Why Play Works.: Recent Episodes
Lucy Taylor and Tzuki Stewart
Do you have a niggling feeling, a secret hope, that work could be more joyful, more fun and (maybe) a little bit wilder? Do you sense deep down that doing great work doesn't need to be a slog?
In Why Play Works, Lucy Taylor and Tzuki Stewart hear the stories of people who are radically reshaping the idea of work as play - from play practitioners to academics to organisations who take play seriously.
How can working on serious problems be fun and delightful? Is play the opposite of work, or is it actually how we unlock success? How can reconnecting to our playfulness create more fulfilling and enlivening experiences of work?
We investigate how we can harness the power of play to boost resilience, improve well-being and foster collaboration, connection and creativity in the way we work.
How do you use playfulness and LEGO® to make an impact on something as serious as climate change?
Lucy Hawthorne is the founder of Climate Play. She is a facilitator, LEGO® Serious Play® practitioner and campaigner at heart. She was an environmental campaigner and a social issues campaigner for about 15 years, helping ban fracking in the UK before starting Climate Play.
Despite this success she was able to reflect that ultimately they weren't deeply changing people's minds and hearts on the issues.
Through Climate Play they create conversations, events and actions that people actually want to be involved in rather than only feeling like they should.
Things to consider
- Play isn’t being super extroverted - it’s having a sense of humour.
- Playfulness and perfectionism are complete opposites.
- “Outcomes are not meant to be playful, but our process is.” - Yana Buhrer Tavanier
- Make play accessible
- Practicing playfulness is an ongoing journey
- The need to be light footed, create space for experimentation, and try different ways of doing things
- Playfulness is about giving people choice and agency
Links
- Lucy Hawthorne LinkedIn
- Climate Play
- Yana Buhrer Tavanier - How to recover from activism burnout
- Carol Dweck - Growth Mindset
- Catherine Wilkes’ Shoopery
Have you ever entered a meeting and instantly been set up to fail? Do organizations really want to change or just be seen to change?
Consultants also get stuck in this game where they want to bring in more play and creativity and the organization thinks they should change but won’t.
This is a challenge that Steve has encountered many times and has to overcome “vanilla compromises” that leads to no change.
He does this through compassion and care, improvisation and subtle tactics like changing the space used.
Steve is an artist, writer, and speaker interested in creativity and the human condition. He's spoken around the world on the subject of creativity and culture and worked with over 80 organizations in many sectors to help free them from ever tightening loops of common sense.
He holds an MSC with distinction in organization's culture and change, and has held roles of visiting faculty on a number of MSC programs at Ashridge Business School, the Meno Institute, and Ruffy Park as an artist. He sold his work across seven continents, exhibited alongside the lights of Pablo Picasso and David Trigg, and has held a number of successful solo exhibitions in Central London, Hampshire.
Things to consider
- What is the difference between work and life?
- How do we get paid more for the things that feel like play?
- Can compromise lead to something that makes no difference
- Nietzche sums it up for Steve, “learning to see the world as strange makes us un home in the everyday and thereby restores it as a potential place of wonder.”
- Learn to see the world as strange.
- Ask curious questions.
Links
- Escape from Freedom, Erich Fromm
- Barry Mason, Safe Uncertainty
- Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice, Shunryu Suzuki
- The (Not A) Lost Cat Project
- Sound of Silence Podcast
- Arny Mendell
- Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace, Gordon MacKenzie
- Can Scorpions Smoke
What is the point of play? Is it just acting like a child at work?
Nicole has grown children's brands, Ella's Kitchen and worked at informal creative agencies, and also in corporate environments.
She has identified over the course of her career 10 key qualities that make up a child's lens on business framework that Nicole shares in detail in this episode.
Nicole believes the whole point of play is to have no point. It is not frivolous. It is a vehicle for connection that can have important benefits for employers including staff retention through greater relationships, willingness to collaborate, general wellbeing and happiness and ultimately better results flow from it.
“Play is like magic tea!” Nicole extols.
But it is NOT just having playful games to be done between the doldrums of work. In this episode explore the definition of play and its deeper meaning beyond just fun in the workplace and the results it will bring.
Discussion highlights:
- The role of play in creating connections and fostering better communication
- The benefits of incorporating playfulness in both personal and professional settings
- Overcoming barriers to play in corporate environment
- Applying a child's lens to business brings qualities such as confidence, creativity, resilience, and collaboration.
Key things to consider
- Creating a culture that encourages creativity and innovation can have a transformative effect on an organization.
- Playfulness has to be embedded in the culture. It should be integrated into the culture of an organization rather than treated as a separate activity.
- Having playful areas at work to use between work is not being playful at work
- To be playful at work and access your playful side, look through the eyes of a child
- A positive and inclusive organizational culture should encourage creativity, innovation, and collaboration
- A supportive culture can significantly impact employee engagement, productivity, and overall company success
Ace thinks play is wonderful. He sees it as explorative and unstructured, where we scan the world in which we exist and see all of the opportunities to push, prod, dig and learn.
Scott thinks play is annoying and that playfulness is where it’s at.
Despite disagreeing on these fundamentals Scott and Ace work together at Envoy providing executive guidance; supporting partnership negotiations; facilitating leadership retreats; guiding strategic planning; and mediating conflict.
They teach these disciplines through talks, workshops, and executive programs.
In this episode, we delve into the power of building momentum and playfulness (or play) in the way we work work. Our guests share experiences and thoughts on how intentional and regular doses of play and laughter can transform our approach to challenges and create a positive environment where different kinds of conversations can emerge.
Their work involves building partnerships and exploring the intersection of technology, behavioral economics, and psychology. While Scott and Ace are experts in handling tough conversations they bring a lightness and playfulness to the way they do it - they take the work seriously but not themselves.
Discussion Highlights:
- When a stickman starts doing the YMCA dance during a serious tech demonstration, highlighting the inherent joy of playfulness.
- The impact of intentional play in loosening people up and facilitating discussions about opportunities, risks, and privacy in partnership contexts.
- The importance of consistently nurturing playfulness rather than resorting to it as a last-ditch effort.
- The value of momentum and creating space for play in our lives, allowing us to tap into it when needed most.
- How play and playfulness can be a great way to shift energy
Things to consider
- Is being skeptical about play at work just being a curmudgeonly bastard?
- Where do you find flow most often?
- When you are using your energy to deal with serious issues you don’t have the energy to take yourself seriously.
- Building momentum and intentionally incorporating playfulness into our lives creates a reservoir of joy and resilience that we can tap into when facing challenges.
- Play is not a desperate last resort; it's a powerful tool that should be nurtured regularly to enhance creativity, problem-solving, and overall well-being
Links
- Envoy
- Scott Wayne LinkedIn
- Ace Callwood LinkedIn
- Envoy Recorded Radio
Get in touch!
Make Work Play
Playfilled
Start a conversation with, “do you think a hotdog is a sandwich?” and see the playful reaction.
Catherine Price is an advocate of bringing people together in a playful manner whether it’s a conversation with a stranger, a dinner party, at work or even Zoom.
Catherine helps people scroll less, live more, and have fun.
She is a science journalist, speaker, teacher, consultant, and the author of several.
Catherine is also the founder of ScreenLifeBalance.com, a resource hub dedicated to helping people create more intentional relationships with technology and reconnect with what really matters to them in life.
Things to consider
- Create deeper and engaging conversations with people by asking more interesting openers
- Bantering with people is a form of play
- There's often an assumption that only certain activities qualify as play.
- Play and fun aren’t an activity they are an attitude or a feeling
- Fun and playfulness actually bring us closer together as human beings.
- If you do have to use willpower to keep doing some activity that's being marketed to you as play, then it's not play anymore.
- Fun is any moment when three states coincide; playfulness, and connection and flow. This can definitely happen at work. Even on Zoom!
- Rules and structure can give people permission to be playful in an unexpected context.
Links
- Catherine Price Website
- The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker
- The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again, by Catherine Price
- How to Break Up With Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life, by Catherine Price
- Vitamania: How Vitamins Revolutionized the Way We Think About Food, by Catherine Price
Get in touch!
Make Work Play
Playfilled
Play, creativity and imagination can enable people to look at things differently,
to extend their own potential. But formal education suppresses our natural instinct to play and as adults makes us think it’s wrong to play. Alison James is on a mission to reclaim the word play.
Alison has written about her commitment to teaching and learning creatively in many publications, from early work on autobiography and personal development planning in the creative arts, to her present day interests in creativity, imagination and play in higher education pedagogy.
She co-authored Engaging imagination: helping students become creative and reflective thinkers with Professor Stephen Brookfield (2014) and more about Alison and her work can be found at Engaging Imagination. Alison was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2014.
At heart she is an educator and facilitator who unlocks conversations, ideas, capabilities in people, including herself, on how play, creativity and imagination can enable people to look at things differently.
She left full-time work at the university so that she could concentrate on a three year research study, funded by the Imagination Lab Foundation. While people think she retired, she prefers to call it free-range play.
Things to consider
- What age do we move on from play and creativity - 16? 18? 23?
- Through play, how we can rediscover the things that we love, that bring us joy and spark our curiosity.
- The internal and external constraints from society to education to academia that stop us thinking about why we do things the way we do them? And stop us doing them differently.
- Play should simply enable you and others to do your jobs.
- Organizations such as Formula 1 and Red Cross use LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®
- A shift in the zeitgeist towards play.
Links
- The Power of Play in Higher Education: Creativity in Tertiary Learning (2019), Chrissi Nerantzi , et al.
- The Playful University Platform
- Brian Sutton-Smith
- Engaging Imagination: Helping Students Become Creative and Reflective Thinkers, by Alison Smith and Stephen Brookfield
- The Value of Play in HE
Get in touch!
Make Work Play
Playfilled
Gary Ware needs curiosity, exploration and imagination in his life. How can we bring these qualities into our day to day life?
Gary grew up as the class clown and got into a lot of mischief. As he got older and became an adult he suppressed his playful side. His goals became the standard that society set; go to university and get a good job. But he felt unfulfilled.
He unintentionally rediscovered his playful side from an improv class where he played silly games to be a better storyteller.
Through co-running his own digital marketing agency he involved play in everything. Until he was sidelined by his business partner who didn’t buy into this methodology.
From this setback he started on the path of facilitation and bringing playful methods to others. He is now a Strategic Play Consultant and created his company, Breakthrough Play.
Things to consider
- The overarching meaning of play is to do something for the sake of it - we’re wired for play
- Adults think play is something is frivolous or what kids do and feel guilty for feeling playful
- Don’t judge yourself when indulging in play
- How to sell play to corporate clients by not telling them about play
- Rebel against the status quo - play is the answer, not more hard work
Links
- Gary Ware, LinkedIn
- Breakthrough Play
- Dr Stewart Brown, Play
- Gary Ware, Playful Rebellion: Maximize Workplace Success Through The Power of Play
Get in touch!
Make Work Play
Playfilled
Colonel Jason “TOGA” Trew is on a mission to help airmen reintegrate intuition, creativity, storytelling, and play into strategic thinking. A Colonel in the US, Airforce, he began his career as a fighter pilot in the where he picked up the nickname ‘TOGA’. He flew in both operational and training squadrons before falling in love with teaching and transitioning to academics.
He is Commandant and Dean of the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, a Lego Serious Play Facilitator and an Iron Man Triathalon Coach.
In this episode, we explore the role between play and power, how even being in the military work can be a case of enlightened muddling through and how the best use of play can often be where it doesn’t feel quite right.
Things to consider
- Where does that childlike creativity go missing and when?
- Play as a tool to help solve military conflict
- When is it the right and wrong time to use play?
- Can we just assume that play works?
- How Design Thinking and Playfulness connect
- Strategies for the real world
Links
- Connect with Jason on LinkedIn
- Primal Connect
- Play
- The Icarus Solution
- Article, Playful Splinters
- Do You Show up at Work as Your Full Freaky Self?
- Designfulness (Part I): What if Design Thinking isn’t ultimately about Designing?
- Playing with Splinters, or Three Thoughts on Play that are Driving Me Mad2021 SA Innovation Summit - Rescuing Icarus
- Review of The Infinite Game
- Extended Mind
- Group Genius
Get in touch!
Make Work Play
Playfilled
Play is the key to collaboration and co-operation. Work and play are intrinsically interlinked, and without play, people are unable to make connections that drive people forward. This is how innovator and trainer Tim Widdowson approaches play at work. Tim is a partner and facilitator at the Culture Experiment and the So Team. He's also a guest lecturer on design thinking, innovation and collaboration at Oxford University's Said Business School. As a behaviour change specialist, keynote speaker and trainer, Tim's core focus is on developing and exploring the creative behaviours needed for cultures and businesses to flourish. Things to considerPlay brings out childlike qualities, but doesn’t have to mean we’re childish. Play offers a disruption to the status quo. We need to make play more systemic in our culture, rather than bringing it out at certain moments. We can all build in micro-interventions. Play can be a vehicle to build bridges and show parts of ourselves we otherwise might not.
Linkshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-widdowson-40815210/ (Connect with Tim on LinkedIn) https://www.notion.so/Adding-play-to-your-DNA-33241a19717343bd94cc4574fd879d3f (The Culture Experiment) https://playfilled.com/ (Playfilled) https://www.makeworkplay.co.uk/ (Make Work Play) https://www.goodpeoplecoolthings.com (Good People, Cool Things)
There are alternatives to PowerPoint, and to playing Devil’s Advocate. Filling a space with foosball tables ad slides doesn’t inherently make a space “playful”. Joining Lucy to discuss how play forms the basis for so much of their creativity, are Brendan Boyle and Michelle Lee-Schmidt from global design form Ideo. Brendan is the founder of the Ideo Play Lab, adjunct professor at Stanford, board member of the National Institute of Play and an award-winning author of the Klutz Book of Inventions. Michelle is Managing Director of Ideo's Play Lab, where she leads an integrated research design and development team, bringing engaging, interactive, and playful experiences to market. Things to considerWhat some think of as flow or engagement is, in fact, play. Play can be a superpower that helps us take on the world. We don’t need to seek permission to play as much as we assume we might. There are other roles we can play in meetings, aside from Devil’s Advocate.
Linkshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/michellesklee/ (Connect with Michelle on LinkedIn) https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanboyle-innovatebyplay/ (Connect with Brendan on LinkedIn) https://www.ideo.com/location/play-lab (Visit Ideo’s Play Lab) https://www.makeworkplay.co.uk/ (Make Work Play) https://playfilled.com/ (Playfilled)
Many people feel they work better under pressure, but if you need to think creatively, a relaxed environment will work far better. That’s how Dr Heidi Edmundson approaches play, and importantly makes the distinction that although play can be childlike, it’s not childish. Things to considerWe need connection as human beings, and it can sometimes be achieved by something as simple as briefly removing a mask. By following a step-by-step process of curiosity, Heidi became more able to trust herself. Trust can help overcome skepticism. The outcomes of play are not always directly quantifiable, but no less valuable.
Linkshttps://www.notion.so/Serious-work-calls-for-serious-play-3bdc994f8b414f509b9566008bd3058d (As we recover from the pandemic let’s not forget to encourage staff to take a break) – a BMJ opinion piece by Heidi https://playfilled.com/ (Playfilled) https://www.makeworkplay.co.uk/ (Make Work Play)
Tommy Crawford and Brian Fitzgerald of Dancing Fox work with individuals and organisations tackling problems as diverse and weighty as climate change and childhood cancer. But the often isolating nature of the work makes play all the more vital. Tommy is a published poet, shamanic storyteller, and a fountain of wild ideas. Brian spent 35 years at Greenpeace, and wrote the children's book, The Moon Candy Rebellion. Things to considerHow can we find our way back to our childhoods, and hold hands with our childhood selves? Play can be an antidote to burnout, and a route to healing. An invitation can be more powerful than persuasion and coercion. Work with more children and animals!
Linkshttps://www.dancing-fox.com/ (Dancing Fox) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Johnstone (Keith Johnstone) https://uk.bookshop.org/books/not-knowing-the-art-of-turning-uncertainty-into-opportunity/9781910649664 (Not Knowing: The Art of Turning Uncertainty into Opportunity), by Steven D'Souza and Diana Renner https://www.makeworkplay.co.uk/ (Make Work Play) https://playfilled.com/ (Playfilled)
Our sense of culture and identity impacts how we approach and conceptualise play. Many of the black women Stacey-Ann Morris has worked with have felt a pressure to fulfil the role of the “strong black woman”. Stacey-Ann is a learning experience designer, facilitator, and educator who creates playful, inclusive, and meaningful connections related to personal and career development in work, school and community settings. She's a graduate of Harvard university, a Lego Serious Play facilitator and has designed curriculums programs and workshops at several universities and colleges. Things to considerPlay is an act of freedom, and a way to re-integrate our inner child. Play is a a form of resistance, and a birthright. As play facilitators, we need to be mindful of people’s history with the idea of play.
Linkshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/staceyannmorris/ (Connect with Stacey-Ann on LinkedIn) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Serious_Play (Lego Serious Play) https://www.blackottawaconnect.ca/buildoutloud (Build Out Load) https://playfilled.com/ (Playfilled) https://www.makeworkplay.co.uk/ (Make Work Play)
Play is a powerful connector, transcending boundaries of culture and background. That’s the philosophy that https://www.linkedin.com/in/kay-scorah-0370984/ (Kay Scorah) brings to her play practise. Kay is a facilitator, coach, comedian, dancer, writer, and general polymath. Kay started work as a research biophysicist, before moving into market research and subsequently into advertising. She now runs https://www.havemorefun.org/ (HaveMoreFunlimited), working with individuals and groups to improve verbal and non-verbal communication. Things to considerSet micro-challenges throughout your day, to inject a bit more play. If “play” feels to unstructured or lacking parameters, you can approach it as an experiment. The separation of work and play begins at school and permeates our society. How can we, as leaders, share our vulnerability and allow others to do the same? Allow yourself to be distracted.
Linkshttps://www.havemorefun.org/ (HaveMoreFunlimited) https://www.havemorefun.org/turning-the-tables-conference (Turning the Tables conference) https://www.makeworkplay.co.uk/ (Make Work Play) https://playfilled.com/ (Playfilled)
Play is a form of exploration, and it begins with the environment we have at our fingertips. This is https://www.linkedin.com/in/lee-kim-bb527514/ (Lee Kim)’s approach to play, and it permeates the work she does in what we might consider one of the most serious of environments. Lee is a design strategist and community builder, based in New York She studied mechanical engineering and fashion design. She serves as Global Congress Lead at Pfizer and is the founder of a social impact nonprofit called Design Dream Lab. Things to considerYou can signal to people to find out who’s up for playing. It can be uncomfortable to begin with, but that’s how we find playmates. It’s possible to make joy a core value of your organisation, even at a large scale. Things are more memorable when we play with them, physically. The things we make embed themselves in our memory. We’re built for togetherness.
Linkshttps://www.designdreamlab.org/ (Design Dream Lab) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0Xu25ZmFg8 (How Wearing Silly Hats Helped a Mom Find Joy) – the New Yorker documentary https://www.makeworkplay.co.uk/ (Make Work Play) https://playfilled.com/ (Playfilled)
Improv is a social technology for approaching uncertainty and complexity. That’s the philosophy https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-poynton-169402/ (Robert Poynton) brings to his playful practice. Rob is the author of two books in the Do series (https://uk.bookshop.org/books/do-improvise-less-push-more-pause-better-results/9781907974014 (Do Improvise) and https://uk.bookshop.org/books/do-pause-you-are-not-a-to-do-list/9781907974632 (Do Pause)), and an Associate Fellow at Oxford University’s Said Business School. He designs and facilitates workshops, retreats, and pauses, and runs online projects that help people learn how to integrate play into their work. Things to considerNo-one has a script – we’re all improvising all the time Play can provide more ease and grace at work There is a difference between play and playfulness Playfulness is a mindset, and we can sometimes forget to apply it We can reframe serious and intimidating things into something more fun and magical
Linkshttps://uk.bookshop.org/books/do-improvise-less-push-more-pause-better-results/9781907974014 (Do Improvise) – Rob’s book on improvisation within work https://uk.bookshop.org/books/do-pause-you-are-not-a-to-do-list/9781907974632 (Do Pause) – Rob’s book on rethinking your todo list https://www.yellowlearning.org/ (Yellow) https://www.theeverydayimproviser.com/ (The Everyday Improviser) https://www.makeworkplay.co.uk/ (Make Work Play) https://playfilled.com/ (Playfilled)
Lucy Taylor from Make Work Play and Tzuki Stewart from Playfilled interview play practitioners, academics, and leaders who are taking play seriously. Why Play Works explores questions such as How can working on serious problems be fun and delightful? Is play the opposite of work, or is it actually how we unlock success? How can reconnecting to our playfulness create more fulfilling and enlivening workspaces?
Each episode serves up playful practices that you can take away and inject into your work.