ChatGPT can’t be as playful as some manuals of instructions
In a recent blog, “When Spending Time in the Sandbox Isn’t Fun Anymore… And Yet You Still Can Play”, I share my observations of children’s curiosity and fearlessness while playing in the playground or sandbox. I find the same curiosity and fearlessness in founders when approaching the problem that they are solving; I am captivated by their sheer ingenuity and innovation. In this blog, I explore what playfulness is when applied to startups as they scale; a biology paper on playfulness & creativity, and a real-world application in the assembly instructions of a 5-shelf bookcase. Playfulness in startup to scale up – leads to creativity Playfulness has five characteristics that I have observed in Business to Business/Enterprise grade founding teams:
- No rules: instead offer some props or prompts and problem statements. By removing the rules, no guardrails, assumptions, or preconceptions remain that would hinder creativity in solutions to the problem statement.
Which requires…. 2. Freeing up time to play, just like our children have time with playmates. So shall we set up time with our workmates. 3. A safe environment – no judgement. 4. The environment also needs to be non-competitive. A way to enable this is to ensure that the individuals in senior positions adopt a subordinate role during play. 5. Humor used as an enabler – Humor is the elixir of disarming preconceptions around a problem statement. Playful work involves having fun while doing so. A CEO once used All Hands-on Deck time to introduce a game with a prize for retention of certain elements presented during a “boring” company update. While in a playful state of mind you co-create and retain information. When you play you learn (and you retain) Have fun on the All-Hands-on Deck or State of the Union used to communicate with the organization you lead. One of my clients’ CEO had an All-Hands-on Deck monthly meeting- instead of going through a standard drill of 15 PowerPoint slides, before slide 2, she asked the team members a question. What had been different on the opening slide with respect to last month’s AHOD? There was silence – technical folks tend to be on the quiet side. Then finally somebody had the gall to say, “I think the logo has changed.” Bingo! You are the winner of a $25 Amazon gift card. And so, a tradition began. Benefits are healthy competition, and retention of the information that will follow. When one is playing, the retention of material of the task is much higher. One of the objectives with an all-hands-on-deck meeting is to bring your organization along on the journey and what better way to do this, than playing. Playfulness and creativity by Patrick Bateson In this seminal article published in Current Biology Vol 25 No 1 r12, Patrick Bateson, a sitting professor of Animal Behaviour, Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge, explores examples of highly creative people leading to discoveries and achievements found in arts and sciences fields. Highly accomplished composers, like Mozart, are notorious for playfulness as revealed in the music scores composed. Scientists like Alexander Fleming (the discoverer of the bacterial properties of penicillin) when asked what about his process, responded “I play with microbes … it is very pleasant to break the rules and to be able to find something that nobody had thought of… “ Biologists are interested in the long-term outcome of playfulness that leads to chance of survival and reproductive success. This also works when applied to businesses – I would argue they are like a living organism. In the words of Andrew Grove, “A corporation is a living organism, it has to continue to shed its skin. Methods have to change. Focus has to change. Values have to change. The sum total of those changes is transformation.’ Playfulness in Assembly Instructions When assembling one of my Christmas gifts. I grimaced- I have never been good with manual activities. With the post festivities Iull, I set out to assemble a 5 shelf bookshelf as I had run out of space for the many books I accumulated during the pandemic days. I read the instructions to assemble a new shelf, and I recalled when my children would inevitably come to me with a request for help to assemble their Christmas gifts. I would first ask if they had read the manual of instructions before asking me. Like many children and (adults), mine did not like to read the instructions. I do. I follow instructions well. While reading the manual, counting the parts (over 100 parts (#@!$!!), and placing them in position, my eye caught in the upper right corner of each page quirky tips and outright humorous messages: (this is in black and white no illustrations other than screws, and smaller than real life renderings of each part and tool) “Now you know our ABCs” “Hammer not actual size” “Some assembly (and snacks) required” “Just think. The sooner you do this, the sooner you do something else.” (With a picture of a sofa) “Almost time to celebrate! With a nap” “Pro Tip: Lift with your legs. And you know, your arms.” After finishing I was in a good mood. Not only was I proud of myself, but I also enjoyed myself in a creative state of mind assisted by a funny manual. And when I closed the manual and put away my tools, I stashed the manual of instructions, but I paused to read the last page and saw: “So how did it go? “Set a work record for speed?” “Feeling good about yourself?” “Nice. Get social with it on any of these quality share sites.” Here are my learnings from the assembly of a piece of furniture from the company Sauder Woodworking Company in Archbold Ohio! Dos and don’ts Do not assemble with a full wine glass beside you. Do have lots of space. Do have the proper tools. Do with proper rest from the night before. Do not try to do it alone. Do not have another distraction like music or the TV going Do have YouTube up and ready for searching terms you may not understand. I honestly cannot see that the latest hype, ChatGPT, can achieve the creativity found in children and founders playing in the sandbox. Until that happens, Game on! For founders along the private company journey, if you would like to learn about how to unleash creativity, please book time with me at Next Act Advisors. Brenda A. McCabe