Play
We don’t talk about “play” enough at work.
Play is a one of the best ways to generate motivation, to learn, and to perform.
A sense of purposeful play might be the single best indicator for high performance, both individually and for teams. It wraps up psychological safety, dependability, clarity, meaning, and impact all into one observation. How good is your and your teams’ sense of play?
Play is not only a great trailing indicator of performance, but also a great way to improve skills and generate motivation.
And, yet, we don’t talk about it enough. Play is low hanging fruit, we all already have a sense of it. In fact, I didn’t talk about it at all when I wrote about motivation a long time ago, nor in any writing since. My bad.
One thing I’ve learned in the last 10 years, we sure need a greater sense of play in our work. Maybe now is the time for it? It fits nicely beside a lot of great trends happening in workplaces, where they are already creating environments for belonging, authenticity, and whole-selves.
How do we learn?
That’s a big question, let’s summarize with the often cited work of Anders Ericsson, which states it requires 10,000 hours of deliberate practice for elite performance. We often forget that he looked at deliberate practice specifically. He (and Malcolm Gladwell) are often cited with just 10,000 — but it wasn’t “any” 10,000 hours, those were structure practices designed by a coach. Skipping ahead a bit we are lucky to find that after Ericsson’s research there is follow-up research that has actually indicated deliberate play might be equally as good. Although much more flexible, there still some key elements. It’s done for its own sake, its enjoyable, and there’s interest in the effort.
How many of your teams (e.g. in software or product development) have this directed effort in getting better even though it is playful?
How does play motivate?
Before we get to “start with why” (e.g. Simon Sinek), we are better off to start with play. Before we get to purpose and potential, we can love the work itself.
For your teams and partners, this means creating a sense of play on the team. That’s it. That’s the principle. There’s thousands of bits of context and ways to approach it that you’ll need to create that environment and team. Start with adopting this principle and then find the right people for the journey.
Especially right now, with an economic downturn starting or looming for most businesses, building play will lead to resilient teams that will perform and stick together. We all do our best work and keep doing it when work feels like play. It’s probably not shocking to hear that, so let’s create more of it, eh?
For your users, although I respect both a lot, I don’t think Kathy Sierra quite has it right to focus on “badass” or Samuel Hulick with “awesome person”. How about simply let users feel “playful”. Users feeling badass and awesome is also good, but giving users a clear sense of play (I don’t mean gamification) is the best place to start (and I think it’s easier). Safe to explore, to try and fail, to laugh, to chat, et cetera. We don’t have to be badass/awesome to be motivated, it’s not as inherently motivating as play. (And, it’s a topic for another day, but being tied to users identifying as badass/awesome also has negative impact of making learning/adaptation more challenging.)
By starting from play, over time your teams and users will find new motivations and they will move on from solely/primarily play to further adopt other healthy motivations (see self-determination theory). That is to say, creating a sense of play also works in moving people towards intrinsic motivation — while hopefully never losing that sense of play. Play is inherently not an external or controlling force; thus, helps foster conditions for growing aligned intrinsic motivation in areas of purpose (why I use this) and identity (I’m an awesome badass).
For some reason, today, if we think about (or google) “play and learning”, it’s only for kids… let’s change that to include adults too!
Or simply… GO PLAY!
