You need to become more productively playful!
Do you consider your organisation to be productively playful? If not, should you? There’s been an awful lot of hype around the layout of the contemporary office – hammocks, foosball tables, etc., but what seems to have been less well publicised is the use of Play in the workplace.
I recently read an article by the renowned Boston Research Group, entitled ‘The Playful Corporation’. It highlighted something we have direct experience of with our colleagues from Mindplay (https://www.mindplayimagination.com). By our own admission, we are a team of ‘very experienced’ managers from differing backgrounds and we were struggling with a particular business challenge. Enter Mindplay. They gathered us in a room and proceeded to immerse us in a ‘game’, using some amazing imagery. I’m sure I wasn’t alone in thinking ‘this won’t help us fix our issue.’
To my surprise, coming out from this session we had a much clearer idea of a solution and a new found appreciation of the impact Play had on freeing our creativity.
In today’s environment, it is critical that organisations harness improvisation, imagination, and inspiration. These are all encouraged with the structured use of Play. In the article, there are some great examples of how Play helped the likes of Google and Play-Doh create new ideas.
It also explains how Play helps with the 3 key areas – improvisation, imagination, and inspiration.
You can read the article by following this link: https://www.bcg.com/publications/2018/playful-corporation.aspx