I still remember my love/hate relationship with learning to play the cello – always wanting to be ‘good enough’ to play pieces of music, but constantly getting bored and feeling downhearted about the amount of time and effort it took to play the notes in tune. It was a constant dance between perfection and creativity, trying to reach the middle ground and find flow, but with enough discipline and effort to make it creative.
I remember being at my wits’ end and breaking a bow in anger – an expensive way to express my frustration! This does however serve to remind me of habits and creating deliberate practice out of habits. A close colleague of mine always says that culture change is about changing habits one habit at a time: a slow, and often painstaking process of not only changing what feels familiar, but also having the patience and discipline to change the system that houses that habit also. As James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, tells us: ‘If we fix problems at the input level, the outputs will fix themselves’. This is particularly important when it comes to driving sustainable behavioural change.
Moving from reflection to action
I love the idea of building new systems and exploring new possibilities. I get very bored with detail and practicing until everything’s perfect. But I still want to be right, and want it to be impactful, whatever that means.
I first came across the notion of ‘practice makes progress’ when I was reading Amy Edmondson’s most recent book, The Right Kind of Wrong, in which she talks about stepping back from perfection and learning from failure. It can feel safer and more comfortable to sit in reflection, to think about how we could move to action and whether it will work or not, trying to figure things out so that they work first time. But when we avoid failure, we also avoid discovery, innovation, curiosity and accomplishment. We must step back from this binary and reactive way of thinking about performance as perfection and strive for excellence so that both innovation and people can thrive. In turbulent times, innovation is more necessary than ever as we look at the huge societal and business challenges we face. The messaging must therefore be about striving for excellence, being ambitious yet humble, and collectively navigating chaos.
The largest part of what I spend my time doing, and indeed my quest, is to operationalise systemic change to create more inclusive and collaborative environments. How do we take on adaptive challenges in a way that allows us to create sustainable change? How do we take people with us, over their own stepping-stones of fear and into a different land of habit, curiosity and pivoting – seeing opportunities as they unfold, and daring to try things out? The important word here is unfold, which is a practice of emergence, not improvement. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have skin in the game, that we can’t be efficient, that we lose our drive or the drive for high performance, but it does mean that we intentionally adopt a different mindset and step into a different paradigm of learning. It isn’t about ‘fixing’ the system by putting sticking plasters where it doesn’t work, or slightly changing the way things are done. It means trusting our collective intuition, the unknown and the power of shared intelligence. It means being present to who and what is in the space and stepping back to allow ideas, thoughts and solutions to form.
In today’s organisations, there are two competitive systems at play – one based on fear and blame, and another based on curiosity and collective intelligence. We are constantly having to manage the polarities presented by these systems: improvement vs. unfolding, humility vs. arrogance, certainty vs. uncertainty, knowing vs. learning, perfection vs. excellence, individual vs. collective – the list goes on. As F. Scott Fitzgerald tells us: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise.”
Polarity management is so intertwined with the relational infrastructure of ecosystems that we need to explicitly and intentionally look at what polarities are present and how we manage them, in both our business ecosystems and the human systems that run them.
Conversations as living systems
I love this concept, which came from a discussion I had recently with Michelle Holliday about thrivability (listen here). Conversations, at their very core, are dynamic and evolving processes that connect individuals through the exchange of thoughts, emotions, and ideas. They are not static, or void of emotion, but rather vibrant, adaptive, and self-organising systems, much like living organisms. The invitation to view conversations as living systems gives us a powerful lens through which we can understand their complexity and develop the skills necessary to navigate them effectively.
Adaptability is also an element of this process. As new information and emotions are introduced, dialogue evolves, and often in unpredictable ways as we let the conversation unfold. Like ecosystems responding to external changes, conversations can pivot, deepen, or sometimes stagnate, depending on the contributions of participants and the context. Conversations can also give rise to new ideas, foster mutual understanding, and build relationships – they are a generative element in themselves. In this sense, if our collaboration is defined by the quality of our conversations, they are not just tools for communication but also mechanisms for building meaningful relationships, for co-creation and for collective growth.
The more we get into the digital layer of today’s world, the more we need to look at the human qualities that will keep us connected emotionally. Susan David calls this ‘the revolution of the heart’. How can we open this conversation of well-being and thriving? Conversations in living systems require constructive, generative, and healing exchanges to allow for inspiration and the energy of life to permit thrivability – we must overcome fear and division to navigate diversity and complexity to create a wiser, more peaceful society. Healing may seem like a strong word, but this is exactly what needs to happen.
It was international workplace bullying awareness week this month and once again the spotlight shone on toxic workplace practices. Until we can understand that what allows business to thrive is people thriving in them, healthy workplaces will remain unattainable. Until we call out toxic practices in a consequential way, they will remain ‘ok’ and unofficially accepted. So how do we step away from the current model to create different practices in teams and organisations? How do we help boost morale, foster cohesion and reignite engagement in a world where burnout is at an all-time high?
Taking a playful approach
Every leader’s job is to create conditions for people to be seen, heard, valued and to know that they matter. In our recent podcast, Elrika Erasmus and I explored how powerful play and playfulness can be in unlocking the behaviour leaders need to adopt and adapt to build workplaces where people and business can thrive (listen here). It is not necessarily just about fun, or laughter, although both of these are good! It is more about how we can take our brains, bodies and hearts to a different level and learn how to create a practice space together.
Do you remember the first time you bought or rented somewhere to live? You think it looks good, but you’re not quite sure how you will feel actually living there? You are cautious about moving in, about how you might feel in winter? Did I make the right choice? Did I read my criteria well enough to create the cosy space I want and need to thrive? Well, this also applies to creating inclusive spaces – you spend time intentionally thinking about what you want it to look like, how you want to feel and experience the space, and how you want others to feel and experience the space. After all, what is welcoming for you may not be welcoming for others. Clearly, this is not about getting everything 100% as everyone wants it because that is an impossible goal – but getting everyone to have a say in how it is built and what the boundaries are can be extremely impactful.
Creating conditions for people to thrive through playfulness at work involves cultivating an environment where creativity, collaboration, and joy can coexist with productivity and professionalism. Playfulness isn’t about frivolity; it’s about engaging people in ways that energise, inspire, and unlock their potential. Below are some strategies to foster a playful workplace culture:
– Redefine playfulness as a value: constantly position play as a key component of innovation, problem-solving, and well-being, rather than a distraction from work, and link it to the strategic team objectives and outcomes.
– Encourage psychological safety: create a trusting environment and allow room for having a go at things, even if outcomes are uncertain; highlight that failure is a huge step toward growth and innovation.
– Design playful spaces and opportunities: incorporate things like collaborative seating, creative breakout areas, or visual prompts that invite playful interactions, and use them as levers to open the dialogue around thinking differently together.
– Drive a culture of curiosity and experimentation: find opportunities for your team to get curious and try new things, be that brainstorming sessions, cross-departmental projects, or hands-on creative tasks.
– Build time for playful practices – together: schedule regular activities such as innovation days, themed meetings, or social events where employees can connect and collaborate in a low-pressure setting.
– Support individual and team autonomy: allow your team to decide how to incorporate playfulness into their routines, so that it feels authentic and aligned with their workflows – there are many different cultural interpretations of play in the workplace, so this may look different for everyone. This conversation is the most interesting and impactful to align on ‘the way you do things’ together.
– Role model and develop leaders as ‘champions’ of play: equip leaders with tools to foster engagement, creativity, and fun within their teams, and reward these activities regularly.
There are lots of existing innovation and collective intelligence techniques, such as LEGO Serious Play, gamestorming or world café to mention but a few, that stimulate multiple processes simultaneously, releasing serotonin (excitement about the process), dopamine (completing the task) and adrenaline (the urgency of the task) to create a different space to work in. The hand-brain connection involved in playing with LEGO, for example, relaxes people enough to listen and be creative, while using more of the brain increases divergent thinking. This space is safe and curious and also constantly in competition with ‘business as usual’. We too are constantly competing with leading as we should be – through results and doing, delivering in the way the system expects us to – through busyness and collective strength, based often on consensus and not collaboration.
In a safe environment, it is possible to build something and break it again, enabling us to fail together and building team cohesiveness. Playfulness in the workplace can also address stress and burnout challenges, providing a feeling of safety to experience emotions: ‘If I can laugh with you, I can cry with you’. Playfulness fuels creativity, strengthens relationships, and reduces stress. It makes work more enjoyable, fosters innovation, and builds a cohesive and resilient team. When employees feel energised and engaged through play, they’re more likely to bring their best selves to work, driving both individual and organisational success.
In short, creating the conditions for playfulness at work isn’t just about fun. The transformative power of playfulness combined with the mindset of practice makes progress possible by allowing emergence and iteration, brings people together and builds community. Without this constant iteration of learning, we will never create the conditions for people and business to thrive sustainably.
Thank you for reading.
If this resonates with you please share your thoughts in the comments, and subscribe for more thoughts on human systems.
You can also find more subjects like this in my podcast, Let’s talk Transformation, available on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Podcast.
If you’re looking to build and lead agile ecosystems differently, check out our Human Systems Practitioner course : https://bit.ly/HSP_TFV
