The power of play: how to unleash your creative superpower

My friend stopped me mid-whine to talk about the benefits of ‘Lego Serious Play,’ which had won my friend over.

It turns out their company had recently invested in Serious Play – a facilitation method that gets people to literally build ideas, and encourage creative thinking and collaboration – to solve important challenges. And it seemed to work. This begs the question: if this approach gets results, why isn’t play more valued in the world of work?

All this has got me reflecting on the last two years, our experiences of lockdown and the importance of play for adults as well as children in that time. Could it hold the key to unlocking better creativity at work?

We’re only a Google away from proof that grown-ups benefit from even the most childlike forms of play. For many, lockdown meant much more time sharing in practical play with youngsters. From fort-building to storytelling, research suggests that adult and child brains are literally ‘on the same wavelength’ during these activities. Playing loosens inhibitions, floods the brain with positive chemicals and opens channels that are responsible for prediction, language processing and sensitivity to social cues.

This, I think, goes some way to explaining why the UK saw a whopping 62% of adults engage in computer and online gaming since mid-2020. Whether driven by a need for escapism or social connection, lockdown gaming helped us practice some of the skills we’d normally show in our professional lives – pursuing mutual goals, allocating shared resources and team troubleshooting, for example.

If play is such an instinctive, shared and human path to creativity and problem-solving, how can we adopt practical play, play through technology – or even the creative benefits reaped from solitude in the workplace? And how can we reverse the ingrained idea that, despite so many of us getting into this industry because it promised creativity and fun, play has no place at work?

Here are a few starter-for-10 thoughts on the subject.

Broaden your creative landscape

Much of creativity comes down to making connections: connections between things, ideas, people, concepts, images – whatever. Creative people aren’t just good at making connections – they’re good at exploring and gathering ideas that will form a diverse ‘bank’ of stimuli upon which connections can be made. Feed people’s curiosity. Give them time to explore passions, interests and responses to your world in culture. In group sessions, encourage connection-making by exposing them to surprising and diversionary stimuli – music and memory are great starting points.

Visualize problems (and solutions)

When looking at a problem (creative, organizational or otherwise), ask people to respond to the problem first by representing the challenge itself visually, and then the solution in the same way. Let them do this in their own way (drawing artistically, creating a flow chart or constructing something in three dimensions, for example). In representing something conceptual physically, people begin to understand, reflect on and connect with problems in dramatically new ways. It creates better dialogue and deeper, more innovative solutions.

Make problem-solving a cooperative, egoless game

More and more board games these days are cooperative rather than competitive: they bring people together to win as a team. Think about bringing this feeling to tackling creative or professional challenges. The simplest of techniques – ‘that’s great, and...’ – helps to create equal and productive creative paces where problem-solving is cooperative and gamified. It’s easy: one person puts forward an idea, the next says ‘that’s great, and...’ before building on it – and so on.

Embrace ‘build, test, learn’

Traditional, linear ways of tackling challenges or running projects naturally put intense periods of work under pressure to deliver products or ideas that are flawless right away. That’s fine, but all too often this way of working bakes fear into the process and doesn’t allow for runaway creativity or working at speed. There’s another way: don’t let your people worry about their answers being perfect right off the bat. Encouraging them to be instinctive, to build simple products or ideas without worrying if they’re going to fail (before testing and refining them), is essentially putting them into a playful mindset that will drive creativity that is faster and generates better outcomes.

Make it real for everyone

Some companies schedule time for play – although it might seem radical, there are alternative ways to encourage people to bring play into their working lives. Make this about everyone – everyone in your business has problems to solve – and give them simple ideas and techniques to help them engage more deeply with ideas and in more surprising ways.

Make the case to leadership

There’s evidence that allowing people to engage in playfulness at work drives better outcomes: more productivity and a more engaged workforce. Getting agreement at the highest level will help unlock time- and spaceless traditional styles of working.

Instinctively most of us feel play has no place at work – ‘it’s not for us, it’s for the kids’ – but play alters the brain’s chemistry, whoever you are and at whatever age. It helps the hemispheres work together, forges connections and surfaces memories – all wonderful catalysts of creative solutions to all kinds of problems. It makes us happier and more effective too. It’s more than worth its place in the creative toolbox.