"Work as play? I prefer meaningful work."
This was the reaction of a retired but relatively well-known CEO to Part One of my newsletter on Work and Play.
The feedback — kindly passed along by a colleague — was extremely useful, but unsurprising. Playfulness is a deceptively polarizing concept and seasoned professionals tend to be the most resistant. If a respected and battle-tested executive had this reaction, my instinct is to assume that others did as well. Therefore, I wanted to explore the relationship between play and meaning a little, as well as double down on my original proposal.
My Reply
For starters, here was my reply to the CEO’s feedback (with minor edits for context):
I am very sympathetic towards his viewpoint. After all, I want to do meaningful work, as most of my generation does. But the dichotomy between meaningful work and playful work is a false one. We can do both. I would never choose just my left leg over my right leg, especially if keeping both was an option. Why would I do differently here? The goal is to emphasize the importance of both capacities: calculated decision-making and playful innovation.
My undergirding belief on this topic is simple. In an age of constant disruption, companies will not survive unless they are able to maintain a flexible relationship to the rules.
To be clear, I am not proposing that companies ignore laws or ethics. The rules that I mentioned are the boundaries of conventional thinking, the assumptions regarding what it takes to delight a customer, and the commitment a company has to its own strategies. All too often, highly defensible positions become islands of inaction. A moat that was designed to be a source of comfort and protection can quickly become an ocean that immobilizes the company and prevents them from fresh enterprise.
Transient Advantage
I said before that play could open up untapped competitive advantages for companies, but what I should have said is that play opens up transient advantages. This term comes from Columbia Professor of Management and author of
, . In her seminal HBR article, she explains:In a world where a competitive advantage often evaporates in less than a year, companies can’t afford to spend months at a time crafting a single long-term strategy. To stay ahead, they need to constantly start new strategic initiatives, building and exploiting many transient competitive advantages at once. Though individually temporary, these advantages, as a portfolio, can keep companies in the lead over the long run.
Professor McGrath goes on to explain how the companies successfully adapting to this new landscape are the companies that have rewritten their industry’s rules of engagement and then develop internal methods of systematic innovation.
It is my contention that the posture and language of playfulness is the premiere way to teach this new ethos, which is what I aimed to explain in Part One of this series. Play is the very birthplace of alternative thinking and you can’t optimize for playfulness without also optimizing for psychological safety and radical creativity.
By itself, play is not a panacea; but the research does suggest that it can supplement key deficiencies of modern corporations. More specifically, it can fill in the gaps left behind by the pursuit of meaning.
Headless Systems
According to a recent Gallup poll (the same one mentioned in my last newsletter), 62% of employees worldwide are not engaged in their work and 15% are actively disengaged.
The companies with the highest level of engagement — which is also correlated to high performance — are not the companies with the biggest vision, boldest call-to-action, or most humanitarian-sounding mission statements. They’re the companies dedicated to consistently improving the effectiveness of their managers at every level of the organization. Unfortunately, many executives are still convinced that the former is more important.
This concept of “casting a big vision” to animate employees is a staple in traditional leadership literature and still enjoys a moderate amount of popularity. But as modern organizations slant more and more towards headless systems — a term I’m appropriating from Toby Shorin’s piece on headless brands — then the less we will see companies successfully galvanizing their employees with top down methods.
Companies that develop headless systems are companies that prioritize flat hierarchies, small tactical groups, distributed work, and rapid iteration over redundant chains of command, prolix checks-and-balances, micro-management, and fear of failure. Most importantly, they surrender control over the product and let the natural dialectic between the organization, consumer, and broader culture inform the end result. This empowers the teams that exist closest to the environment to converge upon novel discoveries rather than wait for disconnected groups of authorizers, who are likely working with low-resolution or woefully condensed data, to dictate the final form.
This does not mean that the individuals on the frontlines become unaccountable rogues, but it does require executives to grow accustomed to providing latitude, insight, and boundedness to emergent strategies rather than enforcing activity from a centralized position. This dynamic is highly engaging, unlocks unique value, and is utterly dignifying for everyone involved.
In other words, it lets people play.
Effective Altruism
I have often suspected that the reshuffling of careers that began during the Great Resignation is, in part, due to a weakening faith in careers as a surefire source of meaning.
In the pandemic, CEO’s were banished from their corner offices and entire industries were deemed “inessential” to society. This broke the spell that visionaries were attempting to cast over their employees by telling them stories of being “an all-important world-saving organization.” WeWork’s goal “to elevate the world’s consciousness” soon became the definitive poster slogan for virtue-signaling bullshit; at least until Sam Bankman Fried tanked the effective altruism movement alongside FTX. And after OpenAI was catapulted to household fame, the world had front row seats to watch “capital smother ideals in their sleep.” Goodwill will always be an essential part of a brand, but I do think culture is course-correcting for the way we inflated the importance of our own institutions.
But, it’s not all bad news. One of the truly outstanding social-minded brands, Patagonia, has stayed true to their mission. They’ve managed to keep their products both excellent and sustainable, churn a profit, and donate an abundance of funds to humanitarian causes. Unfortunately, they are an outlier in this game. For example, Tractor Supply Co. has just put on a masterclass in waffling after announcing ambitious DEI and ESG goals… then promptly retracting those goals when they received pushback from conservative customers. Even the most darling social enterprise of my high school years, TOMS, turned out to be unsustainable in the long-run.
The lesson, perhaps, is that using a lofty “meaning” in an attempt to differentiate yourself in the market is a double-edged sword. It is just as likely to shred your own prospects as it is to cut down the competition. If your product or service has a genuine positive impact, then by all means make it a part of your value offering and marketing; but think twice before permanently fusing it to your strategy, business model, or talent pool. And above all, never get high on your own supply.
In the words of G.K. Chesterton:
“Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.”
And taking oneself lightly is precisely the posture of play!
Lightning, Bottles, and Rods
Announcing the meaning of life is far, far, far above my pay grade. To be fair, I think it’s far above everyone’s. And while I am an unabashed advocate for designing workplaces that encourage human flourishing, I am also cautious against the tendency we have to require too much from our employers. It’s vital that we avoid the creation of “nanny corporations.”
A degree of individual humility is required to admit that a company cannot (and should not have to) provide for all the existential needs of its members; and a degree of institutional humility is needed to admit where companies can do better at promoting meaning, engagement, and wellbeing. Luckily, there are plenty of credible consultants and models that help organizations do just this. Zeynop Tom’s Good Jobs Strategy is a particular favorite.
A serendipitously timed article from HBR dropped this week. It’s titled “What Makes Work Meaningful” and it sums up the situation pretty decently. Companies cannot force meaning on their employees:
“They can only create conditions that foster more meaningfulness at work. Ultimately, what makes work meaningful is going to be unique to [the individual].”
And it's no surprise that the “conditions” — heightened awareness, high quality connections, and engaging conversations — are achievable through systems designed for the cultivation of playfulness.
If meaning is the lightning that everyone wants to bottle, don’t waste time by shouting grand intentions to a cloudy sky. Instead, bring big bottles and lots of lightning rods.
You’re Invited To My Webinar!
That’s all for this week, folks.
If you’re enjoying this little series on work and play, please consider joining my colleagues and I for a webinar on July 16th at 10am EST. We will be chatting about the more practical side of play in companies, successful use cases, and why play is still so taboo in certain circles. The webinar is being hosted by The World Management Agility Forum and it is entirely free. I’d love to see you there!
Curiously yours,
Bradley