Join the Playful Revolution: How to Bring Creativity and Play to the Workplace

By Begoña Pino

If you have any problem, any issue, anything you want to solve or improve, you need creativity.

Introducing play at work seems like a mismatched idea, which is why author Begoña Pino wants business owners and managers to Join the Playful Revolution. She examines creative mindsets, confidence, and environments that boos

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Apr 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781637309377

Book preview

Introduction

Let’s bring the joy of play back to the workplace.

Read this first!

If I asked you to join me in a play session at the office, what would your response be?

a) You are crazy.

b) Convince me.

c) Hell yes!

If your answer was a) You are crazy. or b) Convince me. I’m going to save you some time and tell you this book is not for you. However, if my question intrigued you, keep on reading, but consider yourself warned: the content of this book may bring serious play at the office. The activities suggested may elicit laughter, creativity, and collaboration. Practice them at your own risk.

If your answer was c) Hell yes! and the words Join the Playful Revolution make you smile, I wrote this book for you. That is, if you work in any kind of organization at any level and want to make a positive contribution and have fun in the meantime.

What do you believe in?

Simon Sinek is a leadership expert and the best-selling author of Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last. His 2009 TED talk How Great Leaders Inspire Action, with over fifty-five million views, introduces the concept of the Golden Circle. This refers to the way great leaders communicate in a very different way from everyone else, be that Apple or Martin Luther King Jr.

The three elements of the Golden Circle are: why, how, and what. At the core of the approach is starting with why: the company’s purpose, cause, belief, and the reason for it to exist.

In a recent conversation with Simon, I asked him how to start a global playful movement.

I’m trying to bring more playfulness to the workplace to spark more creativity and innovation while bringing happiness as well. So, how do you start to create a global movement? I asked.

Simon paused for a moment to assess the question and then responded.

I’m a great believer to start with the place you are good at. I was good at speaking my idea before I was writing about my idea.

He suggested you pick your preferred format and go with it to hone your thinking: blog, video, podcast, consulting, speaking, etc. Then, he provided an example of how he developed the concept of the Golden Circle, described in detail in his book, Start With Why.

"I treated it like a science experiment. I didn’t claim to be right. I didn’t claim I had all the answers. When people would say, ‘Will it work in this industry?’ My answer was, ‘I don’t know. I’ve never worked in that industry. Let’s try.’"

He continued, I was very honest about that. I’m looking for the opportunities for the theory to fail so I can improve the theory. What ended up happening was the people who believed in my work gave me entry and tinkered with me. They let me tinker on their companies or their organizations.

As Simon explained, his format of choice was speaking and he was talking about his ideas in order to refine them, but over time, he noticed a shift.

He said, I stopped talking about what I did and started talking about what I believed. Then, I was introduced more and more to people who believed what I believed.

During the conversation, I nodded at his every word. I could not be more in tune with him, but what he said next changed the focus of this book entirely.

"Stop telling people what you want to do and start telling people what you believe in. When you’re talking right now, you don’t really care about innovation. It’s a side effect, it’s a benefit that’s relevant to some people."

That came as a shock because I had just written a book about innovation, or so I thought. As soon as he said it, I smiled as if my mask had dropped. He could see right through me.

He carried on.

You’re in sales mode trying to throw spaghetti against the wall, hoping some of it will stick.

He got me! I think I blushed a little and there was no place to hide.

He kept reasoning, But talking about the thing you believe…You believe in play. You believe play is really important and we’ve forgotten the joy of play. It turns out if you can embrace play, it brings all kinds of things: more happiness, reduced stress, and innovation.

Yes! He articulated it in a much nicer way. I had verbalized something different, but he put the focus on where my heart was, not my words.

If I’m talking about play and then somebody smiles and goes, ‘You’re right.’ They’re more likely to invite you to figure something out with them. You have to practice talking about the thing you believe, and then saying yes to the people who believe what you believe, and saying no to people who don’t, he added.

This is why I included this story: to share what I believe in the hope it may resonate with you.

Simon gave me one more example:

In the early days, when I lived paycheck to paycheck, I didn’t have any money. I needed every client; it was really hard time. I remember word was starting to spread about a thing called ‘The Why,’ and I remember somebody got my phone number. They heard about my work through somebody else I’d worked with, and they got to the phone. ‘I heard about you from [whoever]. Convince me why I should hire you’ And I said, ‘Don’t.’ Because anybody who said, ‘Convince me,’ I knew it was in the wrong mindset. I needed somebody who said: ‘I heard what you do. I don’t think it’s perfect, but I think you’re onto something. I’d love to talk to you.’ I’d said yes to that, even if it paid less money. And so, I was very diligent about choosing people to believe what I believe because they were the ones more likely to help spread the idea.

I Believe

I believe in play.

I believe play is really important and we’ve forgotten the joy of play.

I believe play is essential to spark the creative genius of every human.

I believe play is a great collaboration environment.

I believe we need creativity to solve global problems.

I also believe we need play to remain healthy and happy.

I believe play can bring joy back to the workplace.

What do you believe in?

Meet your creative senpai

In Japanese martial arts, they call the master sensei. They call the senior student, who has been there a while but is not yet a master, senpai. That is what I aim to be for you and would like you to be for others.

I wrote this book to learn the secrets to getting buy-in for innovation. I had been experimenting with several tactics, but my success rate was not reliable and I became frustrated. What were others doing that could be more effective?

I hoped my learning would be helpful to likeminded people so we could raise the global creativity quotient together. In turn, we would bring about more innovation in the world to solve some of the global challenges we are facing.

I have worked in the same technological company for almost fifteen years in different roles (programmer, analyst, and user experience) and learned about business, team management, and especially how not to sell an idea. I have followed Edison’s method of systematic trial and error and kept finding more ways of how not to sell an idea.

I will hopefully get there before one thousand experiments.

Between seeing projects succeeding, failing, or something in between, I have proposed my fair share of ideas. Many of them got nowhere: from hackathons, open innovation labs, remote work (way before it was trendy or critical), e-learning platforms, to several business ideas. Sometimes it seemed like nothing new would ever happen.

Things did happen, but over a long time, averaging five to seven years. The problem is most people with an itch for innovation do not stay that long in the same company.

I feel strongly about the need to bring playfulness to the office. It reduces stress, helps people connect, and increases productivity and innovation. The way people feel, including their worries and passions, highly affect how they show up at work, their level of engagement, and their productivity.

Long-lasting change needs to incorporate emotions too (Barsade & O’Neill, 2016).

With a background that includes a PhD in Education with an emphasis on autism and technology and time as a therapeutic clown and user experience lead, I have seen the power of play increase engagement firsthand.

I know play is a serious matter and I want to see a #PlayfulRevolution take place. We need it more than ever.

A book about play and creativity

Play is a magic environment where stress and fear disappear and creativity can flourish. People relax and bond in a completely different way.

—B. Pino

Many people believe they are not creative because they are not artistic, but every person is born creative and puts it into practice every time they solve a problem.

This is a book about play as a key to unlock creativity. It intends to inspire creative confidence together with a real sense of urgency. Creative confidence is an essential element: if you believe you can do something, you approach obstacles with a very different attitude.

However, confidence is not something you buy in the store, nor do you get it by someone telling you, Yes, you can. If you want to develop it, you will find a few challenges to try here.

There is one challenge in particular that takes just one minute and only uses skills you already have (like writing, moving, or taking a photo with your smartphone). If you do it, you will already be successful, for there is no quality requirement, and I hope it will improve your confidence a little.

You will also find activities and step-by-step sessions anyone can use.

You will read a strong case for neurodiversity, since people who have a different perspective are a real asset to any innovation team.

Is this you?

If you are a team leader, product manager, aspirational innovator, frustrated innovator at any level (from employee to CEO), manager or leader, HR staff, or change maker in general, this book is for you.

If you believe play has a place at work and you want to know how to implement it, this book is for you too.

You will learn how you can transform a company risk-free if you are strategic and systematic, persevere long enough, and take advantage of the cracks in the system. You will get inspired to innovate by trying to be helpful to those closest to you and see how companies are creating a positive culture of creativity and innovation.

You may also see how, sometimes, putting your job on the line can pay off. But you will also find cues on how to start your own under-the-radar, silent, and creative playful revolution if you don’t want to take chances.

How to read this book

If you are just starting out, this may feel a bit overwhelming.

I created this book as a one-stop shop to simplify your life. I curated these techniques from a wide variety of resources and think they are more than enough to get you started.

Once you are confident with these, you will have no problem expanding your repertoire.

In every chapter, you will find a brief summary and a set of challenges. If you are a hands-on person, you may want to tackle the challenges as you go to start putting the concepts into practice.

The first part of the book sets the context for creativity: why it matters and the key elements. It includes understanding the role of the decision makers and their constraints, the culture, and the people who bring ideas to reality.

The second part gives you foundations in different creative processes and an introduction to what activating team creativity looks like. Don’t miss the last chapter of this part if you want to read about specific techniques you can apply right away.

The third part describes the underlying principles of the approach in the book: play, finding the little opportunity cracks, and humor.

The fourth part is full of actionable material to take what you have read to your workplace so you can start your very own playful revolution.

Are you convinced?

If Hell yes! is still not your answer but you have read this far, I hope you still get something useful out of the book. If it is your answer, I hope you read the information I present, absorb it, practice it, and spread the ideas. The world really needs you.

PART 1:

THE FOUNDATIONS

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Chapter 1

Creativity Is an Urgent Matter

We need creativity to reinvent the world. We need playfulness to feed our souls and fuel creativity.

—B. Pino

The world needs more creativity.

And the world needs more playfulness.

In fact, I cannot conceive of one without the other. For many years, with a design-oriented role, I worked to elicit creativity in my team and peers. I noticed simply running a brainstorming session would not cut it.

Then, I started experimenting with very short but regular playful sessions and I saw two effects. First, people loosened up and offered more crazy ideas, the type you need to be more innovative. But I did not expect the enthusiastic response I got. People jumped at the opportunity to play. Even when they were busy, they realized they became more productive afterward. They bonded, laughed together, and became more playful and creative over time.

Enter COVID-19, with quarantine and months upon months of social deprivation. Ten months in, I started to work-play remotely at our lunch break with a team that was still working from home. Their project manager, my teammate, was very stressed out, and he shared the status of the project. Programmers felt stress from the pressure and tight deadlines of their project and tiredness from lack of social interaction. The project manager could not attend to this matter since he was already juggling many hats, so I volunteered to help him out.

We chose to meet remotely once a week at lunch as not to interfere with the high demands of the project. Of course, participation was voluntary since last-minute meetings or incidences took precedence. We warmed up with short, playful activities with an emotional bias to gather the team’s emotional state and some activities aimed at detecting other team issues.