Play with a Purpose
Play with a Purpose
Play with a Purpose
By Keith Burnett and Zak Moore
May 24, 2022
Summary
Extensive research with teams in settings as diverse as classic offices and steel mills revealed a series of running themes; the support available for ideas to emerge and coalesce, the style of leadership enabling that process and, funnily enough, playfulness.
To take a hypothetical case, a team which scored high on Playfulness but rock bottom on Idea Time and Idea Support could well be frittering much of its time at the office ping-pong table and very rarely producing anything of real value.
Good ideas are often lurking just below the surface, and 'idea liberation' can be promoted quickly through a combination of freedom, risk-talking and playfulness itself.
We know of several techniques to promote that, one of the most well-received being - wait for it - a card deck! As devoted music fans we've always been drawn to Brian Eno's 'Oblique Strategies' method - if it's good enough to unblock creativity for David Bowie why shouldn't we play too? It works remarkably for teams trying to innovate in bureaucratic or highly formal organisational cultures, where the random element of the deck cuts-through staid group-think, as well as generating a little laughter along the way.
All Time is Relative - Lunchtime, Doubly So. Idea Time is an important dimension in Ekvall's concept, and therefore in ours too.
Idea Support is a term which we have found has to be used with some care; if it looks like there isn't enough, it can seem a criticism of the team manager.
In a workplace culture which views fresh ideas with a scepticism bordering upon phobic, laughter is not just desirable -it's essential.
Reference
Burnett, K., & Moore, Z. (2022, May 24). Play with a purpose. Retrieved June 10, 2022, from https://ludogogy.co.uk/play-with-a-purpose/