The Whiznook Story with CEO Anastasia Neddersen

“The idea with Whiznook and the gamification was really how do you bridge those two? How do you create an environment that's socially fun and easy and equal?”, shares Anastasia Neddersen, CEO of Whiznook, a company that created a way to gamify team development through data-driven immersive online games. She joins Mike Horne in conversation to talk about how Whiznook helps businesses strengthen their teams.

Whiznook was born out of a desire to combine socialization and team building exercises with the type of data available through surveys and productivity reports. By using these online games, employers get an opportunity to see their teams work together in real time and analyze their actions. This can help pinpoint where there might be issues within a team such as a breakdown in communication or noticing that certain team members are being left out more than others. Whiznook’s current interactive games function similarly to an escape room, providing clues and puzzles that are distributed to different players requiring the team to communicate effectively for a successful outcome. Since these games are online they are a particularly useful tool for remote teams to recognize and resolve problems and strengthen their teamwork skills.

Tune into this week’s episode of the Authentic Change Podcast to learn more about Whiznook and how gamification can help with team development.

• “The idea with Whiznook and the gamification was really how do you bridge those two? How do you create an environment that's socially fun and easy and equal?” (11:14-11:24 | Anastasia)
• “What's even more interesting is that we've had many teams go through our gamified activity tool, and we see that resiliency score is a really strong indicator in of how the team is. And yes, we put together all these other metrics, but we find that that certain metrics are an even more stronger indication.” (17:08-17:32 | Anastasia)
• “The biggest thing for leaders that are participating in Whiznook intelligent games is that not only they will be able to see visually the communication pattern within the group, but then they also will be able to see if there's cliques forming within the group or if there is somebody who is a little bit isolated from the group. And so as a leader, there's definitely opportunities for reflection and understanding how we can create a more inclusive group where there’s a more well-distributed communication pattern.” (24:15-24:53 | Anastasia)