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Slides and Infographic

Here is a summary of the games landscape.

See slides session summary for more

Games Landscape and Importance of Play – Keynote

This is 45 minutes so you may want to flag this for when you have time to watch the whole thing.

More Agile Games 2012 Videos

Here are photos and videos from Agile Games 2012.

Keynote Take-Aways – What people said

Learnings

• Play helps us get into the state of flow. The opposite of play as depression.
• When the going gets tough, get playing
• Games as a way of learning & using games to learn
• 1) Games->flow->happiness 2)games->happiness
• Celebrate imperfection
• Courage to play games ‘!’
• You need a safe environment to promote play.

Actions

• Thinking about building play skills
• Look for more ways to gameify work
• Figure out more opportunities to play for work
• Trying to instill a more relaxed atmosphere by getting a little more playful attitude
• Look into Lego Serious Play
• Find ways to make my work more like playing. Increase the amount of play in my life. Think about what I liked to do when I played as a child and bring that back.
• Our teams don’t play enough games, it’s important to introduce more!
• There were some games from Tasty Cupcakes I would like to try with my team
• Read/watch Brene Brown talk/book about shame

Here is my Games Landscape Infographic and slides from my Agile Games 2012 keynote presentation.

Overview

Play is a powerful tool for achieving business results. A common question is, how can I do this in my current work environment? The purpose of this talk is to orient you to a variety of different ways that you can introduce play to solve real-world problems. Whether you are a leader, coach, and even individual contributor, there are ways to amplify the workplace with play.

Welcome to a guided tour of the play landscape. This guided tour will help you navigate the different techniques with the space of games and play in order to see how they can help you. We will start our journey with ways to harness the power of play through games to do valuable work. Next stop is about using games for accelerated, deep learning. At the peak of the tour we visit the ways we can develop our play skills. The final stop on our tour is how to embedded play into our work contexts.

At the end of the tour you will have a map for exploring play and perhaps even a burning curiousity about some newly discovered places.

Importance of Play

For the infographic on Stuart Brown’s book on Play, please refer to The Science of Play.

The Games Landscape

Presentation Slides

Play is critical for creativity and innovation. It is something we cultivate in high-performance teams.

Stuart Brown literally wrote the book on it – Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and invigorates the Soul. It is the tale of a medical doctor who could not ignore the importance of play in the lives of people and the tragedies that result from a lack of play.

Consider the visual note below that captures features of the book that helped me better understand the science of play.   The characteristics of play are that it is voluntary, fun, and results in a flow state of mind.

Play is the foundation of Creativity and Innovation. Our ability to take risks and learn from mistakes are key to innovation. To do this we must be able to play in safety.

Play is innate to animals and humans. Brown shares the science around play being a driving force for learning. Animals (in particular, mammals) use play when young to develop cognitive and social skills. Humans are special in that they play through life. In part this allows us to continue to learn through life. Neoteny describes our trait of retaining youthful characteristics.

Perhaps the most important point is that Work and Play go hand in hand. Play is an enabler of work, not the opposite. The opposite of play is depression. ”All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” And by dull, we mean unable to support the creativity needed to accomplish challenging tasks. “When the going gets tough, the tough go play.” And I know that I use StrategicPlay® with Lego® to solve really big challenges.

If you thinking about building up your play muscles, the place to start is with your play history: think about what got you really excited when you were a kid. There are questions in book if you want to explore further.

It’s no wonder, I am such a big fan of games for learning and doing work.

Curious to learn more? You can start with the TED talk below or pick up the book.

Play is essential for innovation and high-performance teams. And games can help us get there.

Jane McGonigal has written a fabulous book, “Reality is Broken: Why games make us better and how they can change the world.” In it she explores large-scale online games that are part of the commercial video game industry as well as ones about producing direct real-world benefits.

As is my usual want, I prepared the visual note below to capture the most important aspects of the book to me.

Jane defines a games as having four important characteristics: a goal, rules, a feedback system (so people know whether they are reaching their goals) and voluntary participation. I found the last characteristic very interesting. With Agile and Scrum in particular we promote self-organizing teams where people sign up for work rather than having it assigned. In fact, many facets of Agile make work more like play. The principle of voluntary participation also aligns with good management practices such as “treat everyone like a volunteer”.

I really like how play and being in a state of flow is differentiated from it’s opposite: depression. I just love the definition of play and flow as an “intense, optimistic engagement with the world around us.”

Jane paints a compelling picture of the capabilities and talents of video game players. She states that young adults will have had the 10,000 hours or practice needed to become experts at pro-social collaboration skills through playing video games. Gamers with this level of skill – a superpower – can collectively accomplish great things.

I used to think games were the cat’s meow, but now I see them as just one way to help people reach a state of flow through play (see: Three Ways to Use Play for Business Results). For me (at work), games are a means to an end. At home, one goal is having fun; another is bonding with the people I play with.

The most fun fact I found in the book was: “75% of executives play games at work”. Usually to take a break and relieve stress.

But the BEST of all was learning about and playing SuperBetter to up my game in dealing with some challenges in my personal life. If you are struggling with anything, perhaps you might like to play this game for the win.

If you haven’t already seen Jane’s TED talk – Gaming can make a better world – I highly recommend it.

Play is a profoundly powerful tool for achieving business results. I think of three main ways to accomplish this: Using explicit play to do work, using play for learning, and building people’s play muscles.

Consider the following diagram:

Play for Work

The goal is here is to take difficult, boring, unproductive work  and create great results through play. In the diagram, I give a few examples of how to make work through play:

• Innovation Games® have a proven track record of using play to help companies understand their customers and build innovative products.
• Planning Poker is a well-established team based estimation technique that is now complemented by other estimation games.
• Lego® Strategic Play® is a hands-on activity for solving tough problems, team development and creating company strategy.
• The world of facilitation provides a host of engaging activities from team retrospectives to Open Space.

For more information, check out some ways I help clients with bring play to work.

Play for Learning

I have been very involved in games to assist people learning about Agile, Lean, etc. I made a helpful diagram that shows different types of games and what they can be used for. Probably the best place to go to find a game is TastyCupcakes.org – it’s a community-driven and has an ever-growing collection of games. I even volunteer my time to make it better for everyone – that’s how much I care and believe in play as a powerful dynamic.

Of course, play goes well beyond Agile through folks such as training master Thiagi and GameStorming. (Both are on my to-learn list)

Building Play Skills

What if you want to build the skills of your team or organization to harness play as part of daily work? To have play and creativity permeate everyone and everything? For this, your best bet comes from dramatic techniques such as ArtfulMaking and DramaTech. Also, strongly recommended are Improv skills. You may notice that these are not just about creativity, they are also about listening and collaboration as an added bonus.

For results, play on!

I recently realized that my use of Agile Games for learning and doing work is part of something much more profound: play. This is one way to support the creation of  high-performance teams and companies. When work is play, people are engaged and businesses get great results.

Stuart Brown shares an insightful quote:

The opposite of play is not work, it’s depression.

In the following TedX video, Stuart Brown explains the importance of play.

Key Take-Aways

• Lot’s of great science on the importance of play for learning and development.
• Play is hard-wired into our brains (stories of Polar Bear with Husky and Mother with infant)
• Use of play skills in children is critical for adult development of problem solving skills. In particular, play involving hands is key.

For more information, there is Stuart’s book Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul

Many thanks to Yves Hanoulle who first shared this with me.