What would a chief executive do when confronted with boxes of brightly-coloured plastic bricks, clay, markers, paper and Post-Its? How might their team respond to the question: “Want to play?”
It is not a phrase you hear in most boardrooms or workplaces today, but that is changing, as playful learning techniques become an integral part of strategic planning, team building and innovation.
Senior management teams are now to be found huddled over Lego blocks as they develop their five-year strategy, while their teams use card games to conjure up new products and services.
Although I have led, designed and participated in many of these sessions over the last decade, it is only now that businesses are adding these techniques to their strategic toolkit instead of using them as a one-off experience.
RM Block
Why? The game has changed. Human innovation and creativity have been identified as key skills for future business competitiveness as artificial intelligence (AI) tools take on routine tasks and addressing basic knowledge queries. Other essential human skills needed in business today include: critical thinking, emotional intelligence, adaptability, communication, collaboration and a capacity for continuous learning, according to the International Labour Organisation.
Traditional educational systems value technical skills and memorisation instead of teaching innovation and creativity in a systematic way. Those are treated as in-born talents instead of skills that can be taught.
Executives must know the why before they’ll participate. Give them scientific proof about it before asking them to step into a playful experience or fictional role play situation
In the age of AI, we need to completely change the way we work but much of the workforce doesn’t have the skills or the tools they need to think and connect with themselves and with others creatively. It is a bit like playing Xs and Os while your competitors are engaged in chess.
Thankfully, creative thinking skills can be developed through structured, collaborative play. Playful techniques – drawing, building, role play, games and quizzes – are not just fun, they’re also scientifically proven to increase understanding, embed learning longer-term, and accelerate individual and team buy-in for new ideas.
Oft-cited research on play includes Johan Huizinga’s book Homo Ludens (1938) and Stuart Brown’s Play (2009). By definition, play seems purposeless, all-consuming and fun. However, it is anything but trivial: it’s a biological drive as integral to our health as sleep or nutrition. We are designed by nature to flourish through play, says Brown.
Brands looking to compete have embraced the power of play. First mover was the Lego company, which worked with academics to use the bricks for strategy development. This was taken further by management consultants at Executive Discovery, who developed the Lego Serious Play methodology back in 1995.
Senior management teams are now to be found huddled over Lego blocks as they develop their five-year strategy
“If we prepare people to be creative innovators, we can ensure they will have a place in the future, whatever it may hold,” says Duncan Wardle, Disney’s former head of innovation and creativity. He believes so greatly in the power of this approach that he quit his job to develop The Imagination Emporium, an innovation toolkit for business.
How does it work?
We all have the ability to play and be creative but, as adults, we need the right tools and environment to open up that part of our brain. Although companies emphasise productivity and targets, learning and exploration are just as important at work as performing tasks.
From a biological and developmental point of view, play is helpful because it is low-risk accelerated learning. When you play, it’s okay to make mistakes or to fail and try again, as that’s all part of the experience.
Our logical, beta-wave brains do the heavy lifting at work but some of our best ideas come when we’re not in a formal work setting. It’s most likely that your most powerful insights come to you when you’re in the shower, exercising or daydreaming on the commute home, instead of when answering emails or looking at a PowerPoint presentation. That’s because, in those moments, our brains are in alpha and theta state.
Beta waves dominate during waking hours when you are focused, alert and engaged in active thinking, problem-solving or decision-making. Alpha waves are associated with relaxed wakefulness and focus, while theta waves are linked to deep relaxation, creativity, and memory processing.
So, if we’re having fun while doing something, we learn better and use more of the right side of the brain, which makes us more creative and open to new ideas. That’s one reason why playful learning is so effective in ensuring long-term behavioural change.
Playfulness and humour also bring us closer to one another. Fun at work enhances employees’ creative thinking and builds trust between them, their managers and colleagues, according to a recent study published in Heliyon, a research journal for physical, applied, life, social and medical sciences. The study was entitled Having Fun! The Role of Workplace Fun in Enhancing Employees’ Creative Behaviours in Chinese Work Settings.
Skills can be more easily gained in a playful learning setting instead of a high-pressure work environment, as we relax more and can be more attuned and empathetic towards our playmates and clients.
If the research is to be believed, we need to take off our business straitjackets, roll up our sleeves and start playing. So what’s holding us back?
In the workplace, three things hinder creativity: lack of time, fear of looking stupid, and thinking you’re not creative. The pace of work – relentless deadlines, shifting targets and rapid technological changes – leaves little time for creative thinking or team-building. But when companies stagnate, they die, as witnessed by Kodak, Blockbuster, Nokia and Blackberry.
Facilitators trained in these techniques aim to design sessions that involve gentle play so it doesn’t feel threatening, says Alison Grieve, a leadership and team coach and the co-author of Leading Edge: Strategies for Developing & Sustaining High-Performing Teams.
“We make people feel really safe, but it’s done with a lightness so there’s no fear. By connecting the mind and the body, we’re able to articulate difficult things and to make connections and gain insights that people didn’t realise were there. It’s a fun way to explore, but it’s a really serious process,” says Grieve.
If we prepare people to be creative innovators, we can ensure they will have a place in the future, whatever it may hold
Kathleen Warner Yeates, an actress and director who has been using playful learning with corporate clients for two decades, says: “Executives must know the why before they’ll participate. Give them scientific proof about it before asking them to step into a playful experience or fictional role play situation. If done right, there will be spontaneous collaboration, enhanced listening and communication skills and safe practice in making mistakes.”
Prof Alex Moseley, known as Dr Play to friends and colleagues, has been studying structured playful learning experiences at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK. His book Playful Learning, written with Nicola Whitton, examines the impact of playful workshops, events, spaces, tools and technologies.
The highest impact experiences share a few essential characteristics. “They promote openness towards people, approach and strategy; agency, as participants need to grant permission to play and come up with ideas themselves; trust, so you can’t play if everyone doesn’t agree to participate and play by the rules; inclusiveness, as everyone is involved; and, of course, it has to be fun,” says Moseley.
Margaret E Ward is chief executive of Clear Eye, a leadership consultancy; margaret@cleareye.ie
