“The classic phrase of discovery in science is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny.’” *
Research shows that approaching a subject in a playful manner unlocks creativity and makes the task enjoyable (e.g., Liu et al. 2023). When approaching the sometimes-serious work of charting the course of our organization or planning to protect a landscape, it is easy to, well, be too serious. However, if we want to solve tough problems—those seemingly insurmountable obstacles—creativity may be one of the best solutions. After all, if the answer were easy, the problem likely would have already been solved.
There are a couple of ways to easily infuse play into the planning process. Starting the day with an icebreaker or a quick, fun game can set a positive tone for the session. When energy is lagging in the afternoon, a short break to move and play a silly game might be just what the doctor ordered. Chocolate never hurts in these moments either. 😊
A second opportunity to infuse fun into planning is during a brainstorming session, especially when brainstorming strategies to address a threat or restore a focal value. As the team leader or facilitator, perhaps you can motivate the team to be creative by promising an exotic and wildly expensive prize to the first person who comes up with 5 ideas, or to the person whose idea makes the team laugh out loud. By the way, my expensive prizes usually take the form of a piece of candy, virtual confetti, or the opportunity to wear the title of Captain Creative.
The first time I saw the creative benefits of play was years ago during a workshop. The project was focused on birds and grasslands in the mid-west of the United States, and although it was after noon, the team had great chemistry and was having a good time. I stepped away from the group for a time, and when I came back, they were laughing about a strategy they had come up with to have one of the members of the team dress up in a chicken suit and dance around on some street corner somewhere to increase awareness of the threatened prairie chicken. While funny and unrealistic, the idea sparked a more realistic and potentially feasible idea that the team adopted as one of their top-priority strategies. They never would have gotten to that very creative and good idea if they weren’t having fun.
Literature Cited
Liu, W, A. B. Bakker, B. T. Tse, and D. van der Linden. 2023. Does playful work design ‘lead to’ more creativity? A diary study on the role of flow. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 32:107–117. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359432x.2022.2104716
*Online sources attribute this to Medical Economics, Volume 42, Issue 1, page 218 (January 11, 1965), though I have not been able to verify this against the original hard copy.
