The Role of Serious Play

What is the role of serious play in the boardroom?

I remember my first real experimentation with play to solve a serious business problem and it occurred way back in 2001.  I was a Senior Strategist with ICE and we were working on the second largest e-commerce initiative in Canada for a packaged travel company (packaged vacations).  We had recently wrapped up a 2 months planning phase that culminated in a dangerously heavy set of bound documentation.

I was approached to attend a meeting with all the top brass on the client side as the Information Architect on the account was concerned that even after all this work there was no clear consensus nor understanding on all the components involved.  This lack of clarity appeared to exist on both sides of the fence. There were so many third party systems, each packaged and altered by additional third parties and no-one could come to a consensus on how to build the solution let alone begin narrowing down features for the 1.0 release.

There was less than an hour before this meeting and I found myself sitting in my office unsure of how to bring clarity where a 2 month process seemed to have failed.  Should I dig out some of the documentation and work through it?  I kept coming back to what was needed.  We lacked a contextual understanding of how all the pieces interacted.  What we needed was a method for both teams to both understand and communicate so as to be able to make tough decisions on where to focus.  What features would be on the table? What experience would/should be deployed?  At what cost internally and externally?

We had to simplify things.  It was then that I acted, trusting only my instinct.  I grabbed the packs of crayons I kept in my desk drawer and headed out to the meeting.  When the Account Director saw me carrying a stack of blank paper and all my crayons, I believe he panicked.  He went on for quite some time before finally handing the floor over to me.

I remember so very clearly standing in front of this room of fully suited executives and puzzled looking agency types.  I placed the paper on the table and dumped the crayons into a giant pile as I began to set the context and outline the instructions for the exercise.  I will never forget the silence that settled over the room.

It was my good friend and client lead Stu who saved the day.  He stood up, the whole room watching him and no one moving.  He proceeded to take off his jacket, hang it over a chair, and move in to "get the best crayons before someone else did."

Within minutes I had a roomful of people hunkered over pieces of paper, scribbling away with their crayons.  Within 30 minutes we had over a dozen drawings up on the wall and everyone was moving around listening as each "artist" explained their drawing.  It was critical that we had pictures from both the client and our agency staff. And it was Stu's drawing that brought the house down.

It showed a stick figure in front of a computer (or so we were informed by the artist whose greatest skill was not drawing).  From here, all of the systems were clearly identified with where they interacted in the ticket purchase process, front of house and back of house.  It caused our technical leads on the project (agency side and client side) to finally nod in agreement.  But this was not the major breakthrough for this project.

There was a strange item with a large wheel and a giant tube coming off of it.  And from this was a line leading to a stick figure horizontal above the ground.  The line continued in a giant arc to what some might say was a plane.  "This is a giant cannon.  And this is a customer being fired from the cannon to the plane where he will take his trip."  We all had a very good laugh.  But this crayon drawing captured the one thing that had never been talked about - that no one knew what happened between when the money was taken, the ticket issued and the vacation began.

And this is where the real opportunity existed for the client to create a Wow experience.  To close the loop pre-flight and post-return.  This was the real breakthrough for the project.

When I run exercises like this today I start earlier in the process for the customer (when they start thinking about a vacation perhaps?).  I also have words to describe the user experience and process lifecycle. But what has remain unchanged is how using simple tools and play can break down problems that prior to the session seemed unapproachable, unknowable or even unsolvable.

Image Source: D'Arcy Norman, Techie Kev

Comments

[Paul McEnany]

Blog number two, eh? You are a better man than I. :)

And this sounds like genius. So what challenge was the table given to draw? Or is that the secret sauce that I have to pay for? :)

[Sean Howard]

@Paul: The secret sauce you have to pay for is my undeniable charm. ;) The challenge was to draw the experience with as many of the touchpoints as possible. And the context was from purchase of a ticket online to getting on the flight to a faraway land.

The group had limited awareness or focus on the process from money received onward - how to support and grow the relationship. The discussion actually brought to light that someone had instigated on-flight surveys at one point but no one in the room had immediate access to this data nor were we aware of it on the agency side after 2 months of work. Oy.

[Ellen]

Sean, please write more of these experiences. I really like where this blog is going. I'm sure more people would like to learn and share those "Oh my God", "Deer in the Headlights", "I'm gonna die!" moments.

This is a much more fun way to get the overall goals stated, and then prove that the designers should do the actual designing. Bravo!

[Ben Kunz]

Brilliant, and risky.

Maybe this worked because you broke the business-minds out of their usually meeting routine. So much of communication in meetings is tied to the ritual context -- speak, argue, think of response, or sit through PowerPoint. Everyone falls into a feedback loop in their own mind, reviewing their prejudiced and isolated points of view.

Forcing people to change the medium in which they communicate in such a meeting -- crayons, in this case -- may have unblocked the minds.

Can't wait to try this. But I'll be sure to find a client whom I won't think will fire me :)

[Sean Howard]

@Ellen: Thanks, Ellen! It was a lot of fun. I've spent way too little time with crayons these past couple of years.

@Ben: I think you are right. The routine defines the process and the outcomes. Playing with crayons also frees people up to not worry about the outcomes so much. ie: There's always one artist in the group but everyone else is drawing the same bizarre stick figure shapes so everyone is drawing silly diagrams together. I think you hit on something with "may have unblocked the minds". Could this be the role of fun? Could it be that people are suddenly using new parts of their brains AND having fun which suddenly gives them the opportunity to look at things a bit differently?

[Mees]

Rock Band...playing and singing simultaneously...new parts of brain being used...fun being had...prodigal drummer is born. Woes of the world soon to fall to my twirling drumsticks. Play works!!!

[Ellen]

@Sean - regarding your comment to Ben: Is it really about "unblocking minds", or could it be something simpler? Sometimes when a presentation looks too "finished", it doesn't invite constructive comments from the group. The crayons and stick figures certainly don't look finished, a person couldn't have spent much time drawing it, and as such it looks less "precious." The net effect is one of mutual creation rather than the presentation of something that the presenter has spent much more time thinking about than the audience.

What do you think?

[Ben Kunz]

@Ellen @Sean - I think human minds become *more* responsive when given *changes* in stimuli. A new food aroma or new pop tune catches us and wakes us up; the same old recipe or pop hit played 20 times has the inverse effect, dulling our senses.

Taking people out of communication context is destabilizing and yet invigorating. This is probably an evolutionary defense; when the damn big saber-toothed cat lunges over the ridge, you wake up fast, even if you never saw one before.

Ellen, you have a good point that engaging viewers in mutual creation is also stimulating. In the ideal world, shaking the mind gently by changing routine, and giving them a tool to respond, are two tools to break through.

Let's call it "Recess" :)

[Sean Howard]

@Ellen: Yes. The unfinished nature of any exercise is critical to freeing up people's ability to participate. I'm reading Tom Kelley's "The Ten Faces of Innovation" and they struggled with what you speak about as well. They now present multiple low-res prototypes as quickly as possible. The low res nature forces comments but also allows the client to grab some tape and participate. But also that by having multiple ideas it shows that they are not precious about it. They don't yet have the "final recommended" solution.

@Ben: The challenge is always in how to create excitement in new stimuli vs. deletion and removal. As an outside consultant we have a great opportunity to bring people into new areas. One of my first teachers used to ask one question at the start of every session of her psycho-analysis course. "What's new?" At first it was laughed at. By the end it had transformed us into actually NOTICING and enjoying what is new every day in our lives. I love the term "recess". I think I'm going to do what I do with all things I love - Steal it. ;)

[Gavin Heaton]

Excellent. Dangerous. Glad it wasn't me leading it!

You probably know both Johnnie Moore and Chris Corrigan who do some interesting stuff in this space (workshop facilitation methods etc).

[Oyster Lee]

Just like Ellen, I love these types of stories...
Do you remember what you were wearing in this room of fully suited executives? ... I am imagining you wore flip flops.

[Sean Howard]

@OysterDude: LOL.

I wish I had been in flip flops and a tie-die shirt. "The Dude" gear, to borrow from the greatest Coen Brother's movie ever, IMO.

Reality is I was likely in slacks with a bad shirt and scuffed up dockers. ;)

[Susan Abbott]

great post! It takes real bravery to open the box of crayons. Love it.