Improv is a social technology for approaching uncertainty and complexity. That’s the philosophy Robert Poynton brings to his playful practice.

Rob is the author of two books in the Do series (Do Improvise and Do Pause), and an Associate Fellow at Oxford University’s Said Business School. He designs and facilitates workshops, retreats, and pauses, and runs online projects that help people learn how to integrate play into their work.

Things to consider

• No-one has a script – we’re all improvising all the time
• Play can provide more ease and grace at work
• There is a difference between play and playfulness
• Playfulness is a mindset, and we can sometimes forget to apply it
• We can reframe serious and intimidating things into something more fun and magical

Links

• Do Improvise – Rob’s book on improvisation within work
• Do Pause – Rob’s book on rethinking your todo list
• Yellow
• The Everyday Improviser
• Make Work Play
• Playfilled

Hello, and welcome to the show.

My name's Lucy Taylor from Make Work Play.

And my name is Tzuki Stewart from Playfilled.

Together we are Why Play Works, the podcast that speaks to

people, radically reshaping.

The idea of work as play.

In this episode, I speak to Rob Poynton.

Rob is the author of Do Pause and Do Improvise.

He divides his time between an off-grid house in rural Spain and

Oxford, where he's an Associate Fellow at the Said Business School.

For Rob, career has always been more of a verb than a noun, probably because he

believes in playing around with things and people rather than trying to control them.

For over 20 years, he has designed and facilitated

workshops, retreats and pauses.

In 2020 in a bout of invention prompted by the pandemic, he founded two new online

ventures, Yellow, all about small group slow learning and The Everyday Improviser,

which does what it says on the tin.

Today, we'll be talking about the role of play as a social technology, how

the practices of improv can help us bring more play to our work and our

lives and the importance of the body.

Mind to mention just a few of the juicy topics we cover.

Well, it Is such a pleasure.

And in fact, it feels like quite a big deal interviewing

you because it really does.

You laugh, but your book everything's an offer, which I read about 10 years

ago, like totally changed the course of my working life and sent me off on

this playful, completely different path.

And is in fact the reason that we are here today.

So thank you for writing your amazing book.

Um, that's very kind of, you, I'm glad it had that effect.

It's lovely to have met you.

Yeah,

it really did.

Um, I'd love it.

If we could start by you telling us in your own words, what you do.

Yeah.

Always a killer question, really.

Um, for a number of reasons, it's quite hard to define in my case.

Uh, but also because it's always changing, you know, so one can go the abstract way.

And so essentially what I do is kind of, uh, bring the.

Kind of great spaces in which people can do things together

that they wouldn't otherwise do.

That's a very sort of abstract description.

If you want a more concrete one, essentially, I, I design and

facilitate all kinds of workshops and retreats and programs, sometimes,

uh, for individuals sometimes online, sometimes in person, uh, sometimes,

uh, for companies or business schools.

Uh, but essentially it's that I'm really interested in how

do we come together to do.

What you might call work, uh, you might call something else, um,

in a way that can be more joyful.

And, uh, I was going to say easy, but I, but I mean, a particular sense.

I mean, with a sense of ease and actually a word I find

myself using increasingly grace.

I love that work with grace.

Yes.

I think we could definitely all do with more of that.

And I'm also intrigued to know what the alternative to work.

You said.

If we could call it, if we call it that, what else would you call it?

Well play

Well, yeah.

an obvious candidate.

Maybe that's leading the witness, but the reason I hesitated, I think is that

because we do have an association of work, has it being kind of a grind and, um,

uh, I'm sure some of that is necessary that work can't always be joyful and

fulfilling, but, I don't see that it needs to be as solar, as dehumanizing or

alienation as it too often is, you know?

And I think therefore that hesitating around what do we quite mean by work?

And, uh, do we, uh, associate work with a sort, being a source of

merit or worth or value, whether that's literal or metaphorical?

Um, Yeah, And all, we understanding that as sensitively as we might?

And can we ask our questions around what it means to do good work and

what work looks like and feel like it feels like, and, and what it

takes to be in a space where we are working on things in a satisfying and

fulfilling and fruitful kind of a way?

So I guess that's why my work is always changing because I'm

always kind of in that question.

Yeah, how amazing, and I think what a kind of enlivening question to approach

work with as an ongoing inquiry, something that is changing and fixed.

I think that's a really playful way of thinking about the concept of work.

just talked a little bit about what work means to you.

I'd love to know does play mean to you?

Well it means, uh, it means something very different from.

Kind of forced fun.

That's the first thing I think is really important to me.

So I think for me play and playfulness are related, but different.

I think that both the value, uh, I suppose, I'm probably more, I kind

of tend to embrace more playfulness as a sort of attitude or something

that infuses a lot of what I do.

So I think you can do pretty much anything with playfulness.

Uh, so I think that's an important part of what play means or includes for me.

I think it's sometimes as I describe it, sometimes it's a technology

for approaching uncertainty.

Um, uh, obviously a social technology.

I think it's an intrinsically, I think it's intrinsic to life.

I look at animals playing around to learn.

Just come my way home just a few minutes ago, drive past this

just incredibly playful puppy.

That's clearly not being trained that its owner just couldn't constrain.

And the whole, the animal was just full of kind of joy and zest in life.

So I think that it's, it's, it's part of the word you used in livening.

I think it's hard to imagine.

A lively or enlivening place of work or occupation or

family where there is no play.

So I think, you know, you could also put the question the other way around, which

is what happens when we don't have any.

And I think pretty quickly a world or a life without play or playfulness

becomes quite grim, quite Spartan, quite soul-destroying really,

know, so it's quite important.

I started with a caveat because I don't think play is just

about fun and games in it.

I'm not against fun and games, but I am sort of against pretending that fun and

games is the whole shooting match in it.

But yeah, I love that.

And just listening to you, describe that puppy, just the, you have the light

exuberance that that image contains.

Love that definition of playfulness, exuberance, joy kind

of fell of life and vitality.

And can you tell me about a time when you felt playful recently?

Well let's see, uh, yeah, just, just this morning, I guess, um, you know,

locking around with one of my sons who came, came down, we took him out what

we're going to have for lunch and he's on a diet, which, uh, for some reason

includes rice, but no other carbohydrates.

And, uh, and I said, you know, of a way of engaging with him.

Our timetables are very different as kind of saying, oh, you know, I was

thinking we could have the meat that mum left in the fridge and he could have

that maybe with some rice, you know?

And so, and I'm teasing him, you know?

So in the context of that, a family relationship, a way of reconnecting and,

and being light, you know, between the two of us and, you know, he's 20 years old.

So, uh, you know, levity.

And particularly, I think if I could, it's even better, if I can make fun of

myself, which you know, because then there's a sort of equalizing going on.

So that'd be a ready example just from this morning.

Yeah, I think that's so nice.

And so you've written a number of books.

Everything's an Offer is the first one.

Do Improvise was another, and also Do Pause.

And in, um, Do Improvise, you talk about improvisation as needing this

humility that you've just described and this, um, Kind of openness.

So your work has kind of underpinned by improvisational theater and I've

learned a lot about, um, improv from you.

Could you tell us a bit about the practices of improv?

Because I know you've got a really neat six word way of describing them.

Yeah.

And it's timing because I'm working on the new edition of that, of the

Do Improvise book at the moment.

So yeah.

The way I've captured.

What I think is the essence of the method of improv theater.

And it's worth noticing that there is a method it's not

random, it's not happenstance, it's not down to pure talent.

Um, so the way I've captured it is in the three practices of noticing more.

And so that's really about what you do with your attention and what you

notice, uh, you have some agency or choice in what you notice or don't, and

there's a lovely saying is, you know, what you notice becomes your life.

So if you pay attention to fears and worries the whole time, you can

become a fearful, worried person.

Uh, and vice versa, if you pay attention to opportunity and joy

and pleasure and beauty, then that changes who you are as well.

So the first piece is noticing more, which is around.

Attention and intention to a certain extent.

Uh, the second piece, which is often the one that people find,

find most difficult is to let go.

And I think the reason people find it difficult.

It's two fold.

One is I think we've been taught since we were very small to hold on.

We have a very acquisitive mentality as well as an acquisitive society.

Um, so that feels very counter-cultural, very, kind of goes against the grain.

And I think the second thing is because people often interpret

it as kind of abandoning everything as sort of jettisoning.

They kind of, that's not in the practice.

Um, I'm inviting you to let go or loosen your hold on something temporary, right?

To not trying to hold on to everything the whole time.

But I think people because of their fear of it kind of interpreted that way and

then can follow enough closed down quite quickly around that if you're not careful.

And then the third piece is to use everything, which is really

just, uh, just the most wonderful, simple, very ecological reframing.

It's a, it's a sort of improv practice based way of saying wasted.

Everything can be taken and used and repurposed in some sense.

Doesn't make it necessarily nice.

It make it what you wanted, but if you frame it in that way, what's really

interesting is it sort of itself creating.

If you frame everything as an offer, as, as an improviser would put

it, then your mind, which has this extraordinary capacity to create

possibility will find a way to use it.

You know, so a failure, an error mistake, a shortcoming, any of those

things can be very quickly reframed.

And of course the three of them all connect together.

So if you kind of let go of assumptions and beliefs, then it's easier to

see where's the offer and something.

Uh, if you're not paying attention, then you've got less to work with.

Or if you're paying attention, you might notice that how you're holding onto a

belief that you might loosen your hold on.

So, uh, it's a very, uh, interconnected and funnily enough, non-linear

model where you can kind of start anywhere and use anywhere.

Gary who, you know, Gary Hershey with whom I founded On Your Feet, we did a,

uh, we do a session called the everyday improvisor, which is a kind of very

brief introduction to these ideas.

Um, cause you don't need much time to get to go to them.

And somebody said to us in that session, they said, uh, this

model seems to be indestructable.

Is there anywhere it doesn't work?

And we kind of kind of thought for a minute, No, not really because it's very,

non-prescriptive it doesn't say how it's going to work, it's just an invitation.

It's a set of invitations to ask yourself these questions around,

how am I noticing, what am I doing with my attention and what am I

clinging on to that I could let go of?

And, and what's there that I could use.

And those can be used constantly iteratively immediately in a spontaneous

way or reflectively, um, that can be used on a small scale, on a big scale, and

they can sit alongside and compliment any other way of approach, approaching things.

So they don't have to displace your, you know, other things that

are useful and valuable to you.

Yeah, I love that.

And I, well, I think why I was attracted to this work in the

first place was like, you know, when I read your book, it kind of.

Both to me as a way, improv as a way of living like a practice for

living a practice for working a practice for relating to other people.

And for me, it was totally freeing and all sorts of areas of my life.

And that's something certainly that was true for me as well.

When I first met Gary, which was how I came across it.

Uh, I had exactly the same sensation I went, oh my God, you know, this is,

this is freeing is a lovely word for it.

This is so, uh, uh, empowering would be another and liberating.

And this idea that people in the theater, which for me is just an authority.

It's means that they've devoted some time and energy to kind

of working out what works.

Um, and, and that's sort of playing with this, this thing that is so

valuable and useful in all these other realms and walks of life.

And I think it's that because it's, I wouldn't claim it's the way to approach

things, but it's a really useful way.

And as I've worked more and more with it, I've come to realize how

much in common it has with pretty unlikely traditions like stoicism.

You know, quite, quite often, somebody who's read and thought quite a

lot about stoicism who comes into contact with improv stuff will go,

oh, look, this is just the same.

Um, or, you know, I have a relationship with a Zen practitioner and the state

said that had everyone SB brown, who I've known now for 25 years.

And, and he's a close friend really.

And that came about because we observed the overlaps between the improv work

and, uh, Buddhism, the approach of Buddhism, particularly around accepting.

Uh, being accepting of what is, rather than trying to project onto the world,

the way you would like it to be.

Um, and of course, my way into it was by seeing the similarities

with complex adaptive science.

So the science of complexity, Zen, Buddhism, stoicism, stoicism, and

improv all have a lot in common.

Um, and there's a lovely book by Oliver Berkman, which you may be

familiar with called The Antidote.

And, uh, and in it, he's exploring kind of what the paths or

sources of human satisfaction or.

And, uh, he has a chapter on stoicism, he has a chapter on Zen,

uh, and he could easily have had a chapter on improv in that book.

It would have sat very happily alongside those, those other chapters.

And I think that's why it's so powerful and so useful.

And of course I'm not, you know, I love stoicism and Zen in different

ways, but the one of the virtues of improv is it's very light hand here.

It comes playful.

So you don't have to take it all yourself too seriously.

One of the things that.

Gary and I took a lot about in The Everyday Improviser is,

is, you know, allow yourself to forget to do this completely.

And then you'll remember at some point, then you can start again and

don't beat yourself up about that.

And, um, and we say that obviously, based on first experience here, we are talking

about this stuff and working with it and we forget the whole time, you know.

I love that.

The kind of, the forgiving this of improv and how you, the value of

mistakes, being able to make mistakes, cock something up, then celebrating,

celebrating that as something

Yeah, there's a, you may be interviewing Steve for all I know for this

podcast, Steve Chapman, but I know that you know him and, uh, Steven,

I have an interestingly different attitude to that word mistake.

So Steve says mistakes are great.

Love.

'em bring 'em on.

And I kind of go, I don't acknowledge their existence.

For for, for me, it's kinda like there's two ways of saying the same thing really,

but we just frame it differently because from my perspective, I just kind of

go, well, well, nothing's a mistake.

It's only a mistake until you've worked out how to use it.

Cause mistake assumes that there was a right way to do it, cause

this is now the wrong way, you know?

So it's interesting how, even within this, this world, there

are still options and choices.

I wouldn't say Steve is wrong and he wouldn't.

I'm wrong, but we just think of it a different way whilst essentially

embracing the same principle.

Yeah.

So I guess you're coming at it being an consequence.

Yeah, Yeah.

And so for people who haven't necessarily used improv, like why

would you bring this into work?

Surely it creates like unruly chaos as you described in your book?

Well, uh, in a way, um, the fact of factor matches you're improvising already.

So you're not bringing anything in, um, because nobody's got a script and

nothing ever goes according to plan.

And if the last two years have taught us anything, it should be that that is

the norm, and it's the norm at every level, in every scale of society.

And what's interesting is our very, very strong hankering for control,

which is if you like, what goes on in the world of work, which a friend

of mine, Chris Katana, brilliantly describes as the managerial fantasy,

the idea that you can control everything rigorously and determine

outcomes, all that kind of stuff.

And it is a fantasy.

So the, the, the truth is that we're all improvising the whole time in

the seams in between those bits of structure, but we're probably not

as skilled as it, and certainly not as conscious of it as we could be.

So my invitation would be to become more skilled and more conscious by using it

more deliberately and understanding, understanding better with more nuance

and subtlety the relationship, the complimentary relationship between

structuring, planning, uh, and organizing things in a rigorous way, and adapting

creatively in an improvisational way.

And I would argue that you can't do anything just by planning and you can't

do anything just by, by improvising alone.

And that if you want to do anything at all, you need to understand.

What the relationship is between those two things.

So, uh, I would say you're doing it already get better at it.

Become more aware of it.

Notice where it's going on and then amplify and become more skilled

and sensitive, uh, using it better.

Um, and I think what I love about these practices is they are practices that you

can learn and kind of develop that muscle.

Yeah.

I just interviewed a whole bunch of people.

For the new edition of the book.

And what's really interesting is how deep it's gone.

You know, I spoken to people who've been using these practices for, for many

years and each of them really says, you know, it's just such a fundamental part

of the way I see the world now that I can't really separate it out, you know?

And so it becomes deeply integrated into your set of attitudes and beliefs.

And I think that's, um, that's really, really, really powerful.

Uh, you know, and I joke about it, but it's a serious joke, which is

you can learn in about 20 minutes, something that is going to be valuable

to you for the rest of your life.

And all of the rest of it is practice.

And the thing about practice is you're not practicing.

In a convergent way to get to a perfect expression of something.

It's a different meaning of the word practice.

It's a being in, it's a constantly experiencing, uh, it's an expansive

or a deepening kind of a practice.

And kind of novelty is infinite because the circumstances of your life, that

it's very detailed and it's very sort of everyday details, or in its

kind of, uh, grand plans are always changing and bringing you novelty.

So the idea of, you know, noticing more is always going to have a

new application as well as beings.

This is a very simple idea, and you're always going to have all

these new opportunities to see what else could you notice or how

else, or what aren't you noticing.

And so that combination of kind of quick and easy to learn endlessly

useful, constantly yielding sort of deepening, beautiful.

I think.

Yeah.

And as you're saying it, I'm imagining this like kaleidoscope that just opens

out and opens up and opens out in kind of ever more intriguing patterns.

and I think, you know, that's a lovely image of the one, you, you

know, the image of the kaleidoscope of, of the way life works.

And I think that's why for me, the improv practises resonated because I think they

are, as I say, just an expression or many expressions in many different media

and by different cultures, different times in history and all the rest of it.

But these are definitely unexpressed of something that is deeply resonant

within the process of living in life.

You know?

So if you look at the way that ecosystems evolve, that kaleidoscopic image, you've

just invoked is a pretty good one.

You know, there are a few basic principles and then you set kind of energy and

matter free to combine and recombine, and, and you get this extraordinary

cornucopia of intricate interconnection.

And in a way that's the improv practices sort of human echo of

that very deep, organic process.

And so I think that's partly why it feels right to us.

We sort of recognize it, you know, it's like, oh Yeah, I know that.

I mean, you've done decades of work, sorry.

It makes me laugh.

It's true.

Rob scrunched his nose when I said decades of work.

Um, but you have, you know, you have a wealth of experience in this area,

you set up On Your feet, which was, is a collaboration between the arts

specifically improv and Business.

You've worked on the Oxford University strategic leadership

program for a long time.

And you've worked with countless groups and organizations in a playful way.

Have you got any stories where you've seen play, having a real, really

powerful impact in a working environment?

So many.

So, I mean, I'll start with my own working environment member once turning

up at Oxford and talking to Marshall Young, who was then the director

of the leadership program there.

And, uh, he sort of waived the, um, the timetable at me, you know, uh, and

said, you know, oh, look, you know, I've got the plan for this week and

you said, but it's a Figley really.

Um, and I burst out laughing, you know, that.

Follow the strategic leadership of Templeton Colleges at then was in

Oxford calling the plan and program for the week, which is meant to be

this sort of holy sacrament, a fig leaf, you know, uh, and he said, we

all know it doesn't really matter.

It's smoke and mirrors.

And what he was referring to is that the, a large, a large part of the value of that

program is to create this informal space.

So what you meant by fig leaf was yes, you need to have somebody come and

sit and do a talk or run a session on something, which sounds important and

interesting because you've got people coming from Nigeria or New Zealand or,

or wherever, but, but he was displaying to me and communicating to me as somebody

that worked for him, the fact and the knowledge and the understanding that

the program is not about the content.

It's about what people did the climate and the atmosphere that's created

that allows people to challenge each other question, each other, learn

from each other, enrich each other.

And he did all of that with a humorous comment in a few seconds.

And I'm still thinking about it 15 years later, and it's a concept I use.

And then he went on and he said, yeah, we're going to get them into

the medieval theme park early.

Right?

So now you kind of go, what?

So Perry is kind of seeming to make fun of his own universe.

Again, this for me, this was a pivotal point in my education

and learning something.

I still contemplate now because what he's doing by, by saying medieval

theme park is calling attention to the theater of the architecture of Oxford.

And getting me thinking probably at that moment for the first time about

the role of space, and, uh, physical buildings in creating the atmosphere or

climate that that program is all about.

As well as displaying a wonderful quality of neither he, nor the university itself

taking itself too seriously, and thinking of themselves as a potent and august.

So again, that levity, uh, opened a whole universe of possibilities.

I remember at the end of that week, so a whole week and very intense week

later, I remember very well the drive home and my mind thinking, oh my God.

Yeah, theme park.

And, and, and realizing that this whole.

Whole world of thinking about space and setting in a different way, you know?

And, and so that's two tiny little comments.

Just last week I was talking with Chris Kutarna, who I

mentioned a few minutes ago.

This is a brilliant example of playfulness in action.

So, uh, he.

He told me the story of how he ran a game, so this one is a gain

based thing called the chair game.

Uh, now here's the thing.

Chris had never even played the chair game, let alone run the chair game,

had just heard about it from me.

And I heard about it from somebody else and, you know, so on and so forth.

And so he, I think very brave.

Took a group at the end of a program, they were on an Oxford to play this

game that he himself had never played.

So that's sort of double playfulness because he's having to be open and

honest and hold lightly and be play for him so the fact that he's got no

idea, really how this game works at all.

And w w what was beautiful about this particular story was that he

had this auction kind of weighed up.

It was a Thursday afternoon.

The group had been there all week, and he did a very good thing was just to check

in with how people were feeling and almost universally, he got back, we're tired.

And of course they were tired.

They'd been on a business school program that been cramming.

They'd been doing case studies, you know?

And so what's the value of the player, the playfulness here.

Well, first to speak to them as human beings, to give them what they need as

full embodied persons, you know, they can't take in any more information.

And so again, if we think of Chris as a leader, he's showing sensitivity

and care for the group, and he's got a response, which is this game

and they're just their heart sore.

They're like, oh, thank God.

You know?

And then here's the Coda.

It turns out that because of that sort of soaring energy and.

And they're like, oh, you're looking at, you can, I'm feeling you, you

know, you're, you're seeing us here, they don't engage in it in a way where

they learn tons from it, you know?

And Chris himself, along the way, invents, this is triple play now.

So he invents,

it's getting very meta.

Yeah, very much so.

Yeah.

I like that.

But he, he, he invents a way to frame it for them that I never would have thought.

Because he's near to it, right?

So that innocence, that playfulness brings.

Which was about, you know, seeing this sort of seemingly chaotically crazy game

as what might happen to them when they go back into the office next week, you

know, and when things start changing faster around them than they can see or

control and the game giving them some clues as to how to do that, you know?

So that, so that I thought was just, just amazing.

It's that's a sort of game-based one.

And the another one I just mentioned.

Then I stopped.

I mean, I could go on forever with these examples, but, um, is, is

again a different kind of place.

So asking people to do modeling.

So a friend of mine Klaus Jacobes, uh, from Switzerland, he helped develop

this methodology of using Lego.

And, and so I'd ask people to do is you give them a whole bunch of Lego.

Now that alone changes the room and you get them to reacquaint themselves

with Lego, um, which is a thing that's a value for its own sake, because as

they, in order to reacquaint themselves with Lego, they kind of have to

remember what it was like to be a child.

So there's a part of themselves.

They're now bringing back into play, uh, literally into play and yet in to do

something straightforward festival just to like build something tall or, or whatever.

And then you invite them to start modeling things that are of

interest and relevance to them.

So you might ask them to build a leadership challenge.

You might ask them to build that.

Place of work, but not literally the building.

You might, you know, so yeah you get into build this model and

they're using Lego, if you like is a three-dimensional constructional language.

Uh, it's pretty simple to use.

Most people can use it.

Um, and so that's not a barrier.

It's not that you have to ask them to make art or something.

Um, and, and then once they've built their model, they're kind of

making different choices or looking at things in different ways, using

different metaphors along the way.

And then you can look at it and then turn it around and then you

can have other people look at it and say, oh, isn't that interesting?

You've got the person very high up or you've got no

people or why is it all green?

And.

It might just go, well, I could only find green bricks, you know, might not

have a deep answer, but you can inquire into it and kind of different ways.

And so that would be a shift from being playful with the hand, rather

than playful with the mind or the language and using this kind of

different, different language.

Yeah.

And I think that is so important in a world where we use our bodies.

So little at work, you know, once upon a time work was physical

and would have been physical.

And, now the majority of us work on computers, you know, we are not

using our bodies in the same way.

And I think bringing an embodied component to, how we work together is really

important as you've just described.

Yeah.

And I think that that speaks to a very, very important point.

Um, you know, which is the fact that we are not bodies with minds.

We are body minds to use Kandos Pert's term.

And we easily forget, uh, that we, that thinking is an embodied activity.

Even mathematicians still write 4 million whiteboards or blackboards

depending on their generation and the act of writing the rims of equations,

they write up is still a physical act.

And you can't do mathematics, I'm reliably informed by people

that know about these things that Oxford, without that physical act.

So even that, which seems most disembodied is still physicalized,

you know, and still stigmatized.

And our thoughts and our emotion and our thinking and its deep broad

sense takes us back to Buddhism.

It necessarily involves the body, uh, both materially, uh, where it's making,

making marks on a Blackboard or wielding an ax or pressing a key on a computer.

And also kind of physiologically that, that our emotional state, our

physical state will change the ideas.

We have, the things we see, the way we feel and certainly, and probably most

importantly, the way we relate to.

Um, and so getting people to do something physical at the beginning

of a session, which online I think is increasingly important, kind of

is I think people have learned now.

And they're more aware of the fact that that is not just a trivial kind of fun

thing to do, but essentially the academics have a jargon for it, I mean, they call

it, uh, creating learning readiness.

The rest of them might call it icebreaking or warmup, which sort

of trivializes it if you like.

But when you call it creating learning readiness, um, you go.

Ooh, that's a thing now.

And actually this is the upside of academia.

I think there are lots of downsides, but the academia academic discipline,

which will notice there is something there, which is a phenomenon, which

we could well describe with a sort of slightly pretentious perhaps,

but impressive sounding term that tells us something about it.

And now that's creating learning readiness and those, oh, look, you've got to be

ready to learn., You can't just learn.

And you need to do something to create that, you know?

And, and so it immediately gives you kind of purchase,

And I feel like that leads us in perfectly to of, what do you think the

things that are required to be in place for us to be able to play and to learn?

That is the question.

If you like that, my life's work is trying to answer perpetually,

because what my job is to do is to create those things, you know.

So what's required?

I think there's infinite subtlety to it, but at the same time, I don't think that

means you can't say some very simple, very obvious, very practical things about that.

So what's, what's necessary?

Some framing is necessary.

And the framing happens physically, and it happens temporary.

So physically, where are we?

Um, temporary.

How long are we here for and how are we going to use that time?

Um, I suppose you could go on and say, who are we.

Uh, you know, who are we that are here together.

Uh, and then, uh, kind of what are we about, you know, what are we

here for, or what do we care about?

Um, and it's very easy to translate all this back into kind of fairly

obvious signing business language.

Oh, he's just saying, you know, what's the role of the meeting?

How long is it lasting?

All those kinds of things, but the language I'm using very deliberate, it

gives it a very different feel and invites you to think about it in a different way.

Um, it's very different saying, you know, who are we to each other and

what do we care about that is saying, what's the objective of the meeting?

But one way or another, how you frame it probably is the single most important

thing to do to create the conditions where people can play fruitfully.

And then thinking about, well, what, what stimulus is helpful or required?

You know?

So do we need to, uh, have materials of certain kinds and what kinds?

Again, you can see how, in a way in the normal business world, we sort

of, we sort of done this, but we just assume that the materials you need

as bad point slide, you know, and you kind of go, that's almost certainly

not the case that that's, you know.

They are occasionally useful, but really that's not, you know, you should

think more deeply and more sensitively about, you know, do we need food?

You know, do we need music?

Do we need cushions?

Um, you know, do we need people who aren't here yet?

hopefully all of this sort of adds up and connects.

I think the other thing you need to do is to set mood, tone, atmospheric climate.

So you, you need to give permission or issue invitations or create an atmosphere

where this is not only accepted, but invited to be playful in light.

And then the question is, okay, great.

But how do you do that?

Well, the answer is you have to embody it.

You, if the other person convening or leading or inviting, need to display that

you can't instruct people to be playful.

I mean, people do, and it's awful.

It's makes you cringe.

If you just dwell on that for a few moments, it's so

easy to do that, you know?

Cause you kind of go in my let's take that example.

Imagine I was to instruct people to be playful.

So you kinda, you know, I might start a session by saying today

it's really important that way.

Play around, you know, and already, you know, it's like something's gone on or

you've kind of acknowledged what's in the room or I dunno, I say to people at

the beginning, you know, you're probably being ready, sitting there feeling

really apprehensive because you're about to do this stuff that you don't know

what it is that sounds really stupid.

And you're worried going to be embarrassed, you know?

And then I leave a pause and they're all sitting there kind of going, oh God.

yeah.

Yeah.

And I go, and you'd be right to be apprehensive, you know.

And as soon as you do that, Levity.

They know like what, what he's saying that I'm right.

You know, and there's a emotional thing where we make people feel right.

They like that.

So then they open up a bit more and then I go, oh, what is it we're going to do?

So again, beginnings, framing, mood tone.

Um, but you can't, you you've got to be in it.

So then that kind of goes back another stage where you kind of go.

So where would, if you were to want to start to working this, to work

this way, where would you start?

Well, right here, You got to start with yourself.

So you've, you've got to be aware of yourself.

Sounds like an obvious thing, but it's quite hard to be, that's a

skill, that's a capacity you develop.

And one thing is I got very interested in over the last few years and I find

myself saying very often in sessions is, you know, that just because they're

being aware of what you're feeling.

It's an automatic just cause they're your feelings.

You don't necessarily know what they are.

So it takes us back to the improv practices.

One of the great sources of noting is to not, oh, I'm noticing I'm feeling

frustrated or I'm noticing I'm feeling anxious or I'm noticing this feels great.

And then of course you can use that.

Um, you can, you can then say to people, I'm noticing, I'm feeling a bit nervous

about this, which is different from just feeling nervous and different from

feeling something and not feeling good and not even knowing that it's nervousness.

So there's a lot, uh, but it starts with you and framing and

holding is a big part of it.

I suppose it's also probably useful to think about what it's not.

So you don't to create the possibility of play and playfulness, particularly

at work, you have to be wary of your default settings of wanting

to control the outcome, wanting to be sure of what's going to happen.

So those are the things that you don't want.

And so you have to, those are candidates to let go of.

and I love that idea of, you know, it all begins with you modeling.

And by modeling it, you give permission for other people to do it.

Um, that feels successful.

there's a story.

I, I do love to tell this one, so you may have heard it from me

before, but it illustrates many of the points we've been talking about.

So I was working with a group of leaders on the leadership program and I was

playing a game with them, which involves them all standing in a long line.

And so you got half the group 15 or so people standing in along the line

trying to pass the message along through physical gestures effectively

and the rest of the group kind of looking around and the way it works

mechanically is that imagine they're all standing as it were facing, like a

cash machine or something in a queue.

And when is each person's turn to, to, to show the message, which is a number

of gestures, they tap the person in front of them on the shoulder who turns

around, they show them once, step away, and then it goes on down the line.

And so this was kind of happening and it got partway down the line and.

Um, this man tap the person in front of her on the shoulder

and she didn't turn around.

And so he tapped her again and she's done a turnaround.

So he tried the third time and she's just stayed there.

then he gave up and threw his arms up.

And the group is kind of feeling nervous at this point.

The people are further down the line can't see this, they've got

a sense that something weird is happening, but they don't know what.

The grade level we're looking on.

All of a sudden everybody's looking at me like going, oh, is this right?

Is this wrong?

And my.

Tendency was to feel, oh, I've explained this badly.

She's forgotten.

I need to step in and correct it.

So notice how many concepts there are.

There are, there are in that little sentence of me being right there being

a right way to do it, me having made a mistake and something in me that day.

Well, maybe not.

And so what happens, I was leaning against the wall and I kind of went to step in

and go you know, Maria, you might want to turn around and I stopped myself.

And I just leaned back against the wall and kind of, and smiled.

So this is the embodiment piece.

And I kind of, I genuinely got curious about, oh, I wonder what will happen.

So this is that it starts here.

And I could feel instantly talk about power communication

leadership in that moment.

My gestures of me just kind of going, oh, this is cool.

And then I could fill the room, go, oh, this is.

I mean, nobody said anything.

I could just feel them and their attention went back onto what happened.

And, um, eventually, you know, the group worked out a way to deal with the glitch.

They just sort of made something else up and then carried on and sort

of did a hack if you like, without realizing that's what they were doing.

And the whole thing then turned out to be such a fascinating debrief conversation.

And, and that was me kind of letting go and being playful with the game.

The game went, quote, unquote, wrong.

But it going the way it went, turned out to be a much more interesting

and that kind of lightness of hold.

And all of it communicated just with a gesture.

Now, a gesture.

I couldn't, I couldn't have faked that.

I had to genuinely be curious and like, oh, this is really interesting,

which is where the prior work one's done on oneself comes into play.

You've told us some amazing stories and I think there's just so much to unpack

in there, but in kind of summary, what would you say are the biggest surprises

you've had in your work with play?

Well, there's a whole series of what I'd call little surprises, which

are, uh, we call jumping up and down moments, uh, because they're so pleasing

that you jump up and down, you know?

Um, so to illustrate by example, I was playing a story-building game once a

business school in South Africa, and it seemed to Gus just sort of terminally

messed up that there were two houses of the story that just didn't fit together.

It was just like, oh God, they really haven't found a way to connect

or listen, which often happens.

And then somebody stepped in and said, and they just put an, and

where there's going works is you just put words in to connect them.

And they just put in an and.

Oh, my God.

That's magic.

You know, I mean, it could have been a, but I can't remember the details,

but the single word, that tiny piece of connective tissue made everything

like in a movie when suddenly discovered, oh my God, she's a daughter.

Oh, wow.

Um, and it all just clicked.

So that's what I would call a little surprise.

And that's an example of it.

And there are umpteen of those where the fact that you're willing to be

playful, and by that, I mean not be locked onto the way the outcomes should

look, actually creates an infinite number of ways to succeed rather than

the kind of one predetermined right one.

The sort of biggest surprises I think, are where you, through being playful, you,

you suddenly, everything looks different, you know, so just to use an example.

So the one I gave earlier, those few small comments, jokes of marshals.

Changed how I understood what we were doing with the program unleashed a

whole set of synthesis that I then did of how this program works, which

now 10 or 15 years later, I'm about to sort of pass on to somebody else

who's about to take, you know, take up the directorship of that program.

And so, when play really works is suddenly, know, it's like drawing,

it's like opening this huge door and all of a sudden you go, oh

my God, there's all of this?

Or this is one of those?

And I don't think you can do that with the sort of narrowing.

I don't think you can do that with just your kind of mental concepts and frames.

You know, I think if you look at great terms, you know, great pieces of language,

they they're normally playful they've or they've been invented plaufully.

I think that the kind of essence of players that it allows you to see things

in a way you wouldn't otherwise imagine.

And the sense of just enormous possibilities.

Yeah.

I mean, the bit I've talked less about and prep maybe because I take

it all for granted, but it shouldn't be taken for granted is what play

does to, how we relate to each other.

You know?

So when people engage in place, if you take the group, I was

talking about with Chris Kutarna.

They're exhausted.

If they feel like they've been put through the mill and now they get to be with each

other in a different way and play off each other and connect to each other.

And the way that that particular game works, they each get to explore

how each of them wants to play it.

So we're doing something together, which is very connective, but

we can each do it in our own.

And that's, I think another quality of play.

And if you think about, you know, Gary Hirsch, my partner in, in On Your Feet,

what, what Gary brings is just a, sort of a Jew joy and delight in people

co-creating and connecting together and just putting Gary in a room with.

He had, he had this, another great story, actually, he and other colleagues,

but particularly Gary had a best part of 10 years of work with Disney,

the Disney theme parks division, where basically they would say to

Gary, come and be in a room with us.

He didn't have to do any prep.

He didn't have.

Do anything, I mean, an offer exercises or maybe facilitate a bit, but what

they really wanted was his capacity to create that climate, where people

have a different kind of energy, a different kind of connection to

each other, and he's so embodies it.

It's just contagious, you know?

And so, you know, most play, I think is connected and collective, even when you

play a game of solitaire, you're sort of playing against or with yourself or

your former self or your future self.

But also you're, you're playing, you know, you'll talk about it with other

people or you're at least playing with the people that invented the game, you know?

it's hard to imagine play being entirely solitary.

Although I wonder if you can be Playful on your own.

I dunno.

but it's a bit like that famous Newton quote, we stand on the shoulders of

giants, you know, to push this idea a bit further or to be a bit more rigorous, you

know, it's, it's almost impossible for human beings to do anything on their own.

Because even if you know, sitting, writing a book at the moment, that's

pretty solitary except I'm recalling all the people I've worked with and telling

stories about, and I'm consulting with people and Nick's doing the illustrations,

and I'm checking ideas out and there'll be something in this conversation

that will end up in the book and, you know, so, so we're never really alone.

And, and I think that that's important to acknowledge as well.

It's it's this play has such value for connection.

I love that.

So do you have a playful practice, um, that you think is really useful that you

could share with our listeners as a way kind of into this as a way of injecting

more playfulness into their work?

that's interesting.

I, you know, the last couple of years I've worked, uh, I've not been around

people very much, like so many of us haven't, you know, so I think that my

compensating playful practice will be to have conversations with people who aren't,

as it were on my path with people who are in the margins, apropos of nothing.

Uh, so I had an occasion last week, I was, had quite a busy day on Thursday and I had

this call in with somebody who is actually a teacher, former teacher, retired teacher

at one of the schools my children went to.

So mine, when I showed him, it's really.

Remote in some ways, you know, and I thought to myself, oh, I'm so busy.

Why am I talking to this guy this afternoon?

But I thought, well, you know, I've got this commitment.

I do like him.

So that was enough to sort of make me honor the commitment.

And then we just had this amazing conversation that spawned so many ideas

and connections and ended up with, you know, yellow, which is my current

business sponsoring him to go to a festival by really interesting think tank.

And, you know, and I'm like, yeah, that's why.

And so I think for me that would be a playful practice would be talking to

people who I actually have no reason to talk to, and getting some kind of lateral

input and, and changing the subject, you know, and that's something I can do from

my solitary don't need to find, you know, I don't need to go to a tennis court or

anything like that to do that, or get rugby team together or, or whatever.

So that'd be one.

um, I think the other one I'd encourage too.

Is this the practice?

I mean, I just love playing around with words.

So I have various conversational partners with whom I'm always, I don't know if

this qualifies as a practice, cause it's not as a deliberative thing, but

it's, I'm always on, on the lookout for, for being able to muck around

with words and maybe in a WhatsApp conversation, be playful with that.

And you know, so again, another example, yellow, that business I run now, which

I just mentioned was born out of a WhatsApp group called the school of

thoughtfulness which was a sort of joke, and the school of thoughtfulness

invented, uh, is fictitious journal that, you know, was going to be

called the journal of messy thinking.

as soon as you say that to yourself, you kind of go, God,

I wonder what that would be.

You know, so a practice could be anything that you name or title is like, mess with

the words, play around with the words.

So don't call it a catch-up session, you know, call it a lark around or call it,

uh, you know, uh, I don't know, call it something that is not normally called and

see then what that suggests, you know,

Yeah.

And I think that was so nice because it creates a completely different invitation.

Doesn't it coming back to that idea of modeling and giving people permission.

I think that's so nice.

And so simple.

Yeah.

it's got me thinking I should.

I wonder what, what else you could call a podcast, you know,

or an interview, you know?

Um, what would be the playful way to, uh, to mess around

with the title of this piece?

Like an audio noodle.

yeah, there you go.

There you go.

So, you know, uh, that's already that invites a different kind

of contribution, doesn't it?

You know, that's

Yeah.

I like it.

Um, Rob has been such a delight to talk to you, and I feel like this could, you

know, I could go on for hours, but I w we'll close it there and just say, thank

you for your playfulness and for sharing your stories and your playful practices.

Um, and it's just been a delight.

Well, thanks to you for asking.

I think that, you know, the work that you're engaged in now, I

think is absolutely brilliant.

And you know, this experience, uh, for me, it has been kind of illuminating

and, uh, and delightful as well.

It's like, It's there's a real playful art to, to asking the questions.

And I don't mean to sort of the interviewer's skill is that too, but

I mean actually posing the questions, embracing the questions, putting

the questions kind of out there, and those questions get me think,

you know, some, so this again is an illustration of playfulness and action.

I've probably said things today that I hadn't thought of before, because you

are and also You ask in the context of a relationship that, that you and I have.

So there's, there's a climate here.

It's, it's very different from being interviewed by a journalist,

which I have had done to me.

And that's how it feels.

It's something that is done to you, but it's a very different thing.

So, thank you.

So, Lucy, how was your conversation with Rob?

Oh, it was so lovely.

I mean, there was so much that we went into and I could have, as

I said, let it go on for hours.

I think the thing that really struck me was playfulness and improv

particularly as a social technology, as Rob described it for approaching

uncertainty and complexity.

And I just loved that way of describing it.

I thought it was very kind of apt for this moment in time, your

conversation we've talked about kind of, what do we mean by work?

And I think you used that the term kind of, it's an ongoing inquiry right now.

What do you mean by work?

And that just felt as you say, this kind of time of uncertainty

felt very apt for this moment.

And that sense that, um, going back to the question of, you know, what is good

work, and the role that play can play in working with more ease and grace.

And I just really liked that idea of working with grace and,

Hm.

look like?

What does it feel like?

When he talked about the difference you saw between play and

playfulness, I was like, yes, yes.

And there's two terms mean different things to him because

that's really how I see them.

And that you can kind of playfulness as leaning into an attitude and a

mindset where you can actually approach very non-player things playfully.

He gave that lovely example of just talking about making lunch with his son.

And you can, you could approach that kind of task playfully or not.

And I just love that kind of how we tease out these differences that something

might not be play and very much, not just fun and games, but you can approach

basically anything in life with that Playfilled mentality, which I loved.

I will say, I thought the six words, the guide to kind of improvise as

a practice were just so helpful.

And I found his openness and that the fact that he often forgets them.

Right.

And he kind of thinks, oh, hang on.

I'm, I'm kind of not living by those principles at all.

And his openness in that he kind of slips, I suppose, from his

playful practice, I find that really reassuring and heartening.

And that I find again, I find myself being like, ah, I'm not

doing those things and noticing that and kind of recalibrating myself.

And I just found that from someone who's so well versed and immersed

in this world of improvisation, the fact that he sometimes forgets,

I thought, well, that's great.

It doesn't mean we failed when we do that.

It's just, okay, get back on that wagon.

Um, but it's very human to, to, to forget these

Yeah.

And I also think, you know, so those practices are, let go, notice more, use

everything, and the way we're kind of brought up, he said at one point with

letting go, for example, we've been taught since we were tiny to hold on.

So it's kind of really counter to the way you we're brought

up and the way we're schooled.

And so it is this practice and I loved how he describes the practices as

invitations, because it's like, you know, when you're told to do something,

you, I don't know if you're like me, you automatically want to do the opposite, but

like when you're invited, it feels like, oh yeah, I want to come to this party.

And I think kind of making playful invitations feels like the way forward.

Yeah,

The other thing that I just thought was brilliant was when he was talking about

Marshall at Oxford University describing Oxford as the medieval theme park and

those kinds of reframes that can help time something, you know, that's like

serious intimidating into something, you know, that's the complete opposite.

He coined some terms that I just found super GC, which I loved this idea of, the

managerial fantasy and this idea that.

No one has complete control, despite really we're all kind of operating

under the solution that some people do have control and his point that we're

actually all improvising all the time, but we're not doing it consciously or

to be honest, particular skillfully.

And I find that really exciting as an opportunity that the more we

engage with this idea that we don't have control, we're all improvising.

And how can we engage with that more?

I find that really really exciting.

Yeah.

And so freeing because it means like, all you have to do is like, in that moment.

That's the only thing you have any control over.

And ma

Um,

like deeply relieving.

Yeah, There were two really practical examples he shared that I just want to

share with the world far and wide was around this idea of kind of embodiment

again and, and shifting energy in the room by just getting up and moving.

Right the start of a session.

And I thought that's something we could all do before.

Any meeting you have, you can just say, let's stand up, let's stretch

and just share how we're arriving.

And that small amount of movement can really get you in your bodies

and shift the energy in the room.

And the second was the lovely the idea of thinking about how you're framing

a session just in how you title it.

So rather than team catch-up or status report, what different

name can you give this gathering?

To just give it a different edge and invite people to

church slightly differently.

And that's your audio noodle, I feel is what we're doing right now.

Yeah, me too.

but it was just, you can change the nature of something just by

naming it slightly differently.

And that was something that I was noodling on afterwards.

And I love that term learning readiness that he's, I think that's really

powerful and also let us facilitators, you know, if we don't remember.

I think he said it's over.

And that, that is so true.

I know in myself, but when I'm not feeling something, it

really affects a group dynamic.

And then I think, you know, something we can all take away is, how playfulness can

make everything look different and it's like putting a new pair of glasses on.

So my invitation to you would be, how can we wear our

playfulness glasses more often?

Thank you so much for listening today.

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