Influential players got game

Is Australian work culture finally ready to adopt play as a key tool for improving business outcomes?

If what happened at the recent Australian version of the big American tech and culture conference SXSW (South by South West) is any indication, the answer could be yes.

Going further south

For the uninitiated, Sydney hosted the first SXSW outside of the US last month. Described as one of the most influential gatherings for creatives and innovators in the US, SXSW is known as a place for artists and new technologies to get their big break.

It was the launch pad for the White Stripes and Twitter, for example.

SXSW Sydney featured talks from top futurists, startup founders, researchers and creatives, including Nicole Kidman, creator of Netflix’s Black Mirror Charlie Brooker, and futurist Amy Webb.

Joy and power of play

Having been an advocate of play for serious outcomes since 2007, I was excited that the power of play was featured in the SXSW Sydney lineup in the form of a panel, entitled the Joy and Power of Play, of which I was a part.

The panel was moderated by A Current Affair host Allison Langdon and featured Ryan ‘Brickman’ McNaught, the only LEGO professional in the Southern Hemisphere and perhaps best known as the judge on Nine’s LEGO Masters.

Also sharing his knowledge was University of Melbourne-based Finnish education expert Pasi Salhberg.

Like Mr McNaught, my favourite way to play is with LEGO; specifically, a methodology called LEGO Serious Play, which was created by the LEGO Group and two European business professors as a tool for strategy, innovation, creativity, culture and team cohesion.

While it is huge in Europe and has been used by global brands such as Virgin, IKEA and Samsung, it is only just starting to gain traction in Australia.

Six reasons to play at work

For those who were unable to make it to Sydney for SXSW, here are six key takeaways that I shared around why play (with LEGO or otherwise) can give your team or business a serious edge, based on research from a variety of disciplines including psychology, neuroscience, anthropology and game studies.

• Play helps to create and support high-performing teams by helping us feel more connected to ourselves and those around us. When we play together we gain greater understanding of each other while feeling more understood. This a core feature of creating psychological safety, which is another key component of high-performance teams.
• Play improves creativity and innovation. One of the primary ways play does this is by making failure not feel like failure, but instead allows us to see mistakes as ‘useful negative information’, as researchers like to call it. We become more open to experimentation, iteration, and new ways of solving problems.
• Play boosts problem solving. As neuroscientists have discovered, play actually makes our brains behave differently. We become more open to potentiality, while rewiring our brain and engaging neuroplasticity to see and engage with problems differently.
• Play helps us to deeply understand the needs of our clients and stakeholders. Play is a great tool for rapid ethnography, whereby clients, stakeholders, customers, and users are able to easily access what they really think and feel and share it authentically. In this way, play can help us to overcome the fact that humans, as anthropologists describe, are really bad at self-reporting what we really think, feel and want.
• Play helps us to communicate better. Play, especially using LEGO Serious Play, helps us to level the playing field in meetings by making it as easy for the introverted intern to contribute as the extroverted chief executive. In this way we can unlock the hidden wisdom and knowledge in a room, thereby granting access to more ideas and more solutions
• Most importantly, the research shows us play makes us feel good. When we play, we feel happier, more human, more resilient.

So, how are you going to bring play into your workplace?

• Dr Kate Raynes-Goldie is a cultural anthropologist specialising in human communication, innovation and AI. She is also a keynote speaker, Certified LEGO® Serious Play® facilitator and the creator of SUPERCONNECT®