The Play Book is Dead. Long Live PlayCards!

After a long old journey, I’ve made the decision to stop working (Deviate: Disrupt yourself) on the book that’s been my pet project for the past few years. If it had been meant to be, it would have happened by now. Being busy at work is part of the issue, but more broadly my thinking about Play at work is simply not congruent with a book. I simply couldn’t work to make my Play Book playful.

So the experiment which tested if the 13 skills of the Bricoleur could be turned into a book has been disproved (Iterate: Experiment – don’t “fail”). The core of the model can be found in the articles here: https://mmitii.mattballantine.com/2019/06/26/innovation-in-4-diagrams-3-the-play-matrix/

However, if nothing but for closure, but possibly because there is some good stuff in here, I’m turning the theory into a card game (Deviate: Make time and space for play). In fact, the very first iteration is now available online (Iterate: Minimize Time to Product). It’s only 24 hours after having the lightbulb moment that with 13 things, I just needed 4 dimensions to create a 52-card deck (Iterate: Copy without shame).

The plan is to make a few digital iterations which will available for people to play with online (Collaborate: Work out loud), and get it out to as many different people as I can to get feedback on the cards and the potential games to play (Collaborate: Forge Diverse Networks).

I’ll then get to a point where I can get them printed as actual physical playing cards (Iterate: Put Tactility Everywhere), for which I might run a bit of a crowdfunding campaign (Iterate: Scale Transactions not Interactions). There again I might not. There again I might (Deviate: Embrace Imposter Syndrome).

At this point then I’m looking for people who would be willing to help me experiment to test the content with a fairly open mind and a view to also help find games that can be played with the cards (Deviate: Be Happy Being Childlike). It would also be great to find someone who could help to create the visual identity of PlayCards with me (Deviate: Be An Artist).

What games might one play? Well, there will be individual games used to help improve one’s adaptability and play skills. Group games that help teams to discover preferences and have discussions about things that would be otherwise hard. Collaborative games to get to shared outcomes. Improv games to help expand horizons.

If any of that is of interest, please drop me a line!

The Play Book is dead. Long Live PlayCards!

PS thanks to the people who were involved along the journey so far, particularly Diane Banks, Becky Winnerah and Richard Martin.