How do you use playfulness and LEGO® to make an impact on something as serious as climate change? 

Lucy Hawthorne is the founder of Climate Play. She is a facilitator, LEGO® Serious Play® practitioner and campaigner at heart. She was an environmental campaigner and a social issues campaigner for about 15 years, helping ban fracking in the UK before starting Climate Play.

Despite this success she was able to reflect that ultimately they weren't deeply changing people's minds and hearts on the issues. 

Through Climate Play they create conversations, events and actions that people actually want to be involved in rather than only feeling like they should.

Things to consider

• Play isn’t being super extroverted - it’s having a sense of humour.
• Playfulness and perfectionism are complete opposites.
• “Outcomes are not meant to be playful, but our process is.” - Yana Buhrer Tavanier
• Make play accessible
• Practicing playfulness is an ongoing journey
• The need to be light footed, create space for experimentation, and try different ways of doing things
• Playfulness is about giving people choice and agency

Links

• Lucy Hawthorne LinkedIn
• Climate Play
• Yana Buhrer Tavanier - How to recover from activism burnout
• Carol Dweck - Growth Mindset
• Catherine Wilkes’ Shoopery

Have you ever entered a meeting and instantly been set up to fail? Do organizations really want to change or just be seen to change? 

Consultants also get stuck in this game where they want to bring in more play and creativity and the organization thinks they should change but won’t.

This is a challenge that Steve Chapman has encountered many times and has to overcome “vanilla compromises” that leads to no change. 

He does this through compassion and care, improvisation and subtle tactics like changing the space used. 

Steve is an artist, writer, and speaker interested in creativity and the human condition. He's spoken around the world on the subject of creativity and culture and worked with over 80 organizations in many sectors to help free them from ever tightening loops of common sense.

He holds an MSC with distinction in organization's culture and change, and has held roles of visiting faculty on a number of MSC programs at Ashridge Business School, the Meno Institute, and Ruffy Park as an artist. He sold his work across seven continents, exhibited alongside the lights of Pablo Picasso and David Trigg, and has held a number of successful solo exhibitions in Central London, Hampshire.

Things to consider

• What is the difference between work and life?
• How do we get paid more for the things that feel like play?
• Can compromise lead to something that makes no difference
• Nietzche sums it up for Steve, “learning to see the world as strange makes us un home in the everyday and thereby restores it as a potential place of wonder.”
• Learn to see the world as strange. 
• Ask curious questions.

Links

• Escape from Freedom, Erich Fromm
• Barry Mason, Safe Uncertainty
• Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice, Shunryu Suzuki
• The (Not A) Lost Cat Project
• Sound of Silence Podcast
• Arny Mendell
• Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace, Gordon MacKenzie
• Can Scorpions Smoke

What is the point of play? Is it just acting like a child at work?

Nicole has grown children's brands, Ella's Kitchen and worked at informal creative agencies, and also in corporate environments. 

She has identified over the course of her career 10 key qualities that make up a child's lens on business framework that Nicole shares in detail in this episode. 

Nicole believes the whole point of play is to have no point. It is not frivolous. It is a vehicle for connection that can have important benefits for employers including staff retention through greater relationships, willingness to collaborate, general wellbeing and happiness and ultimately better results flow from it.

“Play is like magic tea!” Nicole extols.

But it is NOT just having playful games to be done between the doldrums of work. In this episode explore the definition of play and its deeper meaning beyond just fun in the workplace and the results it will bring. 

Discussion highlights:

• The role of play in creating connections and fostering better communication
• The benefits of incorporating playfulness in both personal and professional settings
• Overcoming barriers to play in corporate environment
• Applying a child's lens to business brings qualities such as confidence, creativity, resilience, and collaboration.

Key things to consider

• Creating a culture that encourages creativity and innovation can have a transformative effect on an organization.
• Playfulness has to be embedded in the culture. It should be integrated into the culture of an organization rather than treated as a separate activity.
• Having playful areas at work to use between work is not being playful at work
• To be playful at work and access your playful side, look through the eyes of a child
• A positive and inclusive organizational culture should encourage creativity, innovation, and collaboration
• A supportive culture can significantly impact employee engagement, productivity, and overall company success