EP015 - How to gamify learning and development with Dan Paech of Loumee
About the episode
This episode focuses on gamification in learning and development. Providing services in learning and development is a challenging task as it is. Adding remote-first setups on top of it makes it even more challenging. I invited Dan Paech from Loumee to discuss how their company is tackling these challenges through gamifying the learning experience for teams.
About the guest
Dan is the co-founder and CEO of Loumee and 100 Point Challenge. His company provides education, games and data-driven insights to elevate team performance. He leads a team of 15 staff, located all across the world. Loumee is remote-first, and they believe in providing a workplace in which everyone can thrive and develop.
Since 2017 they have organized experiences for teams inside the best companies in the world - including Spotify, Microsoft, Google, Booking, IKEA, PWC, Boston Consulting Group, Air France, H&M, and NHL team, the New Jersey Devils.
About the host
My name is Peter Benei, founder of Anywhere Consulting. My mission is to help and inspire a community of remote leaders who can bring more autonomy, transparency, and leverage to their businesses, ultimately empowering their colleagues to be happier, more independent, and more self-conscious.
Connect with me on LinkedIn.
Want to become a guest on the show? Contact me here.
Quotes from the show
Games are an excellent way for teams to get together, do something fun, learn something new, and practice different skills, all of which are essential for any workplace.
Leaders are worried about engagement. That is a big problem in teams, especially remote and distributed ones. If people become disengaged, their productivity often decreases, and they often leave.
During the pandemic, many people realized that things could suddenly go wrong and can be taken away from you that you took for granted. So you shouldn't take things for granted, make the most of what you have when you have them, and try and strive to improve your well-being and those around you.
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Welcome everyone. Yet another day to talk about the future of work and the future of leadership. Today's topic is team development. More precisely, how can we develop team skills through gamification. For such an interesting topic, I have Dan Paech with me who's the co-founder of Loumee, a team engagement platform. Hey Dan, it's so great to have you here.
Hi Peter. It's great to be here. Thanks so much for having me on.
My pleasure. My pleasure. So can you tell a little bit more about what are you doing building with Loumee and how did you get started on this whole remote work journey?
Absolutely. Yeah. So we say that Loumee is a game-based learning platform for teams, and our vision for the business is to elevate team performance through play. So that's what we're doing at Loumee and we've built an ecosystem to support that mission for teams. So we provide four different things primarily within the platform. We provide games and activities through experiences through which teams can connect, have fun, engage with each other. We also have tools which are used for example, to explore metrics that you can't necessarily measure through a game, but you might measure inside a team environment. So people based metrics we like to call them. And then we also have data and insight. So on the platform whilst teams are playing our games, which are primarily problem solving games, I should say, team problem solving games, we allow customers who are using the platform themselves or if we're facilitating for them to collect data on performance of the teams and track that over time in the dashboard as well as those metrics that are collected using the tools. So on things like the reflection activities or exploring key leaves of team performance, psychological safety, and that data we collate for our customers in the dashboard to help understand their teams better help those team leaders to understand that what's going on in their teams and hopefully to improve their performance over time. And the fourth part of the platform is education. So we have a learning hub where we are also trying to upskill team leaders particularly because Loumee is a digital first platform. A lot of team leaders who have started leading remote distributed teams and are perhaps new to that role. We have a lot of domain expertise on facilitating online as we've been doing it for a few years now, ourself at Loumee. So we have built a lot of resources to help upskill people who are not so used to leading remote experiences on how best to do that. And that's a combination of soft skill training, but also training around the technology that helps facilitate those interactions as well. So that's the Loumee ecosystem, I suppose. And in terms of how we got here. It's been an interesting journey I must say it's been a evolution of ideas over time. I mean, as any startup founder probably will tell you. It's been a, a rollercoaster ride as well along the way, but a lot of fun. So we've been running the company for a few years, but we relaunched as Loumee just last year. So prior to that we were named something, we were called 100 Point Challenge, and that business we've been running since 2018. So we have had business for a few years now. And essentially my co-founder and I, Anna, we met in Stockholm, which is where I spend half or more than half my life. I'm currently in Australia, but we met on very fortuitously on a kayaking trip back in 2018. And as you do...
Obviously.
Yeah. And and got talking. Two Australians in Sweden, it's quite unusual. And we connected straight away and we had some ideas and so we both come from professional services backgrounds. I used to work in consulting and Anna was lawyer. So we've both worked a lot with people in different capacities. Not directly in the space, but we had some ideas around particularly games or teams of people that we thought could be fun. And that's how we got started really was by designing a few different in-person gaming experience. And that's what we did for a few years or a couple of years really built a lot of different types of games and experiences and Then of course the pandemic came along in 2020. And at that point in time, we'd been working with a lot of companies and building a lot of team experiences for companies. And so there was obviously a large need now for experiences that could be done from home. And so, That was a space that we hadn't worked so much in prior to that point, but we decided to quick that we had the skills to do so. And so we quickly got working on some new digital based experiences. And that was the beginning of Loumee in 2020. So since then, basically we've focused solely on online or digital first experiences because our games are not just for remote teams. They're also played by in-person and, and hybrid teams. But we've focused on being a digital first company and that's definitely shaped the transition of the business going from the types of people we needed in the team has changed. So, built team that includes software engineers, obviously and really progressed more towards being a tech company than what we used to be, which I suppose was more of an event business previously. So that's kind of a brief history of the business. We've worked, we, we did a lot in 2020 of facilitation ourselves. So we've got a lot of experience firsthand on Zoom calls with anywhere from 10 people to 500 people. We built games that were scalable or that could be played by small or large groups, our games, as I mentioned, they're problem solving experiences, so we tried to, create experiences and games that we thought were a bit unique for the market. I think in this space, if at least if you look at team building as part of sort of what we do, there's a lot of the same types of experiences. So we wanted to create something slightly different. And so we've focused on building problem solving games that are challenging for teams, but we also often riff off current themes. So we aren't sort of stuck with the old spy theme or the bank robbery or something like this in terms of a narrative based game. We built a game about the Metaverse, for example, so we're quite happy to borrow from current themes and use that as part of our, you know, as our creativity to come up with experiences that are more modern, I would say, in their themes and borrow from popular culture whilst also ensuring that they are inclusive for diverse teams. Because we work a lot with across cultural teams, and one of the issues that they have is that if they were, for example, going to use a trivia as a way to interact with each other, trivia can be quite culturally specific, so it can be hard that can include the whole team. But by having problem solving as a way in which to introduce information to teams. It allows us to be more inclusive in the way in which we design and build games. So we've been quite purposeful in the way in which we've thought about the types of content that we do include in the games and the way in which they're designed, which is specifically for teams. Generally teams of around three to five people would be a typical team size. So yeah.
That's a really interesting journey because as you mentioned, you started as almost like a kinda like offline team experience event based company, right. These are just to clarify, the first more offline based events, right.
Exactly.
And I also know that I had a well, client and friend also in Australia from Melbourne and Well, he gave me a lot of updates on how Australia handled the whole pandemic situation. So it was a really, really strict lockdown for most of the people in Australia. And I guess obviously that kind of force you as well to relaunch or pivot within the the, the product that you already or service that you already offered. But it also, I think it's a huge opportunity for you because you, you did in-person live team building events, right. But you also did and are doing right now mostly digital ones and I know it's a really broad question, but if you can give some insights on what are the key differences that you can see that you can transfer from a traditional live experience to a digital first only experience, what would you say?
A good question. So in the end, I think, you know, it's there's still people based experiences and so the fundamentally, you're trying to find a way to engage and connect people and whether or not that's in person or online, I think that in-person events, it is slightly easier to do that with larger group sizes because you can interact in person, the way in which you interact with people allows you to have a larger coverage, whereas I think in online experiences as anyone who has probably experienced in a general meeting, if the group size get too large, people just drop off, you lose engagement from people. It's much easier, I think in an online environment to disengage if you are not careful. Whereas in person it is a lot harder because you can sort of notice someone drifting off or maybe they're looking at their phone or something like that. Whereas, yeah, online If the camera's not on or something, who knows what someone is doing. So I think that's one thing is around the size of the group is important and that must be slightly smaller. And that's why I think breakout rooms are really important when it comes to facilitating online experiences and those type of engagement. Whereas compared to in person. So that's one. Sort of obvious one. I think there's some key differences coming from the person facilitating or leading the events perspective as a person, sort of hosting the experience. In terms of what sort of cues you're getting back, it's a big difference in the online environment versus the in-person environment. So, for example, In an in-person event, you can have people, perhaps they can sort of interrupt mid you explaining something, and that's totally fine because you can see them, they make eye contact, there's a tone, and then it keeps flowing. Whereas it's much harder, it's much more stop start if you're addressing a group. In an online forum and it's harder for them to interact, the participants interact with the person who is hosting for them as well. They can obviously chat and so on, but you might not see it necessarily at the time and all sorts of things. So I think the way in which you interact between the person leading the event and the participants is fundamentally different as well. Obviously the types of things you can do the scope, the variability. Is perhaps greater in person in terms of you could use your physical self and it can have, you know, elements of you know, it could be needing to touch someone or something in person. And so that obviously goes away. But you have to be a bit creative in finding new ways in an online environment who get people to engage with each other, and really what it, what it comes down to in the end, you're still, what is similar is that you're trying to build relationships between people. And I think that you can do that just as well in an online environment as you can at in an in-person environment. At the end of the day, it's about us connecting on whatever it is on whether it's personal, professional life, but it's about our two brains coming together and talking about something and relating to each other on a topic or not relating and debating, discussing, and that is no different in an online environment as it is in person. So there is still a lot of scope in terms of what you can do, but you have to do think a bit differently about game design I think is important and how you obviously, how you're gonna run things. The technology matters a lot more in an online environment. You have different than what people understand if you're talking about diverse groups I've worked with people from, you know, from the age of well through to, I think the, the oldest group I think we've ever had contact with was probably in their seventies. And so the differences in what they understand in terms of technology and how perhaps Zoom or Teams is one part of this experience, but that they need a browser-based game to go alongside that can be really difficult to explain to certain demographics who aren't used to this kind of technology. Whereas in person you have a lot more scope to sort of have maybe ways in which you can explain and people if things are more tangible, so you can cut across different demographics a little bit easier. And that's certainly something that we have found. I will say, even though I have worked with a very broad spectrum of people and we, we still work sometimes with schools and with teenagers for sure. Not as often, I would say with the elderly age groups anymore, but most of our customers are, you know, digital birth. They tend to be remote and distributed companies who are very used to working with digital tools and who understand the difference between a zoom window and a browser and et cetera. So we've worked a lot of, and especially the last couple of years, a lot of tech companies have been our customers. And then also other, I guess industries as you know, that lend themselves to remote work. So healthcare also lends itself really well to remote distributed work insurance, banking, these sorts of industries which have higher proportion remote and distributed teams. They tend to be the types of customers that we're working with now versus the in-person experiences.
But as you said, I think one of the key goal is obviously building the relationship between the people, between the team and the main difference at least also you just said it as well, but to me as well between an in-person and a and a digital event is in digital, you have to be a little bit more proactive. You need to be proactively building out, seeking out opportunities where you can facilitate some sort of relationship building. Meanwhile obviously on an offline site everything can, well might work a little bit more organic. People can quickly react to situations that you create or facilitate remotely or like on digital it's a little bit more proactive and. And I think that's where gamification comes in very much so. Because if you, if the whole event is set up through a game or a gamified event that actually serves as the fuel for, for proactivity. Right. So tell me a little bit more about the gamification aspect because if the goal is to, of course, building relationships, but also like learning new skills. So develop the teams in a way. I think one of the ways that everyone can say is that, you know, developing. It's education. You need to learn the stuff.
Yes.
And you just pretty much use the platform to teach. But of course it's really hard to tune out from a teaching experience, especially if you are in a remote environment. Right. So I guess that's where the gamification starts. Right. And how do you use gamification here in the remote setup? Tell me a little bit more about that, because that, that is really interesting.
Yeah, absolutely. I think you, you're spot on. You need people to, you need to have some kind of medium through which people are gonna engage with each other. Mm-hmm. and ideally that medium is gonna be fun. So they would like to participate. And we think that ideally as well the learning happens in, in the background. So rather than, you know, in a traditional, as you said, education environment, you might say come along and we are gonna cover the topic of team psychological safety, for example. And someone's got a psychologist who's gonna stand up and they're gonna teach you what is psychological safety and why is it important for teams. And they may be gonna go through a slide presentation and you're gonna sit there and listen. We think more impactful and more fun to actually participate in the experience. Via a game and then use some sort of reflection tool afterwards to think about what just happened. And that can be how you can take away learnings and how you can teach people things. So the gamification, I think, serves primarily to practice team skills, which are sort of skills that you would typically using in the workplace. But while it's not working, not doing a work project together, so you're still practicing, you know, communication, listening skills, leadership in terms of how are we gonna, what's our strategy for this game? How are we gonna approach it as a team? You know, who speaks when, how is our listening skills what resources that we're gonna use to complete this game. So there's a lot of analogous things in a game experience to a workplace. And so you can, you can focus on pick any one of those things or focus on something else like trust in the team and get people to play a game and then get them to reflect. And you can get people to role play different types of roles in a team. For example, if you want someone in your team who is not comfortable you know, typically leading, you might want to use a game to give them an opportunity to be the team leader. Or perhaps they typically in your workplace team, perhaps there's a power structure which would not allow them to typically take the lead because they're positioned in the team, in a game is you can flip that and you can say, This person is the team leader now, and they're for the game and off they go and they get to practice you know, what it's like to lead the team, to instruct, be the dominant communicator whilst doing something fun not just sort of sitting there and actually. You know, have a the game as a medium. Normally in our games, it's they're trying to complete something. So often we have them as set up as competitions as well. We find that to be more engaging. If, you know you're competing against another team, you're more likely to sort of, you know, engage and wanna win. The competitive element really gets people engaged as well. But it is an opportunity to see how people react. In a, what is sort of a microcosm of a work environment. You can also put people with different colleagues who they're not normally working with in a game and see how they work together. So you can look at, obviously, you could compare how different compositions of teams perform on similar types of games, and you might be able to draw some conclusions on perhaps the dynamic in this theme of these personalities coming together and the way in which they work together is better this mix of people. Why is that? Trying to understand why that might be. Do we then want to take those learnings and reconstitute some work teams so that we use more of that team? Or do we wanna say, what was it about that team? That made them perform so well and can we apply some of those same tactics in our regular working teams to improve their performance generally? So I think games are, yeah, are a great way for teams to get together, do something fun, learn something new, practice different skills, all which are essential sort of any workplace wants their staff to have these kind of skills.
I really love this, especially the flipping of the current and existing hierarchal structures into something else in a gaming environment because that's super interesting and well, without giving out any n d a sensitive information about your clients. I really want to know of the main motivation and the goals of how people are signing up for an experience like this. The reason why I'm asking is that I work with a, with a lot of 50 to 100 people startups. And usually before they raise a serious amount of money or hit a certain revenue their whole journey as a company well as a team mainly is like everyone is from everywhere. Everyone is on contract or freelancing legally but they're full-time. They're working together in a common goal, but they're not very aligned sometimes. So I wouldn't call dysfunctional as a team but it certainly needs some realignment. And they are also, by the way, because most of them are are new companies, the teams are new as well. So most of the people are within the company almost not more than a year or two. And there is also high influx. So it's really constantly changing environment within the team, which means that add everything on top of that as a remote environment, by the way. So it's even harder to to, to connect and form bonds. And I would love to know if you ever you had any kind of teams within your clients where the team was either, Dysfunctional at Core and became a little bit more bonding or more closer together after the experience or and this is not a fault of you or the product, but the gaming experience pretty much shined the light on the dysfunctionality of the team and they need to work on solving that after the experience. That's also, I mean, that's also super important, I think. Did you have any kind of experience like.
For sure. I think they're both interesting cases and I think we've actually worked with teams who, who have both of those, both of those sort of examples in different ways. So I think you know, perhaps not highly dysfunctional team. So if you have a really you know, perhaps like one of a better word, like toxic culture or a toxic member in the team or something who is causing a lot of problems, I don't think necessarily that a game providing everyone, putting them, you know, in a game we'll solve that, that requires a particular type of management of those people. But we've certainly had, you know, one of the main reasons why people come to us is because they're worried about engagement and so that is a big problem in teams is that people especially in remote and distributed teams, can become disengaged and if people become disengaged, they often, their productivity goes down, they often end up leaving. And so you have problems with attrition. So that is one of the fundamental issues that, that customers come into us with is trying to improve engagement. And certainly the important thing is, is to create structured regular touchpoints. So it does matter obviously what the experience is but what is really important is making sure that you are doing something regularly with the team. Not just the, you know, having something one off and saying, okay, I've done, that's it. Done. Pick for the next six months or something. You need to have things scheduled for the teams so they can connect on a regular basis. And that's obviously gonna help with their relationship building and their engagement in the company hopefully as well, and in their work teams, it translates across so that they're gonna be more engaged with each other. You're gonna be more likely to reach out to that person when they need support with something. And so that's gonna improve the way in which they work together. So certainly that is one of the big use cases for for Loumee. But equally, your second example I think is interesting as well. And this is something that we're building in with the tools that sit around the games themselves, because that is the insight into people's heads. And that can be, or a team leader, for example, if they want to run a big game with a big group of people and ask them questions about not only the game experience and what they experience within a team, because that can tell you, that in itself can tell you something about the culture or the way in which they're relating to each other. But you can also ask them questions to relate that experience back to the workplace, or then connect something that was going on in the game, just generally to the workplace. And that gives you what we call a temperature check on the people in your teams and could help you identify a problem which then you can address before it becomes, you know, a problem in someone leaving or something worse. So I think of Loumee sometimes as a bit of your preventative health platform for teams as well, that it can help you identify issues before they become real issues and using the tools like the psychological safety tool that we have to sit around the game will give a team leader some really valuable information on what it's anonymous so people feel like they can answer honestly to the questions and then, Where you can provide, or there's two options either we can run that, those sessions or them, or they can choose to run them themselves. And then you get a report which basically tells you, it collates that information and tells you, okay maybe, you know, 5% of the employees don't feel safe to speak up in front of their team and that's, or 50% don't feel safe to speak up in front of their colleagues. And then you've identified a real problem in the culture. So it can be used, I think as a preventative tool, but also as a diagnostic tool as well in both of those cases.
This is great. And you mentioned it before earlier in this conversation that is really challenging to gather people around with so many different culture and I do agree especially, you know, you are from Australia, so you are a little bit more closer to the cultures in Asia as well, but also in Europe and also work with a lot of American clients, I guess. So it's a really huge mix of everything to me, which is amazing because that's what three remote's work is good for. But in terms of culture, especially when you are facilitating any kind of activity between people it's really sensitive, right? So you need to be really aware what each other perceive harmful or not even bad, but like questionable. So how do you tackle that issue? Because this is really hard because if you're doing a, a gamification event for, I don't know, Central European remote companies who mainly have their teams scattered across Europe. I mean they all have the same jokes, even though they are not the same country, but we kind of like, you know, understand each other anyway. But if you someone from Asia or from the US or from Africa or Australia. That's everything gets super changed. And this can present some really challenging scenarios, I think. So how do you tackle that? What kind of games you can play that everyone can play, for example, that's like a main question here.
Yeah. So I think my point about problem solving games is they, they do tend to be more inclusive, obviously. So taking, for example, if you're taking word problems, number problems, like visual problems and things, it's more agnostic. And compared to taking something that's very culturally specific, so like doing quiz Australian films released in the 1990s. I mean that's not gonna stimulate a very good conversation between most people.
I have no idea. The only thing I know is Mad Max. So you got me there.
I mean, I couldn't even do a good job discussing Australian film from the 1990s, but it's you need to think. The types of questions that you're asking people and things like cultural sensitivity about sharing of information. So there's a few things to think about. The culture is one thing. Obviously if people are working already in cross-cultural teams, they will have already experienced some of these differences in the way in which people communicate and their, you know, the way in which they share information, feel comfortable speaking up or not. And so you can see those same sorts of going on inside inside a game environment as well. But yeah the way in which you sort of make people feel safe, I think is important to make them feel comfortable. The types of questions you include in the games, the extent to which, you know, people want to wanna share private information might be vastly different from culture to culture. Even simple things like, I've noticed that some cultures they don't like to turn their cameras on. Which can make, you know, virtual experiences if you are facilitating difficult, but perhaps they won't turn their cameras on if it's an external person facilitating the experience. But perhaps if they have their own account and they have someone in the team that they trust facilitating, they will have their cameras on. And they will be happy to share different types of information. So you can, that could be a difference. Who leading the event, is it internal or external? Also the yeah, there's a few things. Language is another thing to think about when you're working with cross-cultural teams. So you, most businesses, I mean, we work in English, and work with most businesses that we're working with English language. But obviously we can have differences in English language competency amongst the group. And so you then need to think about what sort of, you know, challenges or questions or whatever it is that is involved in that game, you're gonna ask of people because you want to make sure that people are not excluded based on their language skills. Skills of language, for example. So it might be more, you might be better off in that case using a game which has more numbers in it just as a simple example for a team, if you know that that's potentially an issue. So yeah, there's a lot of different things I think to consider around with cross cultural teams, but it's definitely can be more challenging, can also be really interesting to see. And you can use obviously that experience and to reflect on the different ways in which different cultures do choose to communicate and what they feel comfortable with and what they don't feel comfortable with. And ideally that is something that afterwards you then take away with you and your team. And so you know that this person is, you know, From the US So they're more open in their communication style. You know, versus someone perhaps in, you know, central Eastern Europe or something have, they do have a different way in which they want to communicate. And so you will learn something through that experience where, you know, afterwards, okay, I'm gonna take my approach to pinging them on Slack differently. The way in which I'm phrasing this question, or the way in which I, I'm gonna choose to interact with them changes based on what I learned during that experience.
Sure. Sure. I have only one question about because I cannot skip this story about that Australia and it's really rare to talk with with Australia's about remote work. So I do want to understand maybe you have some better insights than I have on how Australia treats remote work now, or flexible workplaces. So again, I think we mentioned that, that the covid situation was really harsh on the country, so everyone was super locked down. Meaning that most companies, I guess kinda like forced to work remotely, but now everything is open, so that's cool. But still do they go back revert back to the office or they kinda like learn that it has their great potentials and opportunities, so they don't want to participating in the back to the office movement or something. So what's the scene there?
Yeah. I think so my experience ha having lived, cuz I was actually living in Sweden during the pandemic mm-hmm. So I was watching the situation in Australia from Sweden and I actually, we did work with a lot of Australian companies and I spoke to a lot of people in Australia whilst I was living in Sweden and thought it was interesting to compare. There was such vastly different approaches. If I'm gonna generalize, I would say that Australia has gone back a bit more to how it was before than what I've seen in Europe and in the US And I think that's for a couple of reasons. I think if you look at Australia geographically we have large populations very concentrated in big cities. Mm-hmm like Sydney and Melbourne on the East. And so they're like, a lot of people are living in those cities and had built maybe their lives around a central workplace. And then we have also, A lot of companies, I'm in Western Australia at the moment, which are heavy in the resources sector. So a lot of big mining companies, energy companies, and obviously a large portion of their workforce cannot work remotely. And so they have some office staff who who can and do, but they tend to also be, I would say that industry it's less, it's changing, but it's less conducive to flexible work arrangements than other industries. Like of course, as I mentioned, tech and which is understandable. I think there's a, yeah. And another thing I should mention, and which is, is embarrassing for me as an Australia now trying to build a tech company, is how bad the internet is. Honestly. It's a, the real problem. I'm surprised I'm getting a clear connection to you right now because it's a real problem. It's a surprising, I know, but it's a real problem for people who are not living in the central part of the city to get a strong internet connection that enables a smooth remote work. So I've definitely been on plenty of calls with Australians where it's been like, oh, oh, oh, oh, sorry, I'm dropping out. You're breaking up. And that's because we have terrible broadband network. So that's a small aside really I think it's driven culturally and by the industries. It is changing and I think it's a change and also I think the younger, you know, workforces probably who you're working with, maybe more like startups, they're much more likely to be happy with flexible work arrangements, whereas, you know other people who've maybe been bit set in their ways and like going to an office and that's how they think work should be. They want that separation of, of home life and work life. They prefer to still be in the office. And so then a lot of companies are grappling with hybrid work arrangement. And so I think hybrid is really common working out, you know, they have to have both, they have every meeting has to be in person plus a digital option as well. So I think it's all still ongoing, but I would say less remote and distributed work in Australia than I've seen in Europe even after the pandemic.
Cool. Thank you for sharing this. Maybe the audience doesn't know this, but we are recording this episode on the, well now it's kind of like the end of January, but still early in the year. And I asked this question during all January episodes that we record that because it's the start of the year, so how do you see the future for this year and the next maybe I know it's really hard to look into the crystal ball and come up with any, any kind of sane recommendation for a short period of time, for like one or two or three or six months. But maybe even beyond that, that will be easier. But how do you see the future of work? How do you see personally for business of Loumee, and for yourself?
Yeah, it's a big question. I'm positive. I'm actually probably more positive I think, than a lot of people I speak to. I definitely have quite a positive person about the outlook for this year. I think you know, there's been a lot of boom and gloom around you know, recession and there's been layoffs and whatnot. Mm-hmm. but I, I actually don't think it's gonna be as bad as, as if you believe what the media says. I think there's some really positive trends of things, some really interesting things in artificial intelligence at the moment coming out. And yeah, I think technology is gonna. As it always does come through and save the day, there's gonna be more innovation new ways. I think I'm really excited about the way new ways of working from a personal perspective. I've always wanted to work more flexibly and I wasn't able to really do so until I had my own business. And I think there is a real push from people to have more flexible work arrangements and to have their own personal wellbeing more looked after by their employer. And so I think that it is going to be more listened to despite the example of, I guess, an Elon Musk and a Twitter. I do think that. That I don't think that model is necessarily going to apply of, you know, I obviously, people need to, people need to work and they need to be excited about the mission and I don't shy away from hard work myself, and I expect also my team to work hard, but I also think it's really important you only live once, that you have a good balance in life and that you have a personal life. And that is also very important and that, that is protected and valued. And from my side I've just had my first. Child over six months old.
Congratulations.
Becoming, thank you, . That's it really brings that to the front of mind, the importance of family and that time spent that for me is really valuable. And I think the pandemic, actually, that was one of the biggest positive that came out of the pandemic is a lot of people realized that things can all of a sudden go wrong. And things can be taken away from you that you took for granted. And so you shouldn't take things for granted and you should make the most of what you have when you have it, and you should should try and strive to improve your own wellbeing, those around you as well. And so I'm hoping that that's a more positive sort of outlook if others are also thinking that way, that with a combination. You know, willpower amongst it comes down to leaders as well. Cause I really think that it comes from organizations. It comes from the decision maker. The top need to be, need to set the agenda and they need to say that this is something that we value. Of course we value making money, but we also value the people inside the company. And we wanna make sure that they're happy and they're supported and they're doing their best work. They're getting meaning from their work. But they're also living a good life, whatever that means to them. And yeah, so generally positive on the outlook, lots of innovation coming which I think will continue to see us grow a little bit more than what perhaps people think in terms of general economic outlook. And then hoping that we will continue to see flexible work and valuing people as key parts of the future of work and of life.
Music to my ears. Thank you very much. I love when people are super optimistic when, when things are Kinda like looking a little bit worse than usual. And I share much of your optimism here as well. So thanks for sharing. Cool. Thanks for coming, where can people find you and where can people find you Loumee?
So the best place to connect with me is on LinkedIn, so Dan Paech my surname is spelled p a e c h, so it's a unusual surname, so I'm not too difficult to find on LinkedIn and Loumee also, you can follow us on LinkedIn. Also our website, www.loumee.co, is a great place to go if you wanna read a little bit more about what we're doing yeah.
Cool. Thank you again. I loved this conversation. I think we learned a lot about how to facilitate gamified events and how to develop skills for teams, especially if they are scattered across the globe. And I wish you the very best for this year and again, appreciate for coming here.
Thanks, Peter. You too. We sure the best and have a great rest of the Monday.
