What I am about to talk about is probably going to sound deeply mistimed in our current age of austerity, double dips and general woe. But hey, humour me for a moment…
In the past few months I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what the management of IT would look like if one were to think of it from the ground up. I’m talking with people from many fields, and trying to think about what would be a service of true value for 2012 and beyond. So let me introduce you to the concept of the Chief Playfulness Officer.
As I have been describing in the past few posts, it strikes me that one of the key differences between our current world of business IT and the rapidly expanding realm of consumer technology, epitomised by touch screens, apps and social interaction, is that one tends to be driven by concepts of control and negative reinforcement and the latter by motivation and positive intent. Or, things that people tend to feel slaves to as opposed to things that people want to play with.
“Play” seems a remarkably unbusinesslike word. Work isn’t somewhere where one plays- you are there to work, right? But play can lead to innovation, creativity, problem solving and deep engagement. Great invention hasn’t come from working hard – it comes from being willing to try things out, being unafraid to make mistakes, and having a sense of enjoyment.
More businesslike words such as “collaboration” might go some way to define these concepts, but that word alone is loaded with historical baggage.
The consumer world that now increasingly dominates the use of information technology, however, is filled with play. Whilst Chief Playfulness Officers are unlikely to be dominating boardrooms any time soon, how long will the CIO whose services ignore the concept of play be of value in an environment that does nothing to support the concept? File under “cost management” and hand over the keys to the CFO…
All high-faluting stuff I’m sure, but where’s the business value? I’d look at the negative consequences of ignoring what’s going on in the world around us… in poor economic times companies can just rely on their employees’ dependency on “just having a job”. I’d rather not be the person whose services in an organisation end up being cited as the reason that staff couldn’t put up with it any longer…
mmitII 
Hi Matt, an interesting idea indeed. I’ve just spent the last couple of days running Design Thinking sessions at a client’s away days and so the notion of using play to assist in innovation certainly feels like it could be of value. To me though it’s a little broader than just play – I think you touched upon it above – it’s about creating the environment in which people feel confident that they can experiment. This to me comes down the way in which all the aspects of work is designed, for example office spaces themselves (have you seen Lego’s offices in Denmark? http://www.home-designing.com/2012/02/lego-office-denmark).
Of course among many other things, the way in which structure is applied will come in to it too, as we’ve previously discussed and that is something that I’m growing to believe needs to be viewed across the entire organisation rather than in one of the functional silos. To some extent I fear viewing this from the perspective of IT alone (while understandable from the need to bound initial explorations) may yield little improvement over all and instead reinforce a deep divide that exists between IT and the rest of the business within most organisations.
Something to think about when considering the remit of the Chief Playfulness Officer role.
Thanks for posting.
Dan.