Vital play

Last month I wrote a post about game play and how I wanted work to be more like that. I've spent some more time thinking and recently stumbled across this TED video about play and why it is important. It turns out that not only is it stimulating and fun but also vital for our brain and perhaps even our survival! A under stimulated being will sooner or later be depressed and this actually results in a shrinking brain!! Ouch! 

Before we continue let me just clarify what play is. The state of play occurs when no particular purpose exists for our actions. If purpose is more important than the act of doing it is probably not play.

Now why is play important then? For one thing it is the medium to link our brain to our body, this is how we learn. And play can exist in many forms such as social play (the want to belong), ritual play (sports), storytelling, imagination etc. etc. But I also believe that it is in the act of play that we get as most creative. Where we let our constraints go and dream up new ideas. Without it, a small amount of depression enters and we stagnate in our development as beings. Most of my ideas pop into my head from nowhere and then tag along for a while. But it is when I interact with others and play around with the idea that it takes off and becomes something more. And I can feed off that energy for weeks! (and if you want a money making angle on it, that energy is fueled straight into my work).

So keep on playing! If not for us (mankind) then for your own sake, and for your brain… and because it’s god damn fun!

If work was more like games and play

What would work look like if it was more like a game, and playing the game was more like playing in the sand with you pals at age four? My guess it that it would be more fun,  effective and stimulating than today. This is my reasoning:

• When we play a game, we readily, without objection, accept the rules of the game. No matter how ludicrous they might we, we simply accept that if we want to participate in this game we must obey to some laws that someone set up. And no matter how we roll the dice or upgrade our level 56 Blood Orch Mage we still accept these constraints.
• On the other hand, when we used to play in the sandbox at kindergarten, we would dream up the most amazing stories of dragons, beasts, cars etc. And the possibilities where endless. If we wanted the car to fly it could, no questions asked.

What if we could combine these two views, and take them with us into work. How easy would in not be to try out a new process or method? We just set up Scrum for example, agree on the rules and then play! And how magnificent would not our stories, solutions and conversations be if we would just allow us to dream as we once did?! I think we would be the most creative company in the world, and having a laugh doing it!

Waste of space! Or Why today’s electronic Scrum tools does not work!

I like computers. I like how they enable me to dream up things I could never have imagined, let me indulge in information from far and wide and communicate with my friends wherever whenever. I also like pen and paper (and whiteboards, coloured pens, index cards, post-it notes etc). And I like to communicate in real life!

As a coach in Scrum and team building I know what works for me in the small local team. We use all kinds of stickers, pens, flipcharts, post-its and what have you to make sure that information is radiant, free and flowing all the time. The ease of use and the unbelievable flexibility that these tools offer are probably endless. What I don’t like is stuff that interferes with this process, cramp it and my steal energy and time. Computerised Scrum tools are such tools! At least the ones I’ve tried so far.

I can understand why my clients wish their distributed organisations had the same flow as the single co-located team. I can also understand the problem with using my analogue tools over large distances. I can even understand, although I question this sometimes, the need to “document” stuff. But I can not accept the impacts it has on us. The tools often are extremely developer centric with all kinds of nifty features but not very flexible at all (also called waste in Lean). They force you into a, for me, unintuitive behaviour and after two hundred and forty eleven clicks I give up. It just takes way too much time to change a simple little number, add a special mark, or group a bunch of stories. Comments like “if froze for some reason and turned upside down”, “he’s the owner of that task but did not notice” and “the story is not in there, I can’t see it” simply never occur with analogue tools. If you add a story it’s there, right in front of you. You can touch it, change it and even remove it! And if you get short on time and need to rearrange, specially mark or add some info to a story it’s so intuitive that (believe it or not) someone without Scrum knowledge knows how to do this!

Don’t get me wrong, there is a need for digital Scrum tools. But it is not a trivial task to create them! I think we need to rethink how our Scrum tools work and which parts of the process it makes sense to digitalise. And we need to stop waste time, space and energy on repetitive tasks in tools that does not support agile thinking and behaviour! 

The more difficult the goal, the greater the achievement - goal-set motivation

First of all, let’s establish our goal. We want to get out more bang for the buck in our development process. Since we believe in an empowered, self organized team which takes responsibility for their actions and work we need method to promote this behaviour. It turns out that using goals to steer and focus is just that method!

In this post we will look at some of the more important aspects of goal-set motivation and why it should appeal to you as a leader.

1. The more difficult the goal, the greater the achievement

This means that situation that the team, or individual for that sake, is commited and posses the ability to achieve the goal, the performance of that team or individual will increase. If not, the performance will instead drop at high goal levels.

2. The more specific the goal, the more precisely performance in regulated

This might sound desirable at first but give it another go. In reality this means that if you focus too much on details you run a very high risk of dampen or kill creativity. This is one reason we preach the usage of negotiable user stories in Scrum instead of function based planning.

3. Goals that are both specific and difficult lead to the highest performance

People do not actually do their best when trying to do their best because, as  a vague goal, it is compatible with many different outcomes, including those lower than one's best. Therefore, goals need to be both specific and difficult to maximize performance. All in accordance with statement one and two above.

4. Commitment to goals is most critical when goals are specific and difficult

Obvious perhaps but I’ll spell it out anyway. Easy and vague goals do not require much dedication and are therefore easy to commit to.

5. (This one is important) High commitment to goals is attained when:

a) the team is convinced that the goal is important

b) the team is convincend that the goal is attainable

6. Participation by subordinates yields higher commitment

For example, participation from the team leads to higher commitment. But the goals might not be set as high as of they where set by their superiors.

7. In general goals stimulate planning and leads to higher quality

Therefore we should strive for using goals in planning and in measurements. And goal setting is in fact most effective when there is feedback showing progress in relation to the goal. The goals help to orient us and affect performance by affecting the direction of action, the effort exerted and the persistence over time.

8. When people strive for goals on complex tasks they are least effective in discovering suitable strategies if:

a) they have no prior domain knowledge or no relevant training (obvious right?)

b) there is high pressure to perform well (a team where failure is not allowed)

c) there is high time pressure to perform well immediately (an already late project)

Here, feedback is very effective in motivating higher performance. But remember, feedback alone is just information. You must relate it to the goals.

9. Finally, high goals might actually lead to less performance satisfaction than easy goals

This has to do with the fact that goals server as standards of self-satisfaction and harder goals demands higher accomplishment in order to attain self-satisfaction than easy goals.

So why should you this leadership technique of self-set goals? Well, because:

• It can help you to provide and communicate an inspiring vision

• Let you act as a role model when aiming for a more self organizing organization

• You can expect outstanding performance if you make it work

• It promotes those who embrace the vision and dismiss those who reject it

• It is a very efficient way of delegating responsibility and ownership

• You express genuine confidence in your employees and peers

• You can actually ask for commitment in public and who knows, you might finally get it as well!