Tag Archives: team

Leveraging the Power of Play to Innovate!

Critical Foundational 21st Century Skills

These key lessons are encapsulated in my latest innovative co-creation – The Start-Up Game™. This hybrid board game combines experiential learning with achievement and competitive elements. It features an AI learning component that teaches critical foundational skills—collaboration, mathematical thinking, and adaptability —essential for both individuals and companies in a fast-changing AI world. As technical complexity rises, the glue that keeps talent productive is social skill—communication, empathy, conflict resolution, and the ability to coordinate diverse expertise. In addition to social skills, other fundamental capabilities — such as critical thinking, complex problem-solving, and reasoning — are crucial components of a dynamic, collective work environment in the modern enterprise. Together, they offer a shared platform that unlocks the full value of individuals’ specialized know-how, enables adaptation and innovation as technology and markets shift, and is increasingly in demand.

Games as Metaphors for Real Life

Since games are often metaphors for real life, I have spent many years shifting from the win/lose competitive mindset and way of being I grew up with to recognize the value of experimentation and co-operation, and to understand what it means to be truly collaborative.

Adults Learn by Doing

With the ongoing war for our attention, time scarcity, our increasing reliance on mobile devices, and the seductive nature of AI and TikTok as sources of knowledge and information, we have largely forgotten the importance of developing these foundational skills, especially in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world.

All adults can learn these skills through harnessing the power of play.

Play is essential for developing our emotional and cognitive functions and fostering stronger social connections. In organizational learning and development, experiential learning involves gaining knowledge through direct experience and deep reflection, rather than just passive observation, like simply watching a learning video. It is a highly effective adult learning method that allows participants to link theoretical concepts with practical, on-the-job applications.

This approach involves active engagement in simulated real-world scenarios and:

Requires critical reflection on the experience to develop new states, traits, mindsets, behaviors, and skills.
Helps players increase self-awareness and gain a clearer understanding of how their mindsets and behaviors influence the people and teams they lead or interact with.

The Power of Play

Because focused, structured and intentional play, in the context of experiential learning, can:

Stimulate players’ curiosity, imagination and creativity.
Help players shift their emotional states, mindsets and behaviors.
Develop players’ emotional and cognitive agility.
Enhance players’ decision-making and problem-solving skills.
Improve leadership and team effectiveness.
Build players’ courage, boldness, bravery and resilience.
Reduce players’ stress levels by providing a safe space for improvisation and a break from business-as-usual responsibilities and habits.

Engaging in experiential learning activities, such as structured business games, boosts brain function, improves emotional regulation and self-management, encourages experimentation, and builds and strengthens constructive collaborative relationships with others.

In organizations, the power of play can be structured to boost players’ skills in key areas crucial to 21st-century success, including accepting responsibility, building trust, being accountable, communication, teaming, innovation, entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship, and achievement, resulting in overall performance improvements.

The Start-Up Game™ Leverages the Power of Play

The Start-Up Game™ engages and encourages players to think and act differently by safely experimenting with language, key mindsets, behaviors, and the creative and critical thinking, decision-making, and problem-solving skills used by successful intrapreneurs, entrepreneurs, and innovators.

It enables players to develop critical social, emotional, and cognitive mindsets, behaviors and skills that are the crucial components of a dynamic, collective work environment in the modern enterprise.

How to Incorporate the Power of Play into Your Organization

Create an environment of permission, safety, and trust, giving people agency and autonomy to learn through play and experimentation, and allowing them to learn from mistakes and failures.
Encourage people to “learn by doing and reflecting” to stretch their thinking by shifting business-as-usual mindsets and behaviors, to push the envelope by developing new 21st-century mental maps, behavioral deviations, and crucial new skills in critical and creative thinking and acting that result in smart risk-taking, intelligent decision-making, and innovative problem-solving.
Commit to building an organizational or team culture that promotes continuous learning at a pace faster than the competition.
Encourage people to develop a regular reflective practice to harness their collective capacity to create, invent, and innovate by establishing a set of habitual reflective practices.

We are living in an age when technical expertise can become irrelevant in just a few years; foundational skills matter more than ever. Adopting an experiential learning approach to Innovation enables people to be agile and adaptive, to develop creative and critical thinking skills, to collaborate, and to sense, see, and solve complex problems, thereby thriving in a constantly evolving environment.

Please find out more about our work at ImagineNation™. Discover our collective learning products and tools, including The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program, presented by Janet Sernack. It is a collaborative, intimate, and profoundly personalized innovation coaching and learning program supported by a global group of peers over nine weeks. It can be customized as a bespoke corporate learning program. It is a blended and transformational change and learning program that provides a deep understanding of the language, principles, and applications of an ecosystem-focused, human-centric approach and emergent structure (Theory U) to innovation. It will also up-skill people and teams, developing their future fitness within your unique innovation context.

Image Credit: 1 of 1,000+ quote slides for your meetings and presentations available at http://misterinnovation.com

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What Differentiates High Performing Teams

Bursty Communication

The first behavior that high performing teams do differently is that they communicate in bursts. You may think that successful teams are in constant communication with each other, or you may tell yourself that as you find yet another meeting added to your calendar. But research from Anita Williams Wooley and Christoph Reidl suggests that high performing teams have calendars marked by long periods of alone time. That’s not to say they don’t communicate, but rather they’ve mastered how to come together quickly, communicate necessary information, and then break apart in order to execute.

If you want to communicate in bursts, consider copying the format of the daily standup or “scrum” from the Agile software development method. In a scrum, team members circle up quickly and give status updates (What did I just complete? What am I focused on next? What’s blocking my progress) before adjourning to focus on work. It doesn’t have to be daily, but a regular burst of status updates that allows teammates to know what’s going on and how they can help would likely achieve everything a 2-hour weekly all-hands does and leaves a lot more time for real work to get done.

Respectful Conflict

The second behavior that high performing teams do differently is that they harness respectful conflict. Successful teams have just as much conflict as lower performing teams, but that conflict feels different—because it is different. A lack of conflict on a team is more often a liability than a strength. Lack of conflict is either a signal that there’s not original thinking on the team, or that there is but those teammates don’t feel psychologically safe enough to express their original thinking.

Respectful conflict means that high performing teams embrace these differences of opinion and debate them in a way that ensures the best solutions are found. Research from Charlan Namath found that teams who used respectful conflict when generating ideas created 25 percent more ideas and generated higher quality ideas as well. Think about that the next time your team must solve a problem. Anytime people actually “think outside the box,” there is going to be conflict. The difference is how leaders, and the whole team, respond to that conflict. You can frame competing ideas as something to push against, or as something that pushes the team to better solutions.

Authentic Connection

The third behavior high performing teams do differently is that they build authentic connections. They work toward a collective understanding that goes beyond knowing each other’s roles and responsibilities, and even beyond knowing each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Instead, successful teams build connection with each other around non-work topics as well. Researcher Jessica Methot calls these connections “multiplex ties” after the multitude of contexts built between different people.

Building multiplex ties means you build commonalities with teammates about multiple facets of their lives. And Methot’s research suggests that the result is higher performance, longer tenure, greater social support, and a host of other benefits. In addition, her research suggests that building authentic connections isn’t about elaborate team-building rituals, instead, it’s about small talk. Those unstructured moments before and after meetings, or the evening after conferences or company events, those are the moments when people self-disclose the multiple facets of their lives and, in doing so, build multiplex ties.

Generous Appreciation

The last behavior that high performing teams do differently is that they offer generous appreciation. There is a constant clement of praise and appreciation running through their discussions—bursty or not. Research from Ron Friedman and his team suggests that individuals on high-performing teams were 44 percent more likely to compliment or give praise to their colleagues and show appreciation for the work their colleagues do on any given day. This is more than just offering a quick round of praise at the monthly meeting or putting compliments on either end of constructive criticism. Instead, generous appreciation comes from a genuine place of appreciating that one’s ability to perform is dependent on others, and that means every individual success is a team-wide win.

How do you build a culture of generous appreciation on your team? You model the way. You praise people regularly and randomly. You catch them doing something right and you praise it publicly. And you even publicly praise when you catch them praising each other as well. The more you praise the right behavior, the more of it you get.

Leading by Example

In fact, modeling the way as a leader is a constant throughout these four behaviors. Because bursty communication requires a team leader who will model the way by structuring (and reducing) meetings to allow for it. Likewise, when conflict arises, teams are looking to the team leader to model the way in responding respectfully. And teams that build authentic connections have leaders who model the way by being authentically interested in the lives of their people. You could say that high performing teams do things differently, because they have leaders who do things differently. And in doing so, those leaders help the team do their best work ever.

Image credit: Pixabay

Originally published at https://davidburkus.com on January 17, 2022

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Cultivating a Growth Mindset Among Your Team

Principles of a Growth Mindset

Embrace Challenges: Encourage your team to step out of their comfort zones and tackle difficult projects.
Learn from Criticism: Constructive feedback should be seen as a tool for improvement rather than a personal attack.
Persistence: Promote perseverance, even when tasks become tough, and celebrate small victories along the way.
Effort is Essential: Recognize hard work and effort as pathways to mastering new skills and achieving goals.
Celebrate Growth: Acknowledge progress and development, not just end results.

The Roadmap to Cultivating Growth Mindset

Implementing a growth mindset culture requires consistent effort and intention. Start by exemplifying the mindset yourself and follow through with coaching, training, and an environment that allows for experimentation and constructive failure.

Case Study 1: XYZ Tech Innovators

Background: XYZ Tech Innovators was a startup struggling with high employee turnover and stalling project deadlines. The leadership team identified a fixed mindset culture as the core issue.

Approach: The company implemented a series of workshops focused on the principles of a growth mindset. Managers were trained to deliver constructive feedback focused on effort and strategies rather than innate talent. The company also encouraged employees to set personal growth goals and paired them with mentors.

Outcome: The initiative transformed the workplace environment. Employees started taking on more ambitious projects, and team collaboration improved. Within a year, employee turnover decreased by 30%, and project completion rates soared by 50%.

Case Study 2: ABC Retail Group

Background: ABC Retail Group was facing stagnation in innovation and product development. Team members were hesitant to pitch new ideas, fearing failure and criticism.

Approach: To shift the cultural mindset, ABC Retail Group introduced an “Innovation Lab” where employees could experiment with new ideas without the pressure of immediate success. The lab was a failure-tolerant environment where learning from mistakes was encouraged and expected.

Outcome: Within six months, the lab produced several viable new products. Team members reported feeling more creative and less anxious about proposing ideas. The company’s innovation index, a measure of new product success, increased by 40% in the following year.

Conclusion

Instilling a growth mindset within your team is a dynamic and rewarding process. As evidenced by these case studies, the benefits extend beyond individual performance improvements to foster a culture of continuous learning, innovation, and resilience. By embracing the core principles of a growth mindset, your team can navigate challenges more effectively and unlock unprecedented levels of success.

Bottom line: Futurology is not fortune telling. Futurists use a scientific approach to create their deliverables, but a methodology and tools like those in FutureHacking™ can empower anyone to engage in futurology themselves.

Image credit: Pexels