Creativity and play: a systematic approach to managing innovation

Business Horizons,  March-April, 1994  by Joseph V. Anderson

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How much personal strategy can be experienced at work? Quality circles have been one route. They give vent to the personal strategies, as problems and solutions are tossed around the table. Formal planning efforts are another way to approach this component, allowing everyone, from the shop floor up, to offer input. At the extreme, some firms capture the personal strategy component by confining themselves to quota setting, which allows individuals to develop their own strategies.

Play revolves around power. Play involves imposing one's will on a real or imagined counterpart. I wish to score a touchdown, you wish the opposite. The Martians wish to eat me, I wish them not to. I wish to achieve par, the golf course wishes me not to. In one way or another, play involves getting others to do something they would not otherwise have done, or to do something yourself in spite of resistance. If you watch a child wash dishes you will note that the job clearly carries the drudgery of work until the child envisions the sink as a setting for naval battles and thereby makes it play. Those dirty dishes become the tools of power in a battle for world dominion.

The stumbling block here is that we defensively assume that the power issue requires giving employees power over superiors. However, the power relationship between us and them isn't really the issue. Their need is simply to have power over something. Consequently, just about any target will do, as long as it's relevant. Heavy advertising increases a sales representative's power relative to buyers. Flex hours give employees power over their own schedules. Some firms allow every assembly line worker the authority to stop production for quality control problems, granting major individual power over the product and the production process. At a minimum, the power issue reverts back to a useful management cliche - always match authority to responsibility.

Play is not a new notion to managers. However, the effort to instill it within the job setting itself requires the kinds of changes to structure and process that can threaten managerial turf and ego. Consequently, many organizations have tried to capture the upside of play without experiencing any of the apparent downside. They do this by adding a separate layer of play on top of work with incentive games, hoping that their motivational value filters down to everyday activities.

The dominant form is in-house sales competitions. However, the concept has been expanded to include cost-reduction competitions in production departments, turnover-reduction competitions in personnel departments, safety competitions on the shop floor, and many other games. There are no hard cost and return figures on these efforts. However, estimates from those who have studied the phenomenon, such as Professor Neil Ford at the University of Wisconsin, paint a grim picture.

More than $4 billion per year is spent on sales contests and recognition alone. That does not even address the costs of incentive games in the other areas of business. In addition, sales contests are viewed with considerable disdain by sales representatives, who endeavor to outsmart and exploit the game, rather than use it as a personal stimulus for ongoing performance.