- Mighty Block |

How Mighty Block gamifies the work experience

Playing is the most original form of human learning, and gaming brings a new way of problem solving to the business world. Gamification is all about taking the features that make games so engaging and applying them in other kinds of activities. There are many ways of gamifying the employee experience and the work environment.

Let’s take a look at some common techniques we used at Mighty Block to have fun while achieving goals while working.

But first, What does a gamification activity have to have?

There are many different features that can be applied to gamify an activity such as:

The use of rewards, points and achievements to motivate the team to reach a certain goal or to participate in a specific activity.
Badges that reward players for achieving something important
Leaderboards that show how players stack up against the competition
Missions that help employees make meaningful decisions in a gaming environment
Checkpoints that mark progress toward a goal

Gamification used to generate team bonding

In 2022 the Mihgty Bloclk team grew very quickly. We celebrated our first anniversary in July, doubling the headcount from January.

There were a lot of questions about the new team members: their roles, objectives and also their experiences.

So we decided to help the team get to know each other better, but how?

One of the first workshops took place in July 2022: For the very first time the team was all together. Before the workshop, we asked the team for a picture from their childhood. However, they did not know the objective of it. With these pictures we made a big mural and numbered each of them.

Upon their arrival on the first day, they found the mural and then we set the game’s rules:

Everyone has to write on a doc which picture corresponds to which member of the team
Then we reveal the correct name of each picture
If they guess correctly, they get 1 point
The player with most points wins a reward

It was a very special event because the team not only had a fun time, but was able to share more about their personal lives.

It was a moment where we could move from our professional mindset and connect from a personal point of view.

Gamification used to Learn – Defi challenge

As we are on a mission to bring Web3 products to the masses, the team should have experience using the most used tools because their knowledge helps us to build better products. We realised that we had a gap to fill in this field so the team created the “defi challenge”

The main objective was to learn about Decentralised Finance, and have fun! The challenge has 2 levels and each one has specific goals such as: Download and install Metamask , obtain a token using a Decentralised Exchange or Mint an NFT using a marketplace, open a lend/supply position and stake a coin.

The competitor that saves more gas (expressed in ETH) receives a Gas Saver badge. Also, there is a special mention for the Gas Guzzler

At the end of the first edition, we got great insights:

🚀Level 1 was completed by 100% of the participants and they acquired knowledge of: Web3, decentralised protocols, NFTs platforms and token management.

🚀100% of the level 2 participants acquired knowledge of: lending/staking, complex DeFi protocols and operations with NFTs.

🚀Possible Web3 projects were identified as a result of the experience during the challenge

Gamification used to create a shared purpose

In this article, we talked about how we design some Mighty Blog culture elements (Edgar Schein). As we described, to design our core values we created a fictional scenario in order to introduce the team in a creative way.

We imagine an unreal situation where we need to clone 3 people from the team to achieve a big goal.

With a description of the team characteristics we wrote a very long list of abilities, capabilities, highly valued skills and this was the base for the core value design.

The gamification in this example was to set up an unrealistic environment, with us as players or main characters in a big story. We use Storytelling with the purpose of engaging the team in the activity: creating the culture elements.

Playing a game together to define our core values was key to establishing our culture. When we talk about having a “white belt attitude” or being “team players”, we know exactly what we mean because everyone on the team was involved in its creation and development.

Finally: don’t forget to have fun

The success of the gamification method is that people have fun while achieving another objective at work. Several investigations highlighted the importance of fun and laughter. For example, it improves short term memory, reduces stress and protects against heart disease.

“Focusing on the good isn’t just about overcoming our inner grump to see the glass half full. It’s about opening our minds to the ideas and opportunities that will help us be more productive, effective and successful at work and in life”, says The Happiness Advantage author Shawn Achor, an expert on happiness psychology.

We can conclude that having fun has a lot of benefits for our wellness, and it has a huge impact on our company culture, so let’s encourage ourselves to start gamifying our day-to-day.

uchami In Blockchain Games, Blog, Culture, Solidity

Culture, team, and games amidst the World Cup

The World Cup is here and at Mighty Block we love football. As most of our team is Argentinian (me included) and we cannot help our fandom for our national team. We’ve been waiting and preparing for this event for months and we created a betting smart contract football game for it, exclusively for Mighty Block’s team facilitated by blockchain technology on the Polygon blockchain with a smart contract. How did this project came to be? Follow me on this adventure as I tell you the tale of this game and how company culture helps to build amazing things while having fun and being responsible.

The “prode”

During the World Cup it’s very traditional that every group of friends would have a ‘dealer’ that would organize what we call ‘Prode’. This is basically a betting game that consists in everybody submitting their guesses on match results and some type of point system is set up, for example:

10 points if you guess winner and scores
7 points if you guess winner and one of the scores
5 points if you guess winner but not score
2 points if you guess one score but not winner
0 points otherwise

This same person gathers money (the same amount) from everybody. After all matches have been played, the group gathers, the ‘dealer’ shows the results and rewards the winners (usually first, second and third places) with all the money gathered.

This system is heavily dependent on the ‘dealer’ keeping everything orderly and transparent, usually this ends up with discussions about rules, points, how much money was gathered, if the dealer changed any result, etc. This leads naturally to:

Ban this type of betting in a professional setting (since it can create issues between the team) or change the dynamic of the game, where the company funds the reward and there’s not betting per sé.
Ban the ‘dealer’ from participating in the betting.
Even when all the above happen, there is still a sense of distrust in the dealer after the game ended.

As the World Cup was getting closer and closer and everybody at the office started gossiping about the players, the news (and even one of our coworkers went to Qatar himself!) a light bulb went on. What if we make this heavily centralized and ugly betting game into a trustless system facilitated by Blockchain and Smart Contracts? (A smart contract football game!)c.µ.

Just like that, our minds started running, we were thinking of ways to make this happen. How would it look? Where do we take the results from? Do we use an oracle? How do we split the reward? What would happen if there is a tie?. As programmers we could not help our anxiety in any other way than coding the damn thing.

We spent 4 hours making this solidity Smart Contract in the dirtiest way possible, following no guidelines of clean, scalable and sustainable code. After all it was an MVP of a joke, we were not planning to really do this, right?

Ok, let’s back up. How did we end up here? Why on earth are we working on an MVP of a joke instead of working on our clients needs on company time?

Mighty blocks culture policies

At Mighty Block we take culture very seriously. A very important exercise was done approximately 6 months ago, were HR gathered ‘the most important thing that you value from a teammate’ and distilled a list of core values that we as an organization value.

At first sight, it doesn’t sound at all special. Just another set of empty words that nobody follows. Well, this is where Mighty Block makes the difference.

You can read more about that process here, but TL;DR, the HR team listed the things that we REALLY value, not just a poster on a wall, these are the things that we want to keep and grow:

Quarterly face-to-face workshops

Mighty Block is a fully remote company, we have teammates all around the world yet once a quarter we try to meet face-to-face. Our HR team makes a great effort to make this week as productive, fun and fulfilling as possible. These meetings really help to spark inspiration and to show our new team members how we put into practice the core values. It’s not forced indoctrination, rather it’s simply making how we work transparent to the whole team and since our core values express that, the newcomers can sense and learn that.

What does all of this have to do with the ‘Prode’ project? Well, everything. Our ‘real’ project (the one our client was paying for) was under control and the client was happy with our productivity at the time. We were not crunching nor under a lot of pressure. On the other hand, we were sure that if the Prode project failed, nobody would tell us off, it would go against most core values and if we succeeded building the Prode and found ways to circumvent all the issues, Mighty Block would support us and facilitate all the resources needed to make it happen.

It was a can’t lose type of situation

Only in that state of mind can you make progress in a relaxed, healthy, fun and productive manner. It was not only important, it was the key for being able to make this project a reality, otherwise it would have been a comment, a joke, a thought, but never a real thing.

The smart contract was just the beginning

Writing the smart contract was just the beginning of our adventure. After this rush of adrenaline and inspiration we had a rough, untested and dirty smart contract that did the thing. We had a Prode v0.1. After making sure that no big barrier would prevent us from making the World Cup Prode a reality, we pitched our smart contract football game idea with HR, they loved the project and we started thinking on what else we should add. Ideas started flowing, adrenaline went down and we planned our next steps.

How to make this work in a professional setting? The smart contract plays the ‘dealer’ role here, so that helps a lot but also Mighty Block funded the prize. So no betting, just a company game.

But interacting with a smart contract is a very annoying thing, we needed a frontend and that’s where the rest of the team comes to play. Most of the development of this project happened in the span of 5 days, during one of our quarterly workshops. While Ignacio and I were writing (and now testing and refactoring) the Smart Contract, the rest of the team heard our conversation and started asking questions, everybody was excited to try it!

Julian, our frontender, was one the excited coworkers, he offered to build a frontend for us. He had no experience making a dApp, so it was a learning experience for everybody involved. I helped to connect the frontend with the Smart contract while Ignacio was finishing tests and HR was deciding the proper prize.

During Julian’s process he had questions about UX, Constanza, our UXer, helped with that.

Juli working on the Smart Contract Football game frontend

Overall it was a team project, a great experience not only for building the technology and then playing with the game we created on real time during the world cup, but also a bonding experience. Next time I have a question I’m more confident asking Constanza, Julian or Ignacio. The whole team sees this vibe of having fun and building stuff together, and wants to join in, the best example of this is our participation rate of 95%, almost the whole team played the game. This is a positive feedback loop that we need to nourish and nurture, that’s our philosophy, that’s why we have core values and that’s why we do what we do.

irinaotero In Blockchain, Culture, Web3

Our learning Culture

In Mighty Block we genuinely believe that people’s learning process has a powerful impact on oneself and on the entire team. Learning is the reason for little and big changes in people and also companies.

According to the Society for HR Management (SHRM), A learning culture “consists of a community of workers instilled with a ‘growth mindset.’ People not only want to learn and apply what they’ve learned to help their organization, they also feel compelled to share their knowledge with others.”

How do we develop a culture of learning in Mighty Block?

Web3 has a singular environment: every day you are learning something new. We always stay up to date by focusing on cutting edge technology. This is the reason why learning must be present as the foundation of the company. Culture is the principal intangible enabler of learning.

When we designed our Core Values at Mighty Block the open attitude to learn was at the forefront of the process. We called it: “White Belt Attitude”. For us, it means that the learning process never ends. The more we know, the more we acknowledge what we don’t know.

If you want to know more about our core values, our last blog article is here.

How do we implement the “White Belt Attitude” core value?

Peer Connecting: When we asked the Mighty Block team about the latest topics they actually learnt they answered that it takes place in informal conversations where they can debate and share about the projects that they are working on. No formal training, or tutorials.

It’s possible because of the horizontal communication: On spaces and connections such as workshops, slacks channels, etc. everybody has their own voice, could ask and answer. No questions are silly questions. It helps people bring ideas and perspectives together. The output is always new learning, and the most important reason is the team: experienced and full of “servant heart” attitude. (Servant heart is also one of our core Values: Always ready to help attitude. Serving others makes us all better.)

The challenges of the product we are building: No matter how experienced they are, each new member takes a humble attitude -as a beginner to learn everything about our technologies and product. The kind of product we develop challenges us to be updated and always learning. It makes us reach out to learn, do research, ask questions and look for the best way to perform. It motivates us to be better.

Recruiting Process: To ensure our learning culture over time each new hire should show the White Belt Attitude since the very first interview. Our recruiting process was designed to get to know each other. It means that at the end of the interviews, we will have a clear picture about the cultural fit with our Core Values. The interview set includes: Cultural Fit interview, Technical Interviews, Tech challenges, etc.

Activities at Mighty Block that incentivize the White belt Attitude

Crypto Research

Every Friday at 12, Crypto Research meetings take place.

In each session, one team member presents a crypto related topic and shares what they have been researching as well as their findings and learnings. The rest of the team also participates in the presentation by asking questions and debating.

The first crypto research meeting took place within the initial weeks of Mighty Block.

The team investigated and did a lot of research on this topic every week, so we finally organised these meetings to share the discoveries.

Now, these meetings have become the perfect environment to learn something new every week.

Despite the fact that “crypto research” is always a virtual meeting, on November workshop we did it face to face

Defi Challenge

As well as developing web3 products, the entire team needs to have basic knowledge about Web3, decentralized protocols, NFTs platforms and token management.

So, we decided to make it fun and challenging. Every quarter a new level starts and it has different tasks to complete such as: Install a non custodial wallet, obtain a ERC 20 token, mint a nft, stake a coin, etc. The winner is whoever holds the most ETH at the time of the final settlement.

We identify a lot of learnings because of our mistakes: We spend unnecessary gass, be scammed, and obtain unuseful tokens. But we help each other when the inexperienced need a guide or a new task is very challenging, we share our learnings and new knowledge.

The “Mighty Blog”

Since the beginning the Mighty Blog purpose was to generate a space to share the team knowledge and learnings. Is a big opportunity to share with the world our expertise in the Blockchain space, leaving a mark in the ecosystem, and provide help to the community.

But blogging helps us to learn so many new skills and abilities (i.e: Writing for different audiences, choosing a topic). The process when we write and the content we research also builds our knowledge.

We have already published 9 articles from 8 members of our team. On October 31, we reached 999 views on our own content! We are very proud and excited about what’s coming on (new topics, new podcast episodes).

Conclusion

The Mighty Block team loves to learn and we try to identify this attribute in all candidates since the first interview. Our challenge was to design a learning culture and strategies which works as an amplifier that encourages both the love of learning and the opportunity to learn.

Mixing creative spaces and activities with traditional training when needed was the strategy we implemented to keep the flame of curiosity alive.

irinaotero In Blog, Culture, Web3

How we create our culture and values

Recently, we celebrated Mighty Block’s First Anniversary. This is a major milestone in the culture of a startup. That was the perfect time to share the final version of our core values to the team, and to remember how we got to this place. In this period, the company developed a healthy and strong culture that engages talented people and we want to share it with you through an interview with Franco Breciano, Mighty Block’s founder and CEO.

How could you describe the philosophy behind Mighty Block Culture?

FB: After going through the exercise of identifying the core values of the company, it became clear to me that the team values people who are a combination of talent, humbleness and serving other team members.

Another important pillar that was present throughout the exercise was the education piece. All the team members are hungry for knowledge and learning, because we are immersed in a very innovative and nascent space, which is Web3. Nobody has experience, regulators are still learning, the active user base is still small and the infrastructure is being built, just like in 1998.

I’m glad that the eight core values really reflect situations we’ve lived through. With our set of core values, we can now refer to them with words and quickly align our thinking. For example, when recruiting, it’s now easy to say “This candidate does not have a white belt attitude” and know exactly what the other person is talking about.

Why is launching the company’s core values such a milestone?

FB: Being happy at work is important for all of us. And when everything is ok with your job, but you are working with other members that don’t share your core values and views of the world, that can make your work miserable.

We have this clear since day one, so we waited for the right moment to gather the team and reflect on what makes us want to show up and build web3 products as a team. It’s such an important milestone because it means there is a critical mass of happy people at the company and there is a shared set of values that for us are important.

I personally think that companies with a high percentage of knowledge workers (nowadays more remote than ever) will have to come up with ways of staying united and having a strong culture, or otherwise they will lose talent to other companies that do have a well defined culture.

Here are some additional benefits of having the core values crystal clear:

Define your culture. Your core values will set the tone of your organization. They will be the underlying foundation and character of your business and the people in it.
Change the way you do business. When you have a solid foundation, everything else falls in to place. It gives you a standard to hold to, and helps you operate more efficiently.
Attract like-minded people to your organization. When you have a clear set of values, potential employees and customers who have the same values will recognize them and seek you out.
Weed out employees who are not a fit. Adhering to your core values will quickly identify who in your organization is not on board. Whether they leave on their own or are helped out the door, you will have an opportunity to fill the position with someone who shares in and believes in your values.
Dictate how you review, reward and recognize your employees. Your employees will know what is required and have a clearer understanding of your expectations. Core Values give you a measurable standard, and make it easier for you to show appreciation and recognition to your support team.

Could you describe the process behind the core values definition?

FB: We are using the EOS methodology. Having a clear set of Core Values is the first step in establishing your organization’s Vision. Core Values identify who you are as a company, and offer guidelines and principles that help you run your business.

Establishing your business’s Core Values is not just a matter of sitting down with a piece of paper for a 15 minute brainstorming session. Defining your company’s core values is not a staff team project.

EOS recommends a more systematic approach, which involves a series of four steps taken during an offsite meeting with your key management team. Core Values steer the direction of your company, so they should not be complicated or overwhelming:

Introduction to Core Values: we selected the group which had more than six months in the company because we needed to capture the attributes that they thought were very important from their teammates. We did a brief intro to EOS and explained why the Core Values were important for the company and to preserve the culture
Identify attributes: we asked each participant to think of the 3 team members that they would like to clone. Those people that they love to work and interact with.
Keep, Kill, Combine: once every participant submits his/her list of people and the attributes that makes them great, the Integrator must kill the ones that are not “Core Value material”, or are just attributes of the person that are not common in other people. Also the Integrator must combine duplicate or similar attributes and keep the ones that have the most potential. The result is a short list of up to 10 core values.
Polish the Core Values & Communicate: finally, the short list of attributes must be polished with a clear and descriptive language. And they must be presented to all the team. We presented the core values at the office. I highly recommend this approach, maybe in the town hall or on a special occasion with many members gathered in the same space.

How do the core values work in practice?

FB: Once the core values are identified, it’s crucial to embed them into the day to day of the company. It just can’t be a list in a poster at the office that nobody notices.

Core Values are at the heart of all our processes. Some initiatives that are based on them:

Hiring: Our recruiting process was designed to identify if the candidate fit with our culture. Is not just a Hr responsability, all the team when interview someone, are looking for how they are aligned with our core value.

Recognition: A month ago we launched our core value-based recognition program to develop an appreciation culture and to reinforce particular behaviors, practices, or activities that result in cultural engagement.

If we have a people issue, we look for the core value behind the problem, to fix it.

To evaluate ourselves and to decide if somebody must leave the team.

What is the best part of working at Mighty block?

FB: Working with super smart people that have many years of experience and yet accept the fact that in web3 we are all amateurs. Also, transparency and being direct without taking things personally makes life easier for everybody and helps us recalibrate quickly when things go in the wrong direction.

Last but not least, we introduce our core values:

If you have any questions, comments you could contact us and we could share our experience deeply.

irinaotero In Blog, Culture, Web3

Working Around the World – A start up remote culture experience

Remote culture experience allows us to work while enjoying different landscapes, cultures and opportunities. It sounds like a dream on the outside, but on the inside it could be a little bit challenging for multiple reasons.

It Is not breaking news that the pandemic helps organisations to be more flexible and let employees work remotely, even at the most traditional companies.

Three of our team members had the experience of a lifetime and shared it with us.

Dario, a nomad tech lead

Dario is our tech lead. He has been working in MB for almost a year. Now he is working from Mexico with his girlfriend, after spending 3 months in Chile.

We asked him to share some feedback about his experience, and he suggests starting with baby steps. “We went to Chile to start with a place closer to Argentina. We had always visited Chile on vacation and this was a good opportunity to get to know it better”.

Additionally he brought extra luggage in order to take professional photos with his own equipment.

Visiting other countries was the perfect opportunity to practise his most beloved hobbie: photography.

He took some courses in Argentina but had no time to practise it. The new landscapes and wildlife motivated him to come back to this.

Dario’s final advice: “Don’t pack a lot. You will regret it if you want to move to different destinations. A good idea could be to ask someone at the destination for some advice, or be prepared to buy something if you forgot it.

Overall, the entire experience was absolutely positive! He learned about other mindsets and enjoyed new landscapes.

Remote culture experience — Atacama´s Glayzers – Photo By Dario Pizzio

Belen in Spain

Belen is one of Mighty Block’s Product Managers. In May, she decided to spend one month in Spain. She wanted to experience Menorca, Valencia & Barcelona off the beaten path and live like a local for a while. She has been there several times just for vacation.

The idea of working for an entire month in Spain appealed to her boyfriend who also works in technology services. Their experience could be named “code and travel”.

She mentioned that not having a travelling busy agenda helps them to do low-cost travelling, because you have the opportunity to choose your flights, apartments, etc. That allowed them to meet old friends again in the Netherlands and Spain and also visit nearby places over the weekend such as Sitges and Tarragona.

But on the other hand, she struggled to work from different time zones, because her time was on a different schedule. She defines herself as a “morning person”, so working until 10 pm was a bit challenging.

Belen final advice: To minimise the timezone difference she suggests choosing a comfortable place to work from. Be sure to have a good internet connection, a chair, good illumination, etc.

Emiliano a expert in remote culture experience

Emiliano also is working from Spain. The most difficult thing at the beginning was to change his daily routine. All the mornings are free, and he has a new routine. For example, he loves doing research. He’s focused on blockchain and cryptocurrencies. During breakfast, check all the news and threads related to blockchain. Also, he makes a list of all the new exciting things that I need to study deeper, like new protocols, papers, or proposals.

Also, this is made up for the possibility of trekking on different routes since the area where he lives (Asturias) has sea and mountains. A different route every single day is amazing! His favourite is The Picu Pienzu route from Mirador del Fitu. It’s a fantastic route to the Pienzu summit, located in Sierra Del Sueve, between the sea and the mountains. From that point, you can see the sea and the big mountains from Picos De Europa, genuinely amazing.

Additionally at those exciting experiences, in Mighty Block we believe that remote culture experience has other benefits: First of all, “remote first” helps to have more direct communication. How many times have you said “this meeting could have been a chat”?

Secondly, it increases accountability because work is guided mainly by self-discipline and intrinsic motivation. Lastly, all the team have a better work life balance.

If you are looking to implement a remote culture experience on your company, this are our pieces of advice

Collaboration Tools will be the network that keeps the team on the same page: Slack, Confluence, etc.
A Strong onboarding path will be useful to new hires, because they will need to know who is who and how the company works to feel they are part of the team. It should include the tech training they will need to perform the tasks more efficiently.
Plan regularly Face to face meetings and activities are fundamental to build the team rapport and bounce new ideas off of each other.
Well defined and organised process to guide the team so they would be able to do their job correctly even when nobody is there to help with the basic questions.
Last, but not least: A team player-culture centric is needed for remote work success. One of our core values is about being a team player. It means for us that no matter where you are in the world, we are always a team. We have each other’s back. We never feel alone, the team is much bigger than us. If you don’t have the team player mindset, then working remotely is out of the question.

Culture