All Work & No Play [Part 1]

Designing Our Companies for Innovation, Creativity, and Alternative Thought

One of the first lessons I ever learned about innovation came from an artifact recovery project that required the rapid assembly of a previously unpossessed technology. 

The year was 2000 and the place was my childhood home in San Bernardino County, California. I was about three or four years old and my mother had been cooking in the kitchen when she dropped something. I can’t recall what it was — I think a grape. The “artifact” bounced and then rolled into the pesky gap between the floor and oven which always seems to collect an ungodly amount of detritus.

Upon seeing this, my mother let out a mildly frustrated grunt, which my young ears interpreted as a cry for help. I immediately jumped into action. I grabbed five or six of the markers I had been coloring with, snapped them into one giant stick, and used them to reach beneath the oven and scoop out the artifact. The grape was thus retrieved in record time.

I won’t self-mythologize by using this as evidence of some innate entrepreneurial ability. If anything, it’s evidence of the lack of such. There really isn’t a market for grape-scoopers and I doubt the moat for such an invention would be a large one. However, this anecdote provides a ready analogy for the assertions of today’s newsletter, which I also believe is backed by modern research. Namely, that the secret sauce to successful innovation is giving people permission to approach their work with a spirit of playfulness and inviting them to see challenges as games.

While this newsletter will lay a foundation for playfulness in a work setting, I plan to release multiple newsletters that discuss play in more depth and from a more philosophical perspective. Please subscribe so you can get those too. I guarantee you won’t want to miss!

Buzzkills and Barriers

The notion that “play” could be a competitive advantage for companies is often met with an air of suspicion. After all, work and play are very unlikely dance partners.

The bulk of objections tend to fall into two categories, which I want to address before making the case for play.

The first concern of most managers is that companies will stop producing reliable results if they forsake the warpath of efficiency for the chaotic mess of playfulness. In this mindset, a company is able to produce precisely because it is tightly managed by leaders and bosses. Like a machine that needs to be aligned perfectly, every employee needs to be directed in such a way that they are yielding maximal amounts of constant progress towards predetermined objectives. In this framing, managers are primarily supervisors tasked with eliminating idleness and ensuring that their team is being productive. Play, however, disrupts the dialed-in processes which pump out results by creating inefficiencies which detract from the bottom line.

The second objection is that the light-hearted and frivolous connotations of play are incompatible with the serious responsibilities of doctors, stock traders, lawyers, researchers, engineers, and the like. After all, these careers are not only demanding but require extreme mastery and professionalism. This is even more pertinent in high-stakes industries, where failure results in real harm for real people. What does it matter if your surgeon has a sense of humor? What matters is that they are capable with a knife.

Buzzkills Refuted

I contend that the first objection stems from a merely superficial understanding of play, as well as an exaggerated emphasis on the influence our managerial techniques have in producing creative outputs. It’s true that in order to produce something worthwhile individuals must act effectively and knowledgeably — but the punchline of effective and knowledgeable action is that it only proceeds after cycles of ignorance, risk-taking, and learning. This is the very language of play and something we will expand on momentarily.

I’d also argue that the second objection originates from the aesthetics of play rather than a true understanding. This is no one’s fault for believing, as play has been largely absent from adult life. Contexts of play are often suffused with infantilizing symbols from grade school and awash in primary colors. This is a turn off for individuals that want to be taken seriously or who exist in spheres where the appearance of immaturity is not appropriate. Thankfully, this is largely a branding problem. In reality, play is too large to be confined to kindergarten classrooms. While it’s important to avoid irresponsible expression of playfulness, it is even more important that we do not needlessly banish playfulness altogether.

Play is the Way

When championing this topic, it’s important to note that people aren’t taught how to play — play is the teacher. As early as the 1930’s, developmental psychologists like Jean Piaget were making a case for how playtime was the foundation of our psyche. Piaget argued that the majority of our knowledge acquisition, socialization, and moral intuition is shaped during times of unstructured activity as children. According to him, “play is the answer to how anything new comes about.” 

Around the same time, cultural theorist Johan Huizinga published his seminal work Homo Ludens (which is latin for playing man). Homo Ludens is often the first book stumbled upon when researching this topic, as Huizinga was able to clearly trace the presence of play throughout virtually every ancient civilization. While I was actually disappointed by this book, I still found many of his insights instructive. For instance, he defined play as:

"a free activity standing consciously outside ‘ordinary’ life as being ‘not serious,’ but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly.”

Huizinga established that play was more than just building blocks and jungle gyms; but could also include weighty business like debates, poetry, and warfare. 

Play is Pleasure

The “intensely” and “utterly absorbing” quality of play is the attribute that makes it such a desirable mode for human beings. Similar — although not synonymous — to being in a state of flow, a person engaged in play is a person completely present in the moment. Their focus and faculties are so locked in to whatever activity they are engaged with, that they escape the entrapments of self-consciousness and are able to bring the entirety of themselves into their pursuit. 

While it’s true that games have objectives like scoring goals or outwitting an opponent, a trademark of play is that it's an intrinsically motivating activity. The fun of attentiveness and the joy of centeredness becomes its own justification for participation. It is an endeavor done for the love of the process rather than an eagerness to see the result. As Schiller said in his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man:

“Man plays only when he is in the full sense of the word man, and he is only wholly man when he plays.” 

I find that people rarely need to be convinced on this point. If I asked you “what were you doing the last time that you lost track of time?” The answer would almost certainly be in the sphere of a pickle ball match, a jam session on your favorite instrument, or the afternoon spent painting in your studio. These are all forms of play and many of us wish that we spent more of our days immersed in this supra-ordinary state. One of the more nefarious traits of social media dependence is how it robs us of our time for hobbies and recreation. We crave the deep and invigorating sensation that accompanies exercises of playfulness, but are often seduced into the flat and specious stimulation of media platforms instead. This, however, is a rabbit hole for a different installment. If you’re interested in this topic, I recommend my last newsletter or this recent piece from Kyla’s Newsletter about Apple’s latest marketing campaign.

Innovation

So what does this have to do with companies and innovation? As usual, I turn to Peter Drucker to explain.

In the Practice of Management, Drucker boldly declared:

“Because the purpose of a business is to create a customer, any business enterprise has two — and only these two — basic functions: marketing and innovation.”

In another book, he said:

“Innovation is the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth. Innovation, indeed, creates a resource. There is no such thing as a ‘resource’ until man finds a use for something in nature and thus endows it with economic value. Until then, every plant is a weed and every mineral just another rock.”

This is a brilliant definition of innovation because it demystifies the term without losing sight of its importance. Drucker was a uniquely prescient individual and I think he was cautious of the growing tendency to exaggerate the genius of founders. He knew that idolization of elite entrepreneurs would only damage people’s appreciation for innovation. This happens, and indeed is happening, when a generation’s benchmark for success is being the next Steve Jobs rather than simply finding a great new use for existing resources. While the former is certainly sexier, it's also unrealistic. 

Worse than unrealistic, it blinds people to the miracle of progress that takes place everyday. If innovation was truly the exclusive birthright of only a small handful of culturally disruptive tech companies, then 99% of all firms would have failed a long time ago. In reality, innovation is the daily bread of prevailing companies, all of whom constantly renew themselves through an iterative process of micro-changes and mini-improvements.

One does not need to invent the next iPhone in order to be a successful innovator. One merely needs eyes to see the untapped potential of the resources around them and then open their neighbor’s eyes to its value as well. 

People who understand that innovations are simple shifts in perspective rather than a complete reinvention of industry are the people best positioned to unlock the creative power of play for their workplace.

Alternative Thinking

Play is the breeding ground for innovation because play opens people’s minds to alternative thinking. It is like kindling for the spark of creativity.

Recall my dopish opening story. In a way, it was a kind of low-brow innovation. The “resources” were my markers, the problem was a lost grape, and my mother the customer I wanted to solve a problem for. I bestowed a fresh capacity upon the resources by combining them into one long arm. Although markers are meant for drawing and not for reaching, my younger self was just innocent enough to avoid the tunnel vision that often besets our creativity. As the rabbi Abraham Heschel said, “One must forget many cliches in order to behold a single image.”

For a more authoritative example, consider a study from 2023 that measured the benefits of playfulness for researchers. The individuals conducting the study knew that the rigor of research and the need for precision necessitated a type of strictness which would likely prevent experimentation. What they discovered, however, is that playful researchers were more likely to craft better and more original hypotheses to guide their research. Plus, when the results of research were collected, they found that playfulness increased the researcher’s ability to create and categorize the data, sense new connections, and entertain new representations.

What’s striking about this study is that it has nothing to do with producing different results. It is merely framing and seeing connections among the results in a way that is divergent from the norm. This is a defining characteristic of innovation. The ability to put together two or more mundane things in a way which produces value that satisfies the customer. This is why Drucker said, “the greatest praise an innovation can receive is for people to say: ‘This is obvious. Why didn’t I think of it?”

Just consider any of your favorite brands. What connections did they make which are obvious in hindsight, but were unconnected previously? Sweetgreen was started by college students who saw the need for a healthy fast-casual option near their university. Costco is based on the awareness that large, relatively affluent families would prefer to buy things in bulk at the lowest possible cost. Even the massively disruptive iPhone which I previously mentioned is based on a relatively simple premise. Is it possible that Steve just got tired of carrying both his phone and iPod separately?

More Benefits

Those are all examples of entrepreneurship. I love to point out that the literature also shows playfulness is a great predictor of intrapreneurship — the creation of new functions or business ventures within an organization. As a 2018 article from MIT Sloan noted, some of history's most unique products like Post-it Notes or Gmail came from employees making mistakes and taking risks with their company’s permission. 

Furthermore, companies that allow for playful cultures also see tremendous increase in intrinsic motivation, which is highly correlated with job satisfaction, which in turn is correlated with higher productivity and decreased turnover. There is also some literature to suggest that play cultures have historically produced more egalitarian communities with flatter hierarchies. Not to mention, other research has suggested that the open-minded posture of playfulness results in greater diversity among employees. The list of benefits goes on and on. The question is, why is play still so scarce?

I would suggest, that besides the two objections already mentioned, play remains scarce because the conditions conducive to play require intentional design from companies. Although play is an innate component of human nature, environments set up by modern organizations aren’t meant to encourage this mode of being. That's not meant to be a knock against corporations — every structure has trade-offs that managers must accept in pursuit of their objectives. But because play only happens under certain conditions, organizations looking to increase innovation should know about the magic circle.

(Fun fact: Cynthia actually named her Substack Magic Circle! before we knew that it was a technical term. What are the odds?)

The Magic Circle

Magic circle is another phrase coined by Huizinga. It refers to the areas where games happen and play can occur. A soccer field, a virtual world, a court room, or a board meeting are all potential magic circles.

While the location itself is not special or sacred, Huizinga’s message was that it is necessary to create spaces where people can flip a proverbial switch and know that they are in play mode. In a work context, this means designating certain meetings, sprints, events, processes, etc… to being set aside for risk-taking, debate, and possible foolishness. What I like about this idea, is that it puts boundedness on the play and provides clarity for the employee about when playfulness is a top priority versus less appropriate. While I think that cultures of playfulness should generally be cultivated, establishing specific magic circles (and yes, you can call it something else) with unique rules avoids undue mess and can bring focus to the effort.

Psychological Safety

According to Dr Peter Gray’s analysis, play is when people are able to willingly engage in intrinsically motivated activity, provided with an imaginary set of rules to run wild within, and are kept in an alert, but “relatively non-stressed frame of mind.” An effective magic circle must allow for all of these things. Therefore, the most fundamental element of the magic circle for organizations is psychological safety. 

Popularized by Dr. Amy Edmondson, psychological safety is the conviction that one can speak, inquire, and act without being punished or humiliated by the surrounding group (+ some of you may remember that I mentioned Amy’s other related work in this newsletter).

Without psychological safety, teams don’t have the confidence to take risks or experiment with new ideas. If an employee is too worried about whether or not they are conforming to the rest of the group, they will never reach their full potential of subversive, alternative thought. In one of Rita Mcgrath’s Thought Sparks podcasts, a guest helpfully offered an easy litmus test for managers to know whether or not they have fostered this type of environment. Ask yourself, “how often do the people I lead purposefully share bad ideas with me?” In a psychologically safe environment, shame has been divorced from failure and bad ideas are seen as mere springboards to better thought.

Additionally, I love some of the practices that IDEO’s Michelle Lee shared in an interview on The Switchboard. Lee said that her department has cultivated a set of “rituals,” creative warm-ups, humorous meeting themes, and even custom uniforms to cultivate a sense of playfulness and catalyze innovation. These are often much simpler than one would expect. I attended a webinar which she hosted a few months ago and enjoyed how she opened the virtual meeting by simply asking people to list as many possible uses for a cup (besides holding water) that they could think of. This silly exercise set the tone for the rest of the meeting. It is one of the many practical tools that managers can use to break the frame of normalcy and help their teams see the world anew.

Conclusion

Being human-centric often requires commercial sacrifice by businesses. If it weren’t so, we’d see a lot less corruption. Therefore, when I find human-centric principles that also unlock competitive advantage, I try to champion it widely. Play is not only existentially vital for workers, but has a contagious and beneficial effect on the structures they exist in.

As I said at the beginning of this newsletter, I intend to write a lot more extensively about this in the near future. This installment barely scratches the surface of a virtue I hold especially dear.

I hope that some of these concepts will revisit you during the week; and when they do, that you’ll remember to take yourself a bit less seriously. I am confident you will discover that a posture of playfulness will open up new solutions, fresh ideas, and novel innovations for you to explore.

As always, please let me know your thoughts in the comments or by reaching out. Thank you again for your time and attention.

Sincerely,

Bradley