Ace thinks play is wonderful. He sees it as explorative and unstructured, where we scan the world in which we exist and see all of the opportunities to push, prod, dig and learn.

Scott thinks play is annoying and that playfulness is where it’s at.  

Despite disagreeing on these fundamentals Scott and Ace work together at Envoy providing executive guidance; supporting partnership negotiations; facilitating leadership retreats; guiding strategic planning; and mediating conflict.  

They teach these disciplines through talks, workshops, and executive programs.

In this episode, we delve into the power of building momentum and playfulness (or play) in the way we work work. Our guests share experiences and thoughts on how intentional and regular doses of play and laughter can transform our approach to challenges and create a positive environment where different kinds of conversations can emerge.

Their work involves building partnerships and exploring the intersection of technology, behavioral economics, and psychology. While Scott and Ace are experts in handling tough conversations they bring a lightness and playfulness to the way they do it  - they take the work seriously but not themselves. 

Discussion Highlights:

• When a stickman starts doing the YMCA dance during a serious tech demonstration, highlighting the inherent joy of playfulness.
• The impact of intentional play in loosening people up and facilitating discussions about opportunities, risks, and privacy in partnership contexts.
• The importance of consistently nurturing playfulness rather than resorting to it as a last-ditch effort.
• The value of momentum and creating space for play in our lives, allowing us to tap into it when needed most.
• How play and playfulness can be a great way to shift energy

Things to consider

• Is being skeptical about play at work just being a curmudgeonly bastard?
• Where do you find flow most often?
• When you are using your energy to deal with serious issues you don’t have the energy to take yourself seriously.
• Building momentum and intentionally incorporating playfulness into our lives creates a reservoir of joy and resilience that we can tap into when facing challenges.
• Play is not a desperate last resort; it's a powerful tool that should be nurtured regularly to enhance creativity, problem-solving, and overall well-being

Links

• Envoy
• Scott Wayne LinkedIn
• Ace Callwood LinkedIn
• Envoy Recorded Radio

Get in touch!

Make Work Play

Playfilled

Hello and welcome to the show.

My name's Lucy Taylor from Make Work Play an organization on a

mission to use the power of play to unlock potential and possibility.

and I'm Zuki Stewart from Playfield, A startup helping

organizations to enable everyone to rediscover their creativity through

playful wonder and serendipity.

Together we are.

Why Playworks?

The podcast that speaks to people radically reshaping

the idea of work as play.

Today I'll be speaking to the comedy duo that is Ace Callwood

and Scott Wayne, directors at Envoy, a consulting firm that investigates

and influences human decision making, although they're reluctant to admit

it, there's a seam of playfulness that runs through the work they do.

A spent the early part of his career building tech

companies such as Painless 10 99 attacks and finance platform for

freelancers and profitability.

One of time magazine's top 50 sites of 2013.

He's been the entrepreneur in residence at his alma Mater School

of Business, a thoughtful facilitator and d e I practitioner for nearly

a decade and has held several board positions across nonprofit,

government and academic entities.

A teacher skills such as aligning motives for success and connection,

integrating d e I into core business functions, generating ideas for optimal

solutions, and building deep partnerships.

Scott having developed his craft in international relations

at the London School for Economics and Georgetown University's.

Foreign service works through the realms of finance, award-winning consultancy

firms, and representing the interest of the British government as a diplomat.

at the center of it all is Scott's obsession with

investigating the why of decisions and shaping them for better outcomes.

He's dedicated to investigating opportunities.

Building partnerships and negotiating outcomes that provide

stability and fuel growth.

His engagements teach conflict navigation, stakeholder research,

building strategic alliances, and empathetic communication among others.

In this episode, we explore how play can loosen people

up to allow for a different kind of conversation to take place, play as

a form of energy, and how Pringles can be the gift that keeps on giving.

So Ace and Scott, welcome to the show.

It is so nice to have you here.

How you doing?

Good.

Thanks for having us.

Thank you.

Lucy and Lucy, thank you for making this podcast because today is clothing optional

day at the studio, and um, so everybody's just benefiting from this being audio.

Are we allowed to say we've opted out clothing or was that

just implied and I could've

So I see we, we've like

let's say things that are,

started as we need to go on.

Suddenly, she's like, let's do that again.

Let's do that from the top.

No, no.

Let's keep going, please.

So listener, just to let you know, I can see their video,

even though you can't see it.

It's not a good sight.

You're, you're welcome.

By, uh, to, to both Lucy and listeners for whatever vantage

point you have, you're all welcome.

Poor listener, lucky listener.

Yeah.

Let's go.

So I'd love it if we could start by you telling me what the word

play or playfulness means to you.

I would imagine we thought the same thing

when that question was posed.

Um, no.

I, I, for me, play, play is exploration, , and un unstructured often.

scanning the world in which we exist and seeing all of the opportunities

to push and prod and dig and learn.

Um, and that, that sounds, I think, heady.

Uh, but that's properly how I think about playing.

It's just what might.

What could be, what might be, and can we go find that out, um, in whatever

way feels appropriate right now.

So it's part spontaneity, part exploration, and, and, uh, that's how

I think about it or feel it at least.

I think they're different.

Okay.

I, I think of play as sort of little annoying actually.

Huh.

And playfulness being wonderful.

So I think players like, okay, everybody we're gonna play Now.

I think of playgrounds at school, primary school, every,

everybody's gotta go out and play.

And you'd sort of go do those things that you're, you know, games.

Mm-hmm.

Which is fun, but it's more like a sport.

You play a sport, you play a board game, you play a video game,

but playfulness, it's like, oh, I'm just, I'm toying with it.

There might be something in this, like, let's see if there's something.

And even actually thinking of as a kid.

Mm-hmm.

I think playfulness is more fun than play.

Play Playfulness is like, oh, could we build a ENT out of these sticks?

Down in the farmer's field play is just, oh, we're just running around playing tag.

I think, I think you're completely wrong.

What shock us?

Yeah.

No, I, I think it's the i playfulness is the, that's the forced fake, like we're

not getting the work done kind of thing.

And play for me can be in the context of.

Your environment, you're setting.

And so I, I think play as applied to work is more interesting

to me than playfulness.

Well it's interesting.

Yeah, cuz I think we're both leaning into how this has being come to

hack me phrases, isn't that, that everybody's, oh we need to be more

playful, we need more like, play at work.

And it's sort of like insert innovation five years ago or empathy

for the past couple of years.

We just need to empathize more now.

Let me tell you what I want.

Yeah.

Great job there.

Alright.

The Innovation Committee.

I always loved those.

Okay.

Well, the Chief Happiness Officer, have you been into a building where

they have one of those and it's some miserable looking receptionist?

so Scott, you sound like a bit of a, you sound like a

bit of a skeptic about play at work.

Tell me about that.

I think you mispronounced curmudgeony bastard, but yeah.

like, was that the right answer?

Well, cause it's like, it's a bit like saying something.

Everybody's like sort of bought into this like, quality of

employee engagement and stuff.

It's, I, I think it's separate.

I think there's, there's time for creativity, but I'm not

totally sold and Lucy will probably yell at me at some point.

On like on work being, work, being play.

Cuz I think leisure is play and work is work.

That's why I get paid for it.

I know, I, I don't mean that in that I want work to be enjoyable and I

want work to be satisfying, but I am a little bit of a, and I guess that

a lot of it becomes definitionally around what we mean by these phrases

of play and playfulness that.

The idea that there's a massive difference between a great place to

work and a great place to do great work.

And I think they're very different and we don't talk about the difference

enough, a great place to work.

It's like, oh, and I get, I get free breakfast and free lunch and there's

a, there's a baby foot table and air hockey and you know, we get these

interesting, we do karaoke, happy hours and whatever else, which actually

sounds hell to me, honest, but,

but I also think Silicon Valley, No.

Well, but I'm not sure it's commo.

I, I present it as commo.

I'm gonna enjoy that.

I'm not sure it's commo.

I think it's a little bit about that sometimes these play playful environments,

these fun environments are used to disguise really meaningless work.

I think there's a correlation between companies, especially tech

companies that have all of these.

Like benefits and presenters being really fun, meaningful work,

but really they're disguising.

It's just very tedious code you're writing that is transferring wealth

from one place to another, not really making a big difference,

I think you are onto something really interesting

there cuz I would agree.

I think it can mask a lot and I think there's something really interesting

about purpose and thing and work, feeling like play, not in the gimmicky

sense, but in that sense of like, Flow and where it feels easy and enlivening.

Flo, you said, oh God, here, you just gave

him a soapbox on your podcast.

No, but we can we, can we play with this because.

as much as like we talked too clear, you just said, can we play with this?

Not, can we be playful around?

I did tonight.

But that's so, I think that's okay.

Yeah, no, I did, that's a great point As much as I'm a curmudgeon,

we laugh at work all the time.

Yeah.

Like I talk about, I wish there were recruitment websites where,

you know, you rate how much you like the boss and whether you

feel included in all those things.

And it just had a scale of like, how often do you laugh?

Mm-hmm.

And laughter just, we just laugh all the time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or, or frequently.

Not all the time.

And we work on some really serious stuff.

And very sensitive stuff, but, but the humor doesn't, it's not a jolly

laughter, I, I think the, I think these words are fascinating difference

but flow where you are playing flow, where you're like playing an instrument

as part of an orchestra or you are playing a sports game and it, you just

connect with the rest of the team.

That's an interesting, where, where do you find flow most often, do you think?

In the room when we're facilitating, especially if there's two facilitators.

Yeah, I literally, I was at a Hanukkah party last night and had this conversation

about having two facilitators and Lucy, you and I have, have had the pleasure

of doing some work together and what I find is really smart people who.

the, the way you said, but can we play with that for a second?

Mm-hmm.

Like, that is how I think of play when I say exploration.

Yeah.

It's Can we dig, can we prod, can we go further into that without knowing what

the end goal is going to be, or without knowing what we're gonna glean from it.

But there is something interesting there.

Can we go play with it?

Like that's how I think And that's why you don't like playful cuz it's too light.

Yeah.

Playful is not, is not serious.

Like for me, play as an extension.

And so even when you said, uh, work is work and leisure is not, I disagree.

I, but I, I, when I talked about scanning, it's because I see the world as there's

an opportunity to inform how we exist.

And how we hone and how we get better.

Every, when I'm driving my vintage truck, it's, that's play for me, but that's also

informing how you have to listen to the thing and know where it's going, which

informs how I go into a room with clients as we're facilitating and you listen

and you wait, and you just like feel.

The thing like that for me is all, all of that connectivity is play.

And so I I, we were talking before the podcast, the three of us, about.

Not unplugging well, or at least I don't, I don't get the holiday.

I'm an American, so you know, I just work all the time.

Um, but, but what I define as work, like being in the motorcycle shop

here at the office, again, motorcycle shop in our office, for me, going

out there and tinkering Sure, I'll take a client call, but I'll like.

Fix the machine.

And that's recharging.

It's recalibrating.

It's not time off.

I'm working on a thing.

But it is fun.

It's exploration, it's scanning, it's informing, learning and playing.

And so like that interconnectivity, I think, lends itself to flow.

Knowing the two of you, I know you're constantly inhaling.

Just things from your environment and that informs how we can play and where

flow I think happens when, when I'm feeling flow working with the two of you.

That's, that's kind of where it comes from.

I think.

Yeah, I,

Can we pause for a minute?

I hadn't realized you were American.

Are you an American?

I, well, bloody help.

Depends on who's asking.

Okay.

Sorry, Lucy.

Were you gonna say something, Scott?

Always.

I was gonna say, I'm realizing that one, I'm,

I'm full of nonsense, aren't I?

Cuz I said separating, you know, work from leisure and we had just

been having a conversation before this call about how I don't like

taking time off cuz I love my work.

Um, but I'm maybe what I'm, maybe what I'm wrestling with is mediocrity.

Mm.

Is that, is, that's why I was intrigued by your hard play versus playfulness.

Yeah.

Is that we are drowning in.

We really are just drowning in mediocrity.

We are like corporately.

We societally.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Corporately particularly, we've become like the chain restaurant, the good

chain restaurant in instead of the neighborhood diner or greasy spoon and

the boutique restaurant, we've just like landing in the middle and claiming

it's the best and it's not, it's dire.

And so I talk about this, like I, I talk a lot about the

slot, like the, the people who.

Declare that they're creative or innovative tend to be just upper

mediocre and we are restricting.

And maybe that's my pushback.

It's the idea of like forced fun versus giving people the tools

to really dive into something.

That's how you are using play.

Get into it.

It's okay.

Make some mistakes, push it around.

Um, versus the and yeah, but that's never resonated with

No, and I love that idea of using play or, or play as a

means of achieving something great.

So finding your way into that state that allows you to do something great.

And I'm really interested cuz you, I know you at Envoy do great work

and it's really, and when I met you I was like, who are these?

This, what is this comedy duo?

They were facilitating an a very serious online meeting and I said to my

colleague, man, we've gotta up our game.

Like they were, you were, you know, had this great, very, in my

view, playful rapport going on.

Um, so it's really interesting to me that you don't naturally associate

yourselves as being playful.

Cuz I immediately were like, these guys are so playful.

So there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a well

documented phenomenon of comics being.

Depressive.

Right.

That's a thing.

And I, it's interesting because I, when you asked us to do this podcast, I was

like, oh yeah, we'll do this cuz we're, we're always laughing and joking around.

And then I started thinking about it.

I was actually, I, I actually find this quite a serious subject.

Yeah.

And that it's being, there's a risk of it being bastardized and industrialized.

But yes, so we walk in every morning, we see each other six days a week, probably,

probably on average, and talk eight.

The, the retort is always one of us saying, good morning, darling.

The other good morning honey, which often makes lights.

It's very nervous when he see us in the room.

Um, but it's sort of just setting that tone of there are gonna

be things that are passing.

Our messaging systems emphasis on that because we don't even have client

senders emails for most of the stuff.

It's on encrypted systems because it's very, very delicate, sensitive, often in

international affairs or it's marketly sensitive, very serious stuff, and it's

sort of setting this tone of there's only enough energy if we're gonna take

the issues really, really seriously.

We don't have time to take ourselves seriously.

No, we don't have the the, the energy bandwidth.

Yeah, the mental energy.

Or the intellectual energy.

Or the emotional energy to take ourselves too

seriously.

And, um, I see that as an in an inadvertent competitive advantage

relative to our competitors who take themselves very bloody.

Seriously.

Um,

Yeah.

No, no

yeah, that's really interesting to me.

So you are taking the work really seriously and not taking yourselves

seriously, one as a means of protecting your own energy.

But I feel like in doing that, you are unlocking something.

Like, what do you think?

That approach unlocks in groups and insensitive situations.

for one, I, I, I'd put maybe 90% on energy conservation.

10% is propaganda.

Um, 10% is, Hey, nobody else would do this.

But because of the caliber and the kinda types of work we do, the

fact that we did that ridiculous thing and got away with it.

Actually gives us another leg up.

So to Scott's like, I'm, I'm just gonna own that.

Like, it's at least partially propaganda.

I know that if we pull this off, if we thread the needle, well if we get away

with it, that's better for our business.

So like, yeah.

Let me just, let me own that.

There's like a, if you are, if you are, I think there's something, if you are

confident enough to be fools publicly and.

Humiliate yourself, humiliate yourselves.

We never humiliate other people.

Then you must be really, really good at what you do.

Now that's up for debate.

That might just be spin.

We might be playing this.

Yeah.

But I do think that comes across and for the, for the counterparts

we work with those grants management consultants and strategy consultants

and investment bankers that are frequently in the rooms that we're in.

It is, it does make you vulnerable when you are taking yourself really

seriously, cuz the slightest chip.

In that armor and you are humiliated.

Whereas if, um, if we are not, if we're able to laugh at ourselves early in

a boardroom session or whatever we're working on, then expectations are set.

The quality work is gonna be great.

I wanna be very specific about how minimal that propaganda piece is.

I think it's just innate to me at least.

I won't speak to Scott, although I know his humor.

And so there's like a slapstick element to Scott.

Scott laughs the most when somebody has gotten hurt.

And that's, somebody is often me.

He's dying right now.

Like there is nothing funny, right?

Somebody walking into something is, or spilling Pringles in their bag.

There's no better color beyond the keystone cops.

Oh, can we talk about that though?

Yeah.

So, so just a few weeks ago, Lucy, you were supposed to be with us.

We, we didn't manage to connect.

We were, we, we were in Brussels.

We're in the station.

And, um, we were, we were exhausted, so we'd put ourself in first class on

the Eurostar and we're in that fancy sort of business lounge, just on a gig.

It had gone really well, big international thing, and Ace had with him a whole

tube of Pringles and he, he opened it.

No, it was in his bag and as I, I had opened it the night before he opened it,

and as he pulled it out, it like the, his bag sort of caught the lip and it

pulled the lid off and he pulled a whole tube of Pringles into his briefcase.

This is Lucy style, and there was, there was no sound.

It was this, this lounge was silent.

There was no sound except for his whimper.

He just went, yeah.

I still, now I can barely talk.

I was like, I was so upset.

I was curled up on the floor.

Like I, I laid on the floor, this business lounge, like crying, laughing in agony.

And, but I think, but if he'd have made a big Ferrari about it, or if it was

like a joke or it's, that's not funny.

It's not even vaguely funny.

It's not even on the, it's not on the land of comic.

It's the, it's the small.

Touches, and I think actually in facilitation, which is

what we do, we negotiate and we mediate and we facilitate.

Is that the really smart clients notice?

They later drinks after a session.

They're like, We, I saw you do that thing.

I saw you, I saw that difficult question.

And through the guise of racial equity, you, you, you threw a hospital

pastor Ace coward, um, or through the guise of, you know, Britishness.

Mm-hmm.

You, I saw Ace, like hand you that question to deal with rather than

him with a little twinkle in his eye.

And that was you were playing with each other.

and I think it does open the door practically actually, that

type of humor to some solutions.

Yeah.

But no, you say your view and I'll, I'll come back to my, wasn't you.

Um, no, I, so I, I think all of that is really important and like

how and when we choose to play like that active choice, right?

Sometimes that's, Scott laughing at the fact that I just dumped Pringles.

But to be clear, we were knackered after that gig and we were

heading to London for another one.

And so like we were exhausted and it was that like little moment where you

get to choose, its intentionality there.

You get to choose whether you're going to laugh at it.

And to be clear, I was pissed, right?

All I wanted was some Pringles and like I hadn't eaten and it was a

whole thing and I didn't know what time it was and I was on different

time zones, et cetera, et cetera.

And Scott died.

And you can't help but laugh at that.

Like you have to, you can't not, and if you don't like that, talk about energy.

Energy is not, I, I don't think, and this is gonna sound woo, like it's.

It's not this zero sum thing.

We get to create energy, but it's those moments when we don't want to, that

it's actually most beneficial to do that and to like lean into, oh, that sucked.

And so like all of that to say that choice.

For me, I think that's what's innate, like, I don't know how not to do that.

we were, we were in Seattle at, uh, one of the big tech companies, innovation

labs, and they have one of, like one of those grocery stores where you can

scan, like, it just automatically checks you out so you don't have to like use

your card, you pull it off and they have these scanners that track human bodies.

And I'm there.

Hang on, hang on, hang.

So they anonymize the data, right?

it's this very large tech company based in Seattle.

You choose which one it might be not, that are very, very

large, that are called Microsoft.

So anyway, you're in there, but.

And it's really impressive.

So, so they have this thing and they're, they're using cameras to track different

bits and pieces, and they have little stick men and women to illustrate the

humans so that it's not taking any, they're not actually filming people.

Right.

This is the technology that they were trying it.

And we're we're there with a client and everybody's very serious.

Taken it very seriously.

Tech's taken it very seriously.

And then on this screen, cuz we're watching ourselves, I see this stickman

start doing Y M C A, which is this idiot, but like the full thing.

And, but, but in my head that is, That you can't not do that, right?

Like you, there are stick figures and it's tracking and it's brilliant technology

and it's like it's the future of how we're going to shop and make purchase decisions.

The behavioral economics and the psychology of all of the tech is

fascinating and in that moment also, Yeah, you do Y M C A on the tv

that's tracking your body movements.

Like how could you not that, that intentionality.

And then the last one, the, the gig that we, hang on, can we stay there because

the energy that it releases actually talking about energy is that the team

we are with the client are terrific.

And it was all about their partnership with, with, in this case, Microsoft and.

They, it loosens people up to talk about opportunity and risks of data and

privacy and all of these things, because now we've, we've just opened it up.

Yeah.

When you burn, a lot of what we do is building partnerships and so.

And everybody in that room wanted to see how the stickman danced.

Like it was like, you could just feel it and it took so much.

So there's a permission thing there when you choose to play.

The last one I'll throw out is the, the gig in Brussels that,

uh, that you missed, Lucy.

Um, and you know, I, I'd imagine you'd have ended up doing the thing that I did.

So I was channeling you.

When I did it, um, kind of sorta, and you, you can decide if that's

a compliment or not, right?

Because we, we did that question, the very serious, heavy question

of what, um, how, how do, how, how do we phrase the question, what

might somebody not know about you?

Yeah.

It's some, share something about yourself that's people in this room, there we go.

Don't know about you.

And so we asked a very serious audience of like really seasoned travelers, et

cetera, and executives and, uh, people were, they were being playful to start.

Right?

Mm-hmm.

Versus playing, they were being playful.

And so there were like very benign things playing.

I play the tambourine and I like, I know how to juggle, and

then somebody says, I love sex.

And then somebody else, couple prompts later goes, I love sex too.

And there's like this natural inflection point where you get to

decide as a facilitator, somebody on stage how to handle that.

And so my, my response was really simple, but I kind of looked at Scott and it was

at half a second of thinking about it.

It was, uh, I read the two out.

I was like, I love sex.

I love sex too.

And then I kind of looked at the audience who was getting ready to go to a happy

hour together, and all I said is, I will see you at the happy hour later.

And like you say that to the audience and it shifts energy from, oh, we're

being playful to, okay, we can play and be real about this thing because

we've just been given permission to go.

And it was around that moment.

The people went deep and then, yeah, what came after that

was, I suffer from anxiety.

I have depression.

I was abused as a child.

I'm having suicidal thoughts, which it, it opened the space up for people to.

To your point, go deep.

Yeah.

And then we are able to say, Hey, when we said we'll see you later, that's

not just for those, that's for those who have something deeply on your mind.

We will be there.

Walk up there.

There are lots of resources for you through this group and association.

And also for those of you who love sex, we'll definitely be there later.

And you're sort of combining that jumping.

So it's back to my mediocre point is never land, never ever land in the middle.

Like you are either the neighborhood restaurant or you're the boutique

restaurant, but you're never the chain.

And most shit's just,

yeah, chain.

Most stuff on LinkedIn is chain.

Most stuff on most, most white papers issued by companies are this, oh my

God, mediocre, mind numbing bullshit.

They're done.

And most of the.

And it's all based upon, like we can predict the future.

And this is where the trend's completely ignoring the fact that

every significant event over the past five years have changed things.

Nobody predicted, like nobody predicted any of this stuff.

And if we issued retractions for smartness, So if we, if you had to

say, oh, that report I wrote five years ago didn't forecast these

things, nobody would ever report.

Nobody would ever report, read any of these trend magazines versus if you

can say, actually, I don't know, which I think is a big part of playfulness.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

I actually, I don't know, but let's prepare for the fact we don't know

and look at some different, and there's lots of examples in history.

Of that playing with an idea resulting in, in a great outcome.

One of the most famous is during the Cuban Missile Crisis, where there was

this, if you, if you read the papers around what was happening, this escalation

between the Soviet Union and the United States and was really close to nuclear

conflict, and Robert Kennedy, who was the.

Obviously president of the brother of the President, but also the attorney

general came up with this idea that they would just pretend they hadn't received

this lesser of threat from the Soviets.

They just act like it hadn't shown up in the mail.

And there's an argument that that playful idea saved the world.

It allowed for a deescalation.

And I think we spend a lot of time suggesting to clients

that we don't do anything.

Mm-hmm.

Which I think only comes from being able to think.

Not think differently, just think broadly about something.

It's not thinking differently, it's actually thinking of exactly the same way.

Just taking a broader expanse of, of inputs and the where

you like, well one action would actually be to not do anything.

Just let this play out, hold the line, et cetera.

And that's not always our advice.

Often it's to disrupt things, but that's rarely presented in an opinion.

I wanna come back to something that you said before

about this kind of dance between holding things really lightly.

The comment about, I'll see you in the bar later and then.

Going somewhere that's like really tender and that requires

a lot of compassion and holding.

Cuz I think, yeah, there is this interplay between those two things, isn't there?

The kind of open play as like an open or playfulness as an opener and humor

as an opener in order to go deep.

And I know that you both do a lot of d and i de and I work and

you have found quite a playful.

Way into that, and I'd love just to hear a little bit about how you do that

and how you play with that dynamic.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, the d n I work is, is fascinating and I wanna kind of set

the stage for where we are right now, cuz that'll contextualize

the, how the work happens.

Um, budgets, budgets are getting slashed across, I don't know, my country.

Um, I'd imagine, and I'd seen similarly across Europe, Lucy, and my country

is basic bankrupt, so you can buy it.

10.

Which one of you is on the shortlist for Prime Minister?

It's Lucy.

Certain Next week.

On the week after.

There we go.

Perfect.

Yeah.

Well, nice.

We could, I don't want to get into politics cuz then I'll

have to look in a mirror as the Lone American on this podcast.

Um, no, I, the, the context though budgets are particularly around DNI are

getting slashed kind of globally Yeah.

In, in the corners of the world that we see pretty regularly.

Um, and then the economy is in a.

AJ's spot at best and.

I'm seeing a lot of folks who want to recalibrate their people to be

better leaders into weather, the impending economic dumpster fire.

Um, and, and so those things seem incongruent, but they're

actually really similar work.

And so I'm getting asked to kind of scale back on the D n I front, but up

on the leadership development front.

And like for me, diversity, equity, and inclusion has to be interwoven into all

of the work that we do, like everywhere.

Get leaders tight to get teams optimized to, to make better decisions.

Like we have to take the lived experience of the people, uh, for

the people we work with and around, but also the people that we serve.

Like I have to have a lens that makes space for the way that they

have existed in the world and their experiences, so on and so forth.

And, and so as we go into conversations, a lot of it, and this is where

the play gets really interesting.

Is giving people some context and permission to open up, to start being

candid and open and honest and real with each other so they can dial in

the way that they work and understand the triggers that someone might have

and the biases that might block them from being receptive to an idea.

Um, and, and the way that they communicate with each other.

And so, uh, Part of the, part of the playfulness, and this is when I say

exploration and scanning, is knowing that there are going to be barriers as

soon as I use the term d e i, in some rooms, soon as I say that term, that

phrase, people shut down or half the room will right hyperpolarized kind

of environment that we're existing in.

And so like for me, part of the play is exploring what we call

Hmm.

Right to, to talk or think about the Trojan horse into the d e I

conversation, but calling it executive leadership or human human connection.

And so like all of that around the work and how we lead into it and pulling

the pasty Brit into the conversation to seed some of the uncomfortable questions

that other folks might not have asked.

Like all of those are intentional because we created space to say, Hey, d e I

is important as a subject, as a topic.

The terminology we might be able to play with.

So it's better received and not neutering or making it palatable for the sake

of the people who don't agree with it.

But, uh, I think delivering the outcomes in a way that is going to be conducive to

behavior change like that requires play.

And that's, that's how I think about that corner of my work.

You know what's interesting as you're describing that, and I'm thinking

this is a podcast, not video, is that, You are speaking, just assuming

people know that you're black.

Ah.

Because if you'd have used those words and you're a white American,

it's just a little bit different.

It's, yeah.

And so that's probably worth saying is that like even that you, you use

humor around your, uh, Racial identity.

And then you use humor around my racial identity.

Yeah.

As the pasty Brit.

Yeah.

In the middle class.

And we, so he'll run these exercises about in and out groups and who's

in and who's out, and we rapidly discover that I'm never in an

outgroup, even one around immigration.

And because I'm an immigrant to the United States, I don't count because

I'm British and try it differently, even around accent and language.

I don't count because I speak British English and therefore see myself as

superior, even to the 300 million natives that live in this country relative to me.

We saw together and go, oh, I'm never ever in an outgroup.

I'm never experienced it.

And we joke about it and then, yeah, we joke at my cost around things that.

White middle class men say and do, and it sort of opens it.

I presume you do this to access white middle class men.

Well, yeah.

Yes, and right.

I can, if I call you the pasty Brit, then I can land the joke, the,

the what seems like a joke, but is not very much one that, Hey, as we

think about in groups and outgroup.

I'm a man, therefore I'm in the in group, but I'm a black man in America,

therefore I'm in the outgroup, right?

That's right on the heels of calling Scott a pasty Brit.

And so, you know, it's almost like that peanut butter wrapped around

the pill to give to your dog.

Like you get to drop the hay in 2022.

As a black man in America, I'm in the outgroup and that's like detrimental

to my health, quite seriously.

But also I'm working with the Brit, and so I can joke that

he says things funny sometimes.

And so that, like that interplay of racial demographic dynamic, it allows

us to kinda drop the line about the thing that is actually important and

folks onboard all of it cuz they're still kind of chuckling about the thing

which shifted energy to a place where I could like slot the other thing in

and it all happens at the same time.

And that that's

No, and it's like happened underneath people's different, you've like

snuck under people's immediate defenses.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's so

yeah.

Those immediate defenses are, yeah.

That's kind of interesting is that how do you get people to lower their armor

so that you can get the messages through?

And, and Lucy, I think we've learned this from you to a large extent as well.

Yeah.

And you do that through, through laughter.

Because I, as, as I opened up this podcast, I'm very cynical about this

space and I've seen you do the work and have been, uh, reluctantly respectful

of the impact that it makes, which I think is probably the highest compliment

that it's well for, for

like high praise coming from Scott.

Thank you, Scott.

It was said through slightly gritted teeth listener.

It was not terrible.

Yes.

No, but, but that's important, right?

Because I, I And Lucy, I know this is your podcast and you're asking us questions,

but I'm, I'm curious, like, similar to using the term d e i, when you talk

about play and improv, Like, do folks shut down and I'll, I'll own my bias.

When we first connected, um, we were doing a gig for big international client.

You were on, we were facilitating and you all came into, I think, do a like breakout

or a, a segment for the entire group.

And when we saw the topic, Scott and I both kind of rolled our eyes.

Uh, and then you came on and you all were brilliant.

And I, I mean that in the way that you lot would say it.

Um, brilliance doesn't mean anything coming from an American.

So I'm using the British version of brilliant.

When I say, I thought you two were, I thought, I thought

you all were incredible.

Um, but like we stuck around because we kind of had to be

there and we were keeping an eye.

And like fell in love with the way that you approach the work and the way that

you position and like make it accessible.

And so I like, I felt some tension there for like, we had to be there for a thing

that we didn't think was real and turns out like you nailed it and continue to,

and so like I continue to learn from you, but my question is, do you see that people

shut down when you tell 'em what you do

Um, thank you for the question.

We got that, didn't we?

And for, for all the, uh, for all the nice feedback.

Um, but yeah, absolutely.

Like it's a big, people feel quite icky about the web play.

Like there's a.

You know, it doesn't, na people don't naturally feel

like it has a place in work.

So part of this podcast is about like, how do we rehabilitate that concept?

Because I think it's a really important one.

And often people are like, why don't you just call it something else?

But we feel quite strongly that, no, we don't wanna call it something else.

Like it's play, it's playfulness, it needs, um, Yeah, to be rehabilitated

and in the past I have snuck it in and called it creativity or innovation.

But now I'm standing strong and I am flying the play flag quite proudly.

Um, but I think it does require, so when we met, I did a laughter

yoga session and that requires like full body mind, spirit commitment

cuz if you do that half-hearted.

Then you evoke all of those kind of feelings in people if they feel

like you are not in it entirely.

So I think coming back to the permission thing, it's about giving other people

permission through, like really embodying and modeling something yourselves.

It is a delicate line, isn't it?

I'm, I'm thinking to sort of the role you talked about bringing play back, Lucy,

and I'm thinking of like the laughter.

I'm from the northeast of England and the sort of laughter that is

inherent in Indus industrial sort of settings and manufacturing.

There's a lot of humor, but like humor can be aggressive and it can be abusive

humor or it can be at one's cost.

My dad was an oil rigger.

They just, they had it, they worked in the middle of North Sea.

It's tough work.

It's really tough work.

Um, but they laugh all the time.

They were always engaging jokes and practical jokes and, um, but there's also

this, you know, the roles of, of lawyers and the roles of political awareness.

I think is an, it's an interesting thing to, to navigate.

I'm sitting here thinking about, we, we signed an NDA going into that

innovation center in Microsoft, which is, and I'm thinking, oh, should,

should we ask Lucy to edit this?

And it's interesting because I.

You could then say, oh, it's a large tech company in Seattle.

And you're like, well, um, and also the thing we're described about

is in the public domain, you can walk into a shop in Greenwich,

in London, in England and see it.

Mm-hmm.

But we, and so I'm thinking through this.

Not in the sense of like, oh, are we in trouble?

I'm thinking through this.

Well, we signed an NDA that we probably didn't need an nda.

It's actually in the public domain, but we sort of over lawyery corporate worlds.

and maybe Microsoft will sue us for saying lovely things about

their amazing innovation thing.

But the, the, um, uh, but we do live in this world and I'm thinking like,

one of the things that we do to bring laughter to serious subjects is we're

actually quite physical with each other.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, Which isn't appropriate to somebody that has not given permission to do that.

And so it's, it's sort of we'll squeeze each other's shoulders quite a lot or

we'll pass comment on how the other looks or will, I mean all the things

that you should not do, but we're in the middle of a conflict mediation and it

works beautifully to put people at ease.

Now, it would never possibly happen where we would say that to somebody

who's a participant in the group.

Sure.

But we're actually not modeling appropriate behavior if we, if we'd like.

Fully what we don't truthful we see, you see it all the time.

It's just owning that.

Mm-hmm.

But yeah, me walking in or you walking in saying, good morning

darling, is not appropriate.

But it, it takes the edge off the room for our practice.

So even the d e I stuff, you approach this not as, Diversity, equity

and inclusion, you approach it as conflict resolution between groups.

Yeah.

And so you're, we're essentially doing the same thing again and again.

Mediate, negotiate, mediate, negotiate under the, often

under the guise of facilitation.

But it's, it's really those two things.

And, but that doesn't.

That playfulness.

Maybe one day we'll get us into trouble.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And, and this podcast will be used as evidence in that.

I mean, but, but there you go.

Like, I mean, immediately you can feel the energy in this room dropping as like,

oh yeah, we probably shouldn't do that.

It, it's a, it's an interesting place to walk.

It is, I think

It is.

And I was in the uh, meeting recently where there was a woman who can see

energy and it was quite a serious meeting.

And she said at the beginning it was like heavy and.

Heavy and dark.

And then as soon as we started playing, it completely shifted.

And there is, I think, especially when you do facilitation work, um,

yeah, the e managing the ebb and flow and kind of knowing when to

like put something in that's playful to break some of that tension.

I'm really interested to, hear a bit more about like the conflict resolution

work that you do, and do you, are there situations where actually you leave that.

Comedic routine at the door, or does it always kind of weave its way in?

I, I don't know that I've ever left it.

Mm-hmm.

We've turned it down.

Mm-hmm.

We've kind of turned it on later.

, but I don't know that I've ever gotten the recession or there wasn't a

wisecrack or a joke or a, a nudge or a wink that like happened in the session.

Yeah.

But I think, I think there's some not nows.

Yeah.

So the, because afterwards we may have a drink after a session going.

I'm really grateful you didn't land that line that I, that I could see in

your eyes you would love to have landed.

Mm-hmm.

That the, of, you know, vice versa.

, can I, can I, uh, jump on that boat?

Yeah.

Because I think that's play too.

When you know your people, when you know your partners and the people you're

working with, like, you cannot make the joke and you've still made the joke.

Right.

Like, and, and that not just for the room, it's not a broadcast,

playful, or play all the time.

Sometimes it's the thing that we didn't say that's hilarious because

it should have been said or could have been said and you held like that.

There's an inside play between or amongst a team that is tight knit and doing real

work that like that is never not existent.

When we're pissy and tired and like struggling, that's sometimes the thing

that gives us that jolt of energy that's requisite to get to the finish line.

So that's important.

I wanna come back to energy in the conflict resolution.

Actually, I think we use humor more than when we're, um, let's say we're giving a

speech cuz we talk a conference and stuff.

There's less humor there than there is in the conflict resolution.

The.

The convo resolution is the humor allows you to close people down

without their egos closing down.

And that's a lot of what you have to do.

You have to take some of the dominant voices in the room and have them shut up.

Mm-hmm.

And deploying humor to do it is P the only way that I know of to do that

without them shutting down as well.

Because you want to close them down to create space for other people, but

not shut them down so they disengage and start sabotaging the program.

Yeah.

And humor is your asset there.

Um, the one risk that we have, And I've realized over the past

year we've developed a code look to remind ourselves not to do it.

Is there are certain types that show up in these meetings and there's one

or two that really trigger me and one or two that really trigger you.

One overlaps the other doesn't.

And you know, you can use humor very aggressively.

I mean, if you can think in the moment, you can use humor to crush somebody.

And there's times when we're tired where.

We'll go after a person.

And it's not really them, it's their type.

And we have to remind each other, this is not the time to prove a point, this

is the time to resolve this conflict.

And when you're tired, it's harder to do that.

There's certain, um, yeah, there's, there's uh, what do I call it?

There's, there's Jason from New Jersey that is a certain behavior

type in my head, and they're not always from New Jersey, and they're

definitely not always Jason.

But the, I have to be careful.

That I'm wrangling that human and not that type.

Uh, there's also the aristocrat from England that as my northern

chip on shoulder kicks in.

I've got to be very careful with that as well.

Um, am I too Yeah, New Jersey and, and Hampshire.

Yeah.

Both are real.

So there's a little down, boy, not Hampshire,

gonna say, speaking as

someone from Hampshire, We seem to be on dodgy

I was too late.

Maybe that was what the spiky start was

about.

gets fucks.

Oh,

Um,

Yeah.

I don't remember what the question was, but I hope yes.

Oh, I wanna talk about energy.

So, Lucy, if, if you change the word of what you do from play, I, I

think it might be more accurate that you're in the energy business, which

would switch even more people off.

But I do, but it is interesting to me because the outcome of the play.

Often is energy, isn't it?

And I'm reminded of a friend of mine back in the uk, Jillian, Jillian

McGee, if you're listening, Jillian and I worked together in a few places

and she would always, she'd always leave bowls of fruit out all around

whichever office she was managing.

And she's like this, this stops them from doing energy spikes.

If I just leave fresh fruit around, people will eat it and the sugars

will keep them going through the day.

And they don't do a lunch spike and a breakfast spike

and a, you know, snack spike.

And I think it's very, I think of that often actually, and I think

about that as emotional energy in the room, is you're actually looking

for it to stay fairly constant.

Mm-hmm.

You don't want people And I think humor can be, people start the day with

high energy, they're caffeinated, they want to go late morning, it, it drops.

And I th maybe we observe this, I suspect we inject humor at that point.

Yeah.

Instinctively we do the same after lunch and we do the same

around three 30 in the afternoon.

Uh, And, and then of course there's a natural high when people finish.

You don't need, we, we actually never finish with a joke.

No, we never, ever wrap up a session.

We, we never parachute in a joke at the end.

Nope.

It's often, uh, it's just very quietly.

Can I Thank you.

Yeah, I, so I think very visually and as we're having this conversation about

injecting energy, like I'm thinking, you know, the Flappy Duck game.

Or like you're trying to keep the duck up as it moves forward.

Like that's what we do.

We just hit the, we hit the like play button every now and

then, and it like keeps it.

But like that's kind of what we do through it.

We collectively, we do through sessions and like that little hit of, uh,

that little injection of play keeps people at a level that we can get

the work done and get it done well.

Um, yeah.

No,

that's so interesting cause I think it definitely allows

us to stay the course for longer.

Like when we do, when we do things in a way that has humor and fun and play,

like I observing you folks at Envoy, my sense is that, and you've described

this, you have a lot of fun together.

Like what do you think allows that?

Like how does that come about?

I think being good.

Yeah.

Helps like, like for the people that we, and this hasn't always been the case.

There are folks who haven't worked out, not because they're bad people.

It's not an indictment of someone's character.

It's like it just doesn't fit.

Cuz there has to be confidence without arrogance, right?

To know that this is what I do and I do it well, and I'm coming in and working

alongside other people who not only do.

Well work well, but no, they do.

And so there's an iron sharpening iron and it, but for some reason,

and this I haven't quite put a finger on culturally for us at

Envoy is that it's not competitive.

Like we're, we're not cutting each other down at the knees and

it's not trying to take you outta the game so I can be on mine.

Like there is very much an, an understanding that, uh, we all work

best together when we're all on.

And so how, I mean, I, I think maybe there's this inherent understanding

that play keeps our energy level too.

Um, and so it's, it's been very natural that.

We just play partly cuz that's because we're really good at the hyper niche kind

of corner of the world we've carved out.

Um, and also because it makes for better work, particularly given how serious

the work that we do can be at times.

Mm-hmm.

Even when we're injecting play, like I understand the repercussions of

getting the decision in the room today.

And that has global implications for a large corporation or an

international nonprofit and the lives of the people that they support.

Like, yeah, that has to be really intentional and we have to be on

way more often than we're not.

Um, and so that, that's the thing for me.

Yeah, I think it is, it's back to this, this great doing great work versus

being a great place to work and the.

If, if, if there's a group that needs to resolve a conflict, build

a partnership or reach an agreement, I don't think there's anybody better

in the world at doing it than we are.

There's lots of things that.

We're terrible at.

Hmm.

Um, but, and within the team, we all know what we are best in class at.

So between us, if we're in a room and it, it's turning into a negotiation, ace

will instinctively move to number two.

And I'll move to number one, if it's showing turning out to be a mediation,

I will instinctively move to number two and he'll move to number one.

We've got a Alex, a filmmaker we use, we use media quite a lot.

In our work, um, is just a world class filmmaker.

Yep.

Uh, Fiera actually for staff is, is just one of the most fantastic

project leaders and managers and client wranglers that you can find.

And I think if, but.

But you are a, you are a solid filmmaker.

Mm-hmm.

And if you are a filmmaker, it'd be hard to joke with you because you'd be slightly

aware of, is this a dig at my work?

Right.

Whereas when we joke with Alex, he knows he's great.

Yeah.

And, and to be clear, people see us because we're on stage more often.

That laughter is within the whole team.

All 9, 10, 12, 15, depending on how you counted it, count it, um, But

I think it only comes from being, um, being very comfortable in your

domain, which requires you to stay out of things that you're only good at.

It does and deferring to others and it allows, yeah, the humor of a

compliments really, like I'll give v a hard time our chief of staff

for being in my shit and like for trying to solve problems immediately.

But v knows that she preempts 90% of the problems I'm gonna have.

Um, so I don't have them.

Right.

So that 10% I give her a hard time about.

She's like, yeah, but I'm on top of everything, so I don't really care.

Like that's funny in a way that somebody who lets a bunch of

things fall through the cracks.

Would be really self-conscious about and it'd be a shitty dig on my part.

And so like that only works in the way that we like to play, which

is not the forced family fun.

It's the taking the piss around people that we really enjoy like that.

Yeah, there's a dynamic there that culturally works, I think, for us.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sort of.

We we're probably not sharing best practices that are good

for larger organizations.

I mean, quite seriously, because sort of like feedback is, So if, if Alex is

showing us the rushes of a, of a video, cuz we, we do media with executives

for them to communicate a point and, you know, we are way more likely

to say, so what was running through your mind when you shot that frame?

And that's, that's his way of receiving information, that

99% of this was brilliant.

And maybe we make that 1% better.

But if, if I said to Alex, Hey, that was a really good video, mate.

He'd be like, I know, like, what?

But how are we gonna make it better?

Of course, it was a really good video.

I did it.

Like, how are we gonna make it better?

And that is not, that is not corporate culture in most corporations.

So if I told you, you.

Did.

If we got out of a session or you were delivering speeches

like, Hey, that was really good.

You'd be like, you patronizing bastard.

Yeah.

What, what can I do to make it better?

Yeah.

What I, but it's infuriating to the team.

Cause I walk off stage in my singular question.

I've gotten good, I wait at least 15 minutes now.

But as I walk upstage, my question in my head is, what did I miss?

Right?

And so like there's an element of like, yeah, you play because you can, because

there's enough confidence or comfort in the way that we work being good.

How do we push to grade?

And the laughter, I think, levels that up and kind of

Yeah, I love it.

I love this link between that you have made between play and great work.

And I wonder if you did have like something that's replicable or a

suggestion or for somebody listening, like how to inject more humor,

play or, or bring or bring that great work to life through play.

What would you say?

What would be your suggestion?

Oh, I've got a, I've got a few on this.

I, I do too, because I, I would use, I would use laughter as a

measure of how well the organization

I love that.

in the sense of, you are either laughing because something went

really well, or you're laughing because something went catastrophically badly,

but, Often catastrophically badly only happens if you are placing a big bet

or you're doing something bold right?

Which is probably great.

Even if the outcome isn't great.

The, the, the project, the activity was probably great.

We don't laugh when things are just tripping up.

Stupid stuff's happening.

We become frustrated by that.

And so if there isn't a lot, there wasn't a lot of left here a couple of weeks ago.

We were like tripping over ourselves.

We didn't have flow.

Yeah.

Yeah, if, if you had a, a laugh oter, it would've been very

low a couple of weeks ago.

It's back now.

We're back in our flow.

The team's humming.

Um, so I'd use it as a, as a gauge for that, and then I'd structure

it as a right and a responsibility.

You have the right to play at work.

You have the right to laugh at work.

You have the right to, um, have fun.

You have the responsibility to make sure that your teammates feel.

Solid and know where they stand.

I'm not using the word safe and secure very, very consciously because

people's idea of emotional safety is very different from person to person.

But they know where, this is my belief is that they know where they stand.

They know that they're doing good work, especially if

they're junior to you or a peer.

Um, and their responsibility is to carry their part of the team.

And if you're doing that, let's play.

Let's laugh, let's, but, but they.

We'll be back to basics if we're not meeting that responsibility.

And that is, that's not so fun.

Back to basics isn't so fun.

No, I, I agree.

Um, so I, I, I think that's a, a very strategic lens and an

important one, visionary incisive.

sprang to my mind, Scott.

Um, uh, I'll give, I'll give a, a tactical one, like a

thing that we might be able to do.

Um, or behaviors we talk about.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, it's around worst idea, which, oh, yeah.

I like one of my favorites.

A lot of my work is kind of in the creativity and innovation space, the

words that Lucy has opted not to use because her work is better than mine.

Um, so that, that's what I took away from that.

She's not using creativity, innovation, those are my words.

Um, But we, we use a technique called worst idea when we're kinda walking

people through the process of innovation.

The anatomy of a good idea is kind of the framework that I park it in.

Um, But worst idea, pretty self-explanatory.

Like as you're trying to surface a way that we might accomplish

a task or get to an outcome.

I like intentionally create space for folks to share the dumbest way

that they might go about doing that.

Right.

And we just call it worst idea.

And it's like, let me have those.

And I find that it shifts the energy in the room when somebody says, you

know, I'll give them a benign scenario.

Get so and so from one side of the river to the other side of the river.

Everybody goes to bridge out of the gate.

And the like takeaway is never stop at bridge right there.

There are so many other ways to get me to the other side of this river.

Um, and so when somebody says, you know, uh, jet ski across,

I'm like, okay, that's fun.

When we go to worst ideas, somebody inevitably says, well, Put 'em in a

cannon and fire 'em over the river.

And that's hilarious, right?

Like there's h Larry Curly Moe, component of humor to that.

But really it just gets people out of their own way of, I have to be very

serious, we should build a bridge.

It's like, no, we can evil, can evil this thing.

Let's jump a dirt bike over the river.

And so that worst idea, As a concept and as a process shifts energy, when people

have hit their wall, they start laughing and we know that energy bump starts.

I mean, you get another 10, 15 ideas just out of worst idea as a catalyst.

It allows voices that haven't been surfaced to kind of inject.

The thing that they were thinking, but were scared was gonna be seen as dumb.

And then it allows the people who think they have a good idea that

might be perceived as dumb, but they know it's good to park there.

So like it does so much, but it's just, it's kind of positioned as, let's

play a little bit, give me the really bad ideas that nobody's brought up.

And I find that, that if, if an organization were to say, how

do we start injecting play or creating space, like worst idea as

a concept, just start seeding that.

Hey, we now have a language.

When I'm outside of this room and we're not ideating, I can

still say, Hey, I'm gonna give you my worst idea and park that.

And so it just, I find that that is a tactical, tangible thing.

Every time you're coming with ideas, use worst idea as part

of that ideation exercise.

And I think that starts to shift culture as much as it gets

Yeah, and I love it.

It's a great gift.

It's a lovely piece of language that you can share and it's

generous and it, I can totally see how that would shift the energy.

This idea of momentum because I'm, I'm trying to find a way to

express that I don't love the holidays and I love the holidays at the same time.

So I love the holidays and kids will have a great time.

All of those things.

And I kind of like twinkly lights and.

Santa and stuff at the same time.

I feel like the holidays you lose momentum, and as you've been talking, I've

been thinking about how you need, like there's this movement to humor and a joke.

So the holidays, you sort of lose momentum, I think of a joke

like those amazing Billy Connolly standup routines where he'd be

on for two hours and he'd start.

The beginning of a joke, and then he'd, he'd go down a sideline and tell all

of these different jokes, and right at the end he'd finish the punchline

to the first joke that he started.

And I think that there's a, there's a format with us is that things carry over.

Mm-hmm.

And that there's this constant movement, so, Three months from now, there's a very

good chance that you have a rough day that we're on the gig and you go to bed

and you pull back the sheets and there's just Pringles all over your bed, and

I've booked the room next door for you.

Right?

But in of itself, like that gag.

Isn't funny, just somebody having a bad day and sabotaging

your room isn't funny at all.

Somebody having a bad, somebody having a bad day.

See somebody having a bad day, getting to your bed, being just wrecked, rolling.

Sp and Crunch.

Crunch.

And then the text being the key to the room.

Next door is in the bathroom drawer.

Have a good night's sleep is brilliant.

It it is, but without the momentum.

There's no, yeah, there's no thing.

Yeah.

You have to, you can't inject play as a measure of desperation or

a kind of Hail Mary last ditch.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You have to have been building that in regularly and intentionally so

you have it when you need it most.

And people try to use it when they need it most without

having created the space for it.

Um, that I think is the truth of our work.

Of your work.

And probably a good time to make this bit shut up.

I think that is a beautiful thought to end on.

thank you so much as and Scott for coming on the show.

It's been a total pleasure and a giggle as always.

So how was that for you listening to our conversation?

I mean, hilarious.

Um, what a duo.

I really want some high stakes conflict going on that I can

get them in the room for.

Um, I'm completely intrigued to, to kind of see them in action.

yeah, amazing to hear about.

But I think one thing that, um, the conversations kind of started at

and circle background to you was this lovely distinction between.

The difference between a great place to work, you know, an organization

that has perks and benefits and there's a great environment and a place to

do great work, and the really subtle nuance between those two things that

that aren't necessarily the same.

So I really like that distinction First up.

Yeah, and I quite enjoyed the fact that Scott finds play annoying.

Even though I think when we got under the skin of it, he changed his tune a bit.

But, um, that pushback, I think it's really helpful cuz I think it

is representative of how lots of people feel about play and all the

preconceptions that come with it.

Mm-hmm.

was nice to have that challenge.

Yeah, I completely agree.

A challenge from a.

A secret advocate, but Italian nonetheless.

Um, yeah, no, there were just so many kind of really helpful nuggets

I took from the conversation.

One was the.

The question of, can we play with that for a second?

At one point that was said, and it was, it wasn't even like, Hey, here's

a tool or a technique you could use.

It was just in the conversation, it was us.

Can we play with that for a second?

And I thought, oh, that's such a simple question.

Um, but it's so powerful to, and, and you could say it in kind of any

environment at any meeting, you're not saying, Hey, let's, let's get up on

our feet and play everyone, because that can be a, a tough ask in some

scenarios, but I can't think of any.

Meeting where you are discussing a challenge or a problem you're trying

to solve where you couldn't say, huh?

Yeah, I like that idea.

Could we play with that for a second?

And just what the possibilities might be if we could just ask that question.

Where could that take the conversation?

And it just felt such a sort of low stakes, easy entry point into using

the idea of playing with an idea, um, that I think would be kind of welcoming

in most sort of business interactions.

Yeah.

And that, um, I think it was Ace, he was talking about play, being

about the what could be, what might be that sense of possibility.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, definitely.

And the another thing that I, I noted Dan, was this idea of vulnerability

and, and I think play and vulnerability of, of are very kind of close, close

cousins, but the reference about when, when we take ourselves very seriously,

we're actually more vulnerable.

In their experience and that any chip in the armor is then very, very sorely felt.

Whereas if we're comfortable laughing at ourselves from the off, that kind of armor

isn't there to be chipped away at, and it's just, we're actually less vulnerable.

And I just, I thought that really turned this idea of.

Kind of being playful and putting yourself out in the world in

a way that you're laughing at yourself and you're being playful.

You know, often we think, well, that makes you more vulnerable.

But actually it was this idea of, well, when you're wearing that armor

and you are taking yourself very seriously, that's when you're really

setting yourself up for vulnerability.

It's like, I love that.

Yeah.

Kind of perverse turning on its head.

Yeah, and there's a Brit, there was a brittleness

that comes with that, isn't there?

That taking oneself really seriously.

Um,

brittle.

When you said brittles, I was like, mm.

Peanut brittle.

yeah.

And I think also what's interesting about that was actually they're only able

not take themselves seriously because.

They've done the work and they put in the hours to know that they're

like really good at what they do.

Yeah, that, that decoupling of taking yourself seriously and taking

the work seriously, again, just, I loved hearing about that and this idea of, I.

They do take their work very, very, very seriously.

But it's almost like that's taken up.

All the serious energy in the room or all the serious energy that's available has

been taken up on the work and therefore that that seriousness has, has been paid.

It's it's due course, it's due respect, and, and they've decoupled

themselves from that work.

Um, I found that that was, that was great to hear about.

What else came up for you?

well, I think there's this thing about people having

a right to laugh and have fun, a responsibility to their teammates.

To make sure that they know like where they stand, that they have their back,

which comes down to having like all the nuts and bolts, like perfectly

tightened, everything's in place.

And then it's like the fun is the stuff that can happen on top of that.

mm.

And I thought also, I.

You know, you've got these decision points as a leader where you can

choose if you're gonna laugh or if you're gonna, you know, blow your lid.

So, I mean, the Pringles example, which made me how, as I was re-listening

to it, um, you know, that that just sets the tone, doesn't it?

And I think if we have a propensity to laugh at ourselves more than we.

Don't, you know, I think you can really shift a dynamic within a team,

within an organization, especially when that comes from the leadership.

Mm, totally.

And, and kind of building on that point around the shifting, um, I really enjoyed

hearing the reflections on energy, um, and how you were talking about the women

that you'd worked with, where she could.

Kind of see an energy in the room.

And I was pondering on that and thinking, you know, you can always feel the energy

in the room even though it's, you know, invisible to the ma, the majority of us.

But it's kind of how quickly that energy can really shift through

introducing a moment of play or humor or laughter as you were saying.

And, and I was thinking, you know, energy is everything.

Even in the most informal one-to-one interaction, how you show up in the

energy you're both bringing ver you know, versus the, the, the very,

um, you know, stressful, high stakes conflict resolutions that, that,

that Ace and Scott be working on.

I just thought, you know, what can be achieved in a room with light,

warm, open, trusting, engaged energy versus what can be achieved?

You know, when the energy is uncertain, it's, and you know, that's uncertainty

is also part of play, but that kind of reserved, anxious, closed defensive

energy, um, and just the discrepancy and the outcomes that can be achieved

just down to that energy in the room and how play can be such a factor in

shifting that I think is really powerful.

Yeah, and what they were saying about, particularly in the D

D E I work where they bring the play and they bring that into play between

their different racial profiles to the table and they poke fun at each

other and the playfulness of that.

Allows people's defenses to drop, there's laughter, and then they can sneak the

insights and those kind of really more punchy, um, thoughts under the defenses.

So like yeah, players a way in and, and as a way of aiding behavior change

because it lowers resistance and defense I thought was really interesting.

Yeah, I'm probably, my last lasting memory from the

conversation was the visceral description of, uh, Pringles in the bed and

like the rollover and crunch crunch.

I was just like, oh, that's so true.

That's so incredibly crunchy.

Can you imagine rolling over them in bed?

So thank you for that.

Yeah, and then the idea of Scott, like just dying with

laughter in the other room, the glee that he's played an amazing

so good.

So good.

Thank you so much for listening today.

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