Management 101 WOW style - intro

I warned you this was coming....

I play World of Warcraft- yup it's true. And I have found that there are many many things one can learn about management and group dynamics from this multi member online role playing game.
"Guilds" are loosely held together groups of people trying to assist each other in improving their own "toons". These guilds can get big - the one I'm in right now has around 300 people in it.
Many of the activities in the game require you to work with others in order to complete a task of some sort. In some cases this is just one other person - in others it can be up to 40.

So imagine, if you will, "managing" a group of 300 people to ensure that the right levels are working together and connecting the right set of skills to accomplish various activities. "Managing" these people to ensure that your guild keeps moving forward and taking on bigger and more difficult challenges.
Now imagine bringing up to 40 people together at the same time, with different skill sets and different levels of competency to accomplish those challenges. Add in that these activities may actually occur over multiple days.

You can begin to see that various management styles can be observed - various lessons can be learned and some great group dynamic observations can be made.

In fact - the management techniques you can learn from playing these kinds of games may help you with real life management situations and your career. In an April 2006 article in WIRED - http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/learn.html - we hear about a man who ran a guild in WOW - and how it helped him.
The article talks about "Accidental learning" and that is exactly what is going on within the game. Having to deal with people with different expectations, different attention spans; people who are of all age groups (8 to 80 last time I checked) from all over the world (over 11 million people play) - teaches you electronic age social skills. And managing them through strange and stressful situations can prepare you to manage others.

Recently, Business week did an article on World of Warcraft players and accidental learning related to lessons for executives.
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jan2009/id20090114_362962.htm

So - here comes little old me - with some pretty simple management and group dynamics observations I have made from my time in World of Warcraft. Stay tuned! I told you this was coming.