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Adopting Playfulness as a Strategy
Rating: 3.6 out of 5(7 ratings)
858 students
Created byParthajeet Sarma
Last updated 9/2022
English

What you'll learn

  • How to adopt a practical outlook towards combating uncertainties at work and in life
  • Learn the basics of applying 'play' as a mindset within your ecosystem
  • Develop agility in your thinking and the opportunity to make your work and life more agile
  • Understand how to ride the 'unpredictable world' in an age where humans and robots will work together

Course content

1 section • 5 lectures • 36m total length

  • The Predictable World7:08

    The Covid 19 pandemic disrupted human livelihoods and forced organizations and individuals to rapidly reconsider their normal ways of working. As ‘normalcy’ returns, organizations will be under tremendous pressure to make up for lost time possibly through re-evaluating their customer strategies and pursuing aggressive cost-cutting. Likewise, there will be pressure and hardships at an individual level. It will probably involve a change management exercise that we have not seen in our work for so many years around workplace efficiency. It is unprecedented and will require considerable thought as well as coordination among several stakeholders. It will require a change in attitude, at an organizational level as well as an individual level.

    At the core of it is the fact that predictability has been thrown out of our lives.

  • Humans vs Robots6:21

    There has been a raging debate over job losses to robots and if humans will soon have no work to do. Now, if you observe the kind of job losses that we are seeing, there are all linked to tasks that are left-brained, sequential types of work. Work that had predictability, work that meant that if you did something; such and such results will be seen. It is those jobs; or rather functions controlled by the left side of the brain, that has been lost to robots.

    Look at the new kind of jobs and careers that have emerged over the last 10 years. Online Community Manager, SEO Specialist, Blogger, UX Designer, Social Media Manager, Digital Marketing Expert….These jobs did not exist in the early part of this century. Most of these jobs relate to functions controlled by the right side of the brain. Functions related to creativity and to emotions.

  • A Playful Mindset12:22

    Being playful is a mindset that individuals and organizations can adopt. The new generation of employees who are entering the workforce now has adapted well to the uncertain times we live in, and the sooner organizations adapt too, the better it is for them.

    Gen Z is the first fully digital generation. They have grown up as one homogeneous tribe across the world, thanks to being connected with pop culture from their early years. One of the resulting, yet very powerful qualities of this generation is that they have the confidence to be ‘themselves’ wherever they go. They carry their entire 100% self wherever they are, at work or at home. This may be seen as childlike by elders at work or at the University. I think there is much to gain by not looking at their behavior as ‘child-like’, but to appreciate the benefits of an attitude of playfulness that they bring to organizations. They are what they are, and almost in their natural playful self wherever they do. They do not pretend when they are at work.

  • Making Playfulness Work4:36

    Becoming nimble-footed does not come easily within organizations as humans have a natural resistance to change. Moreover, organizations have to abide by norms. So the question is, how does one make Playfulness work at the organizational level? Playfulness as an attitude or strategy at an organizational level works if 3 conditions are fulfilled:

    1. Invitation

    2. Role Models

    3. Mission Alignment

  • The Power of Play5:52

    This is an article on how playfulness works in the workplace.

Requirements

  • This is pertinent for anyone who faces the challenges of unpredictability at work and at home.

Description

From the beginning of the 21st century, predictability in work life has gone out of the window. Predictability and permanency have disappeared from the way businesses are run as well. Be it extremely short product lifecycles or unexpected changes in the business environment caused by a new regulation or something like a Coronavirus, unpredictability is all around us. Almost all of the sequential, logical work with predictable outcomes is today done by robots and algorithms, be it the shop-floor of an automobile manufacturer or micro-level individual tasks. The result of this is that humans are left to deal with work that rarely has a predictable outcome.


So, an approach of ‘sticking to the norms’, that worked even 5 years back, is unlikely to work today, as the norms would have been rendered defunct, thanks to increased robotization. At the workplace, humans have to be adaptive to change, all the time. To survive in this new environment, they have to be agile and nimble footed and willing to unlearn old habits and pick up new skills, all the time. Unlike the single-career professionals of the 20th century, most humans today are expected to have multiple careers in their lifetime.


Being nimble-footed does not come easily as humans have a natural resistance to change. Moreover, as adults, we are taught to adapt to social norms and to be afraid of failure and criticism. The way to overcome this is to be playful. Playful not as being sporty or childish, but to adopt playfulness as a mindset. This course describes the 'why and how' of adopting a playful mindset to combat uncertainty. This can be adopted by organizations and individuals alike.

Who this course is for:

  • Leaders from all areas of business, including HR, strategy and innovation
  • Entrepreneurs/Wanna-be entrepreneurs

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