Tips For Working Playfully: This Month's Top Five List
The Renewable OrganizationTM is a system that teaches leaders how to use 7 Renewable Practices that help them "be who they are" by tapping into and unleashing the power that dwells within them and the organizations they care about. Practice #3 is "Working Playfully."
Working Playfully frees people up to bring their most creative selves to any situation. It gets people thinking in new ways, seeing things from different perspectives, and trying things they never would have imagined trying before. Just try leading change in an organization without it!
But, paradoxically, working playfully is serious business. It doesn't come naturally in most organizations we work with. And a lot of leaders are afraid of it. What if people are so busy playing that they never get anything done? Or, just as scary, what if I invite people to play with me and they look at me like I've lost my mind? What if they won't play...and I end up looking stupid?
This month - just in time for summer! - we offer 5 practical tips for working playfully:
#5 - Get enough sleep!
Is your work important to you or not? If it is, you'll make sure you're getting enough rest to do it well. Because, frankly, if you're just slogging through your day, cranky and tired because you didn't enough rest before you got there, you're not the only one who will suffer. You will be physically unable to lead your team or create the kind of space they need to work playfully. Working playfully takes energy! Make sure you have enough to do it.
#4 - Make space for play. Literally.
Nothing squelches the "wee voice that wants the crayons back" (i.e., Hugh MacLeod's "Ignoring Everybody" - see the review in this month's newsletter) inside of people more quickly than blank walls covered with puke-green institutional paint...except maybe furniture and fixtures that growl "but we've always done it that way before!" Fill your workspace with whatever color makes sense in your context...earth tones, vibrant color, whatever...but make sure it feels alive. If you can't paint, use posters, colored paper, rugs, furniture, fabric, funny books, toys, whatever you can think of to make the space you're in a place where people feel like smiling...a place where people can breathe.
#3 - Practice playing (before you try working playfully!).
The goal of working playfully is to help people become more innovative, productive, and committed to your common work. But it's hard to go from zero to sixty. If your people don't know how to
play together, they're going to have a pretty hard time
working playfully together. We know this is going to make the Type A personalities out there very nervous but you're probably going to have to play...just for the sake of playing...before you can try
working playfuly. Close down for an afternoon and go bowling. Put board games in the lunch room and schedule a monthly all-play. Start out your meetings with a quick game of UNO. Don't make your team give extra time to playing together (unless they really want to, of course); get them playing together on
your time. That's how they'll know you're serious about the importance of play. Ironic, we know. But true.
#2 - Go outside and play!
Your mom was up to something. There is something about getting "out of the house" that frees up your imagination. You meet new people out there. You see new things. Encourage your team to take their work on the road. Send them to a coffee shop, a park, or the children's library for their next meeting. What's the point of having a laptop if you don't occasionally work with it on your lap?
#1 - Create "Working Playfully Zones"
Build playfulness into your work routine so it's clear that you expect people to bring their best creative self to everything they do. For example, if you're got a sticky problem or issue you're dealing with, set a timer and for 3 minutes play the WACKIEST IDEA GAME or the NO RULES, NO MONEY GAME. Encourage people to throw out the most outrageous solutions they can think of...the seeds of brilliance often lie at the heart of crazy ideas...and write down everything they say. Pay attention. Or, for example, schedule "Madcap Mondays" or "Fun Fridays." On these days, invite people from outside the team to talk (or sing or act out or whatever) about why they love your organization. Or, for example...well, you get the idea. Put working playfully on every agenda, build it into your routine, schedule it on the calendar. Make it something people EXPECT to happen.
This Month's Book Review
Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod (2009).
If this brand new, take-no-prisoners, occasionally off-color, provocative call to answer your own "wee voice that wants the crayons back" doesn't motivate you to do something that matters, nothing will. A perfect summer read.
Hugh MacLeod is an advertising copyrighter who turned his hobby/nervous habit of drawing cartoons on the back of business cards into a wildly successful business venture. He's been blogging about creativity at www.gapingvoid.com for years. In fact, over a million people have downloaded the post titled "How To Be Creative," which is the original basis for this book.
MacLeod is talking from personal experience when he describes how lonely and uncertain the life of a creative person can be. In fact, he's titled the book "Ignore Everybody" because, frankly, if you really have a great idea, nobody will understand what you're trying to do. What's more, nobody will WANT to understand what you're trying to do: "Great ideas alter the power balance in relationships. That's why great ideas are initially resisted." Plus, he says, "a big idea will change you." And even your friends won't support you because, well, they like you just the way you are. "Good ideas come with a heavy burden," MacLeod writes, "which is why so few people execute them."
That being said, MacLeod warns against ignoring that "wee voice" inside of you that says create it! build it! make it! try it! start it! grow it! dream it! do it!
That voice has been trying to "get the crayons back" since you were a kid. And if you don't go for it - whatever "it" is for you - something inside of you will die.
MacLeod hasn't written an academic tome on creativity. He's written (and sketched) a little book that is full of quotes you'll want to copy down and paste on the inside of your medicine cabinet or turn into a screen saver. Here are a few keepers:
- There is no silver bullet. there is only the love God gave you.
- The idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be yours.
- The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.
- The competition is at home, working their asses off.
- Don't make excuses. Just shut the hell up and get on with it. Time waits for no one.
The world, MacLeod says, "is awash with nonautonomous thinkers."
I don't know. What do you think?
I don't know. What do you think?
I don't know. What do you think?
A culture or an organization where "lack of original thought" is rewarded - as it is in too many businesses, schools, churches, nonprofits, and government agencies these days - "creates a rich, fertile environment for parasites to breed. And that's exactly what's been happening." So now, MacLeod says, " we have millions upon millions of human tapeworms thriving in the Western world, making love to their PowerPoint presentations, feasting on the creativity of others."
If you're creative, MacLeod urges, your organization needs you now more than ever.
And so does the world.
Is It Time To Regroup?
There are times in the life of every organization that it becomes wise and necessary to engage an intentional and focused revisioning process. These times often come before, during, and after key transitions (i.e., new organizational structure, a building project, staffing change, relocation, major conflict, seismic shift in size, etc.). But they can also come after a long period of "business as usual" when you sense that it's time to wake up and pay attention to what is happening both within your organization and in your context.
How do you know if it's time for you and your organization to regroup?
Use this checklist to determine your need to engage a revisioning process:
- Has it been longer than 3-5 years since the last time people across your organization (and not just the leaders!) spent in-depth, focused time together reflecting on the purpose and direction for your common work?
- Are you preparing for, in the middle of, or recently been through a major transition? (Add a point for every major transition, if there are more than one.)
- Are your leaders tired and/or burning out?
- Do your leaders have a hard time saying “no” to things because they aren’t clear about what is really important?
- Is the creativity and/or participation level of people in your organization at a plateau or in decline?
- Are you itching for something new to happen but you’re not sure what to do next?
- Do you need to create more focus and/or enthusiasm in preparation for a major fundraising, marketing, building, or sales campaign?
- Do you sense that you're missing out on opportunities because you haven't been able to make the changes you know need to be made or muster the resources and enthusiasm of people in your organization?
- If polled, would the majority of people in your organization be unlikely to articulate your common purpose, principles, and directions?
- When faced with major decisions, do most of your leaders forget to ask how your purpose, principles, and directions can guide them?
- Are people prone to conflict over things that really just don’t seem to matter?
- Do you wish your co-workers, colleagues, teammates, fellow members had more clarity and deeper commitment to your common cause?
- Are you unclear about the purpose, principles, and direction of your organization?
Score your need for a revisioning process:
1-2 - Likely
3-4 Very Likely
5 + above - Urgent
Early Bird Registration is Now Open!
"Treasure in Clay Jars: The Renewable Organization for Faith-Based Groups"
2009 WORKSHOP DATES:
Chicago - October 8
Los Angeles - October 13
San Francisco - October 15
Hartford - October 22
Baltimore/DC - October 27
Winnipeg - November 10
Charlotte - December 1
Orlando - December 1
Early bird registration fee of $59 includes lunch and a copy of the brand new workbook "The Renewable Organization for Faith Based Groups." Space is limited.
