When playing my games, be it board games, mobile games or computer games, there are many things I learn. 2 things I’ve noticed what would attract me to a game initially – the catchy name of the game itself and the characters in the game.
So when our Learning & Development team embarked this journey of revamping our training programs, that is what we did. I still remember that intense meeting we had. It was pre-Covid times. Latha, Kumar & myself were locked in my little office space and we told ourselves we will not leave for lunch till we have the name of our program finalized.
Finally, we agreed to name it SMARTiSE – Start Making A Robust Team in Skill-building Excellence. The word itself is a combination of Smart Expertise (geddit geddit?), in hope that is the desired outcome of our trainees to be after they attend our SMARTiSE programs. It’s also easy to remember like the chocolate Smarties, which we used to give out during classroom training. I also remember Kumar & myself used to scour around town for those mini Smarties boxes.
Next, we created characters to go along with the training syllabus. All the characters we have chosen inspired by different superheroes and icons have their special powers and attributes. Once you completed each training program, we give away these characters collectible badges.
Like for example Professor X-Cell whose character was inspired by Professor X of The X-Men. You guessed it, this is the superhero who is the expert in MSExcel where he can collect, formulate, calculate, format, present, streamline & simplify millions of data in a split of second with MSExcel.
Tacky? Perhaps. But most importantly it’s new and different. Don’t you think?
Bimbo
