Bringing Fun to the Workplace
Tuesday, February 24th, 2009The other week I came again across a 30 min presentation from Tim Brown entitled “The powerful link between creativity and play” (see an earlier post from Rheinard in Nov 08). A friend of mine was telling me about how his team at work are trying to define their role and values within the larger orgainsation they work at. Some of the themes that come from this video would be good inclusions in such a dicussion.
Tim comes from a corporate design background and talks about how a playful work environment can be used to facilitate the creation of great ideas. You’ll need to watch the video (see below) to really get the points, however here is a quick overview.
As most of us don’t work as designers it can be easy to write off creativity as something we don’t need nor should there be an effort to facilitate it. The vast majority of jobs require solutions to problems (even if they are small) and this requires some form of creativity. In an attempt to demonstrate that play can be a critical element of creativity, he refers to the example of young children learning while playing without inhibitions and fear of making mistakes. They consequently learn various concepts that we as adults take for granted….but are not explicitly taught as when we were children there was an opportunity to discover through play.
I don’t see anything entirely new with the message, however the message is one worth re-circulating as it is very easy to focus on being operational…whether that be in the classroom and/or in the office. By operational I mean simply to work directly at fulfilling targets that the respective work environments demand. For example Jay Cross has flagged a concept of “tinkering” which builds on many of the aforementioned points and attempts to contextualise them for the corporate workplace.
The other important point that Tim raises is that of trust. Well the old adage is that you “earn trust”, however for a student and or employee entering a new environment…how can they earn trust if they don’t feel empowered to give things a go and experiment. Without trust there is no possibility for students, employers etc to play, tinker etc.
I would then like to pose some questions for consideration (I have my thoughts) to anyone who ends up viewing the video….
1. How do we facilitate and then subsequently manage a workplace where play is an accepted component? You may already work in one…
2. Can this principle be applied in the classroom?
3. Can social media facilitate this process in both a blended and distance learning environment?
I think the answer is yes for all three questions and that to some degree it already happens… but only you can answer whether it is supported (atleast somewhat) in your area.
