Are you playing at work?

When was the last time you played at work? When was your creativity pushed to the brink in the middle of the day?

Frog Design, a global innovation design firm, held a workshop at our Current Fellows Conference in January. In a session entitled “Sketch Jam,” froggers, as they refer to themselves, showed us that you can use “sketching” to help you visualize pretty much anything—regardless of your ability to draw.  From mapping out a newsletter, to helping someone learn how to use your product, to figuring out how to teach someone a new skill, sketching is a universal tool that can create conversation without any words at all.

We’re going to try this at Echoing Green and we challenge you to do that same:

• Ask a simple question—perhaps related to a project you are trying to tackle, or a new product you are trying to launch;

• Find a white board, a chalk board, or even some large white paper;

• Find some markers (preferably non-permanent for that white board);

• Grab your team during your lunch hour, hand them a question and get to sketching—no rules, no holds bar.

Then, step back and see what happens—not just in those first few hours after the sketch jam, but the next week and the one after. Try the exercise again, but ask someone else to lead. Pull in other teams. Design an entirely different way to sketch—use office supplies to fit a square peg in a round whole.

These gatherings can lead those magical moments that allow those unguarded, unfettered ideas to surface. But not only that, they connect us back to why we are doing what we are doing—even if we don’t realize it. In a recent Harvard Business Review blogpost, Tony Golsby-Smith advocated for more conversations, and fewer meetings. A conversation is democratic; they allow us to substitute questions for agenda items and, better than anything, they give you a chance to play!

Dan Pink also provides an interesting viewpoint in this TED talk about the science of motivation. Study after study shows that financial incentives do not lead to the most innovative ideas. For most of us, this comes as a big surprise. More money, more productivity..no? Turns out, autonomy, mastery, and purpose are the building blocks to driving motivation and stimulating innovation.

• Autonomy: the urge to direct our own lives

• Mastery: the desire to get better and better at something that matters

• Purpose: the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

Don’t we all want these qualities to be a part of our work lives? So, go on play a little…it’s bound to give your work a lot more purpose, and a whole lot better.

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