DO 'GAME CHANGERS' EXIST IN THE CORPORATE WORLD?
This was the question that the London-based business insight and talent consultancy, where Nathan Ott worked, was increasingly getting asked.
Feedback from clients suggested that something was missing from their talent frameworks when identifying people who could drive transformational change, through creativity and innovation, within their organisations.
In 2013, Nathan teamed up with Dr John Meryn-Smith to commission some research to see if they could answer this, and the following questions:
If these 'Game Changers' do exist, what characteristics differentiate them from their colleagues?
Can we assess these characteristics in a meaningful way, that can support the identification, retention, recruitment and development of these individuals?
This research was carried out in collaboration with Duke Corporate Education's Academic Journal Dialogue. What made it interesting was that this research was being driven by the world of work, not academia. The research was deductive, not inductive.
The research took around two years and culminated in the publication of 'The DNA of a Game Changer 2015'. The headline results revealed that, yes, Game Changers did exist. They were working across all levels of an organisation, and they had characteristics that differentiated them from their colleagues.
From the results of this research, it was evident there were two clear constructs that defined the people who were being referred to as 'Game Changers'.
One was Imagination: the capacity for original thought, the ability to generate ideas and to see possibilities that others don't.
And the other was Obsession: an obsessive and compulsive nature that compels them to turn ideas into reality.
But one question remained unanswered. How could we help organisations identify, retain, manage and nurture these Game Changers?
It was not enough to say that they are imaginative and obsessive people, we wanted to find a more sophisticated way of measuring these qualities.
At the same time, we had been presenting The DNA of a Game Changer 2015' to the corporate world, via the speaker circuit. It started to resonate with businesses and we ran a number of pilots.
At one particular conference, a group of Telco ClOs and CTOs asked us another question. They were encouraged by the idea of identifying Game Changers, but they wanted to understand what our data was telling us about the ways other people could make an impact and contribution to their organisation.
With the help of Professor Adrian Furnham and UCL, we conducted further research. Adrian is one of the world's authorities on the assessment of individual differences. Adrian and UCL helped us develop a series of questions for research that was again dictated by the world of work.
The additional research took us from understanding Game Changers within an organisation, to creating The GC Index - the world's first organimetric. A way of measuring everyone's energy for impact within a role, a team and an organisation.