When I sat down on the train tp read Leadership in a Distributed World - Lessons from Online Gaming, a paper from IBM Global Business Services, I thought I knew right up front what the conclusion would be. After all, the paper starts by making the point that, "as technological innovation enables companies to disaggregate and send increasing amounts of work to employees and external partners around the world ... corporate leaders must both co-ordinate and motivate individuals who are separated by time zones and cultures," which, in the view of the authors, is not so different from the skills needed to do well in playing massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs): "We believe that online gaming provides a window into the future of organisations and the leadership capabilities necessary to guide enterprises to success."

I was already preparing my arguments for and against corporations constructing their own MMORPGs to train the next generation leaders. No more outward bound activities in the wilderness, no more constructing of Lego towers. Future leaders will stay at home to enter IBM's virtual leadership world from their PCs, constructing new empires for Big Blue and putting rivals such as Microsoft and Google in their place once and for all. They will then be perfectly prepared to run the accounting department in some regional office.

Now, although the report claims that "many of the qualities of online game environments facilitate leadership and speed up the process of developing leaders," and 49% of respondents to their survey claimed that "game-playing has improved their real-world leadership capabilities," the authors were not recommending the use of MMORPGs to develop leaders at all. Just as well, because only 39% (or as the report phrases it "more than one third" - that trick always amuses me) believed that "MMORPG leadership approaches can be used to improve leadership effectiveness within the enterprise." More cynically, one commented that "games are played just for fun and that the risks taken have no consequences". Another commented that "in games, leadership is all about empowerment and risk-taking. Although we'd like to think that parallels business, I don't think it does at normal management levels." And to top that, "In general, corporate culture drives true leaders away. You see, corporations don't want leaders, they want followers."

The upshot? MMORPGs really will help you develop your leadership skills. Just don't expect to use those skills in corporations. Why not start your own instead?

So where does the report lead if it doesn't advocate corporations using MMORPGs to develop leadership? This is what really surprised me. It recommends enterprises using a whole raft of contemporary communication tools, many of which are apparently found in MMPORGs (I confess I am not a player), to help managers lead virtual teams successfully. These tools will be familiar to us all: instant messaging, VOIP, blogs, wikis, collaborative spaces, online spaces, live online events, personal employee spaces, expertise locators, tagging. Second Life does get a small mention, but blink and you'd miss it. Now, I'd endorse all these recommendations. I'm just not completely sure how we got there from an analysis of online games.