the cases was “Ex-staffer plays games with Virgin Blue”
Great, because:
- its simple and easy to grasp and cut to its core
- its unexpected, grabbing people ’s attention
- its concrete, people get the idea and will remember it much later
- its emotional, and people care about the story and want to find out more

Find out more about these principals and more in the book from Chip & Dan Heath - “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die”

2) Interpretation of a fact to attract readers
There was a mail, there was the truth and then there is an audience that wants to be attracted.
So you as a journalist make the story so that it becomes interesting.
Just a staff member making a game reflecting on some moments they had in a project doesn’t do it.
So you need to pump up the tiger to make the story bigger to get a bigger audience and to get the momentum we have seen

3) How newspapers are connected and reusing content
Of course that’s no news, how ever, could be observed very well in this situation.
All newspapers (brisbanetimes.com.au, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and WA Today) are connected to each other and belong to Fairfax Media.
Using the same layout and the same stories plus some local flavour. Still the news are selected independently and the homepage looks different for every one of them.
Smart approach as you as an individual are reading your local newspaper online presence (if you do) and probably not surfing the other sites. An article is written once and reused on all the sites and synergies are kicking in.

4) How momentum is generated in the internet
Of course, this was small. But it was great to see the momentum and watch everything develop over the day.
First one newspaper,
then others published the story as well
Forums were coming in
Blogs started to post about it
and other international newspapers used the content as well

If it would have been bigger …
more newspapers would have used the content, even in other countries
far more blogs would have written about it and trackbacked the content
twitter and friendfeed would have been other sources

It it would have gotten really big …
The story would have carried along for several more days
Press would have called me to ask for exclusive interviews
and I would write a book and my memorars

Glad it was small.

I might use this case for a project management presentation which explains how to develop a game like this and how to make sure its not creating any damage for yourself and others.

World is moving on, and so should we.
Hope everybody enjoyed the game and had and shared the fun we had putting it together.

Enjoy the ride