Using games in internal communications
When it comes to finding guests for the show, we’re always looking for people who are relevant to our field. We do a lot of research into people’s backgrounds. We’re looking for people who work in internal communications and in employee engagement be that as internal managers or directors or senior leaders within an organisation, also consultants with new ideas and concepts that we think will bring value to our audience. It’s always interesting, though, when we find someone who has a tangential interest or an area of interest which is relevant to our field, but one that we wouldn’t normally cover. And today’s guest is exactly that.
I came across Adam Collins through an outreach that he made to me as he knew that my company, The Big Picture People, create corporate games. We create games for organisations that are learning games, communication games that we provide to our clients to help them to facilitate conversations around lots of different topics. These conversations could be around health and safety, company values, vision, strategy, all of those different types of areas. He reached out to me because he’s someone who is interested in board games, it’s his passion. When I got into a conversation with him I found out that not only was he interested in playing board games, he was actually bringing them into the workplace to create culture change, but he didn’t call it that.
It wasn’t his definition of what he was doing, he was just doing something he enjoyed and he recognised that it was having a cohesive effect on his colleagues and his workmates and I was just really interested in that. When I got into conversation with him, I found out that this has got nothing to do with his day job, he’s an engineer, he’s not an employee culture ambassador or anything like that. He’s just doing this off his own back. And I thought it was a really nice story and example of what we’re all striving to do within our organisations. We’re striving to create a group of people, a culture of people within our organisations that are just doing the right thing for the right reasons. They’re bringing their own passion and personality to their work and this is having a positive impact on their colleagues and the culture of the organisation.
So that’s what today’s interview is going to be looking at, this idea of games. We’ll also look at other social interests that we can bring to our work, that help bring our whole self to the work that we are doing, but have a massive benefit and a massive positive impact on our organisations too.
Guest profile
Adam Collins is Preconstruction Manager at The UP Companies based in St. Louis, Missouri. Adam is also the host of the “Eat Lunch and Board Game” podcast. This is a podcast that tells the story of what started off as playing games with some co-workers to pass the lunch hour and has spun into so much more.
Useful links
Link to relevant episode: https://thebigpicturepeople.co.uk/blog/podcast/using-experiential-learning-for-engagement/
Adam’s LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-f-collins/
Adam’s website: https://www.eatlunchandboardgame.com
Adam’s games website: www.beardedboardgames.com