Creativity and play: a systematic approach to managing innovation

Joseph V. Anderson

Creativity is the stuff of legend. It's the gripping core of Henry Ford's rise from watch repairman to industrial dynamo with the perfection of mass production. It fuels our awe for Steven Jobs's rise from garage-bound hustler to computer king, based on his vision of an industry not yet born. It is the source of our pride in the current resurrection of American TV manufacturing with the strategic and technological innovation of digital programming.

Creativity is also the stuff of survival. Without it, you go under. Consequently, business invests a considerable amount of money and verbal steam in creativity. Organizations are constantly redesigned, systems altered, procedures redone, incentives implemented, enlarged, and changed. Consultants make vast sums explaining, enabling, and haranguing. Yet a Presidential blue-ribbon commission published a very disturbing conclusion in the mid-1980s. It said, unequivocally, that the U.S. economy was characterized as having a vast sea of risk-averse mediocrity dotted infrequently with islands of innovation. No wonder the Japanese have been doing so well. They haven't had much competition.

The same criticism is made by the Japanese themselves. Akio Morita, the co-founder of Sony and coauthor of The Japan That Can Say No, said, "Real business entails adding value to things by adding knowledge to them, but America is steadily forgetting this. . . . America no longer makes things, it only takes pleasure in making profits from moving money around" ("A Japanese View . . ." 1992). When your competitors feel secure enough to be condescending, you know you've got a problem.

THE ELUSIVE SECRET OF CREATIVITY

The creativity gap, however, is not a result of neglect. In addition to squandering billions in merger mania, American industry also spent the 1980s investing millions in becoming creative. The investment bore only sporadic fruit at best. Jon Henderson, an executive at Hallmark, put his finger on the reason: "You can't just order up a good idea or spend money to find one. You have to build a climate and give people the freedom to create things" (Cocks 1990).

The central idea here is radical. It says you can't make creativity happen, you can only allow it to happen. That is a major frustration for two-fisted managers, but it is completely in line with the stream of reports that come from "creatives," or those who create. The dominant theme from those sources is one of release, not imposition. Michelangelo said he'd never really created a statue. He only got the gravel out of the way so the statue inside it could be released. Bach said much the same thing about music. Authors report the same phenomenon, citing the muse within. Even inventors echo the message, from Thomas Edison to Paul MacCready, inventor of the first practical human-powered airplane and electric car. MacCready credits daydreaming as his major tool. It lets him get underneath what he's "supposed" to think and find out what he really thinks deep in the shadows. How does one achieve that kind of "release" in business?

Structure and Process

The traditional approach has entailed a focus on structure: instituting two-way communication, providing direct access between the top decision maker and the workers, loosening specific work rules, monitoring outcomes instead of inputs, and tying rewards directly to performance. In principle, structure works well, plus it has the added benefit of being easy. A one-time change in policy can become self-sustaining. However, the structural approach has had limited success at best - a point easily explained by looking in your own backyard.

Ask your own teenager to mow the lawn, and you will witness the descent of bone-crushing fatigue beyond the help of medical science. In most respects, the subject "employee" both feels and is incapable of performing the task - despite two-way communication, direct access to the top, a focus on outcomes, or even a direct reward structure. Should the telephone bring the chance to cruise a mall or play ball, the fatigue evaporates and the corpse becomes revitalized. Adrenaline courses through the veins, and a flurry of focused action and creativity ensues.

A similar phenomenon can be seen in all of us; it's just easier to see in teenagers because they have not yet mastered subtlety. What we witness every day is the motivational difference between work and play. More often than not, the difference resides in the process rather than the structure.

Work wears us out, even before we do it. Play energizes us, even after we're done. Play also gives direction and focus to our activities. In class the mind easily wanders. On the ball field, at the mall, or cruising singles bars, the mind is incredibly focused. Play also breeds creativity. Duck into a huddle in sandlot ball. It's a babble of "what if," "let's try," and many other strategies enacted ad libitum. Watch the action at a singles bar. It's a tutorial in the art of attracting and retaining attention, including grooming, fashion, and banter. Greet a tardy teenager after curfew for a yarn that puts Mark Twain to shame.

In short, the process of play gives us energy, focus, and creativity. It involves the total being, instead of relegating us to the role of a singular drone-like task. It feeds competency by giving us the excitement of a "safe" risk - a challenge instead of a threat. It lets us feed our own acceptability. We can clearly and unequivocally win; we can be the unquestioned hero. As Carl Jung pointed out, [W]ithout this playing with fantasy, no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable." If you could bottle play and dispense it at the time clock each morning, you could retire early on royalties.

THE ESSENCE OF PLAY

Play depends on two rudimentary ingredients: safety and stimulation (see Figure 1). Each of these in turn is supported by three sub-issues. For a situation to be pure play, all six sub-issues must be completely satisfied. Thankfully, however, purity is not necessary, as purity is impossible. Consequently, there is no absolute and crystalline dichotomy between play and non-play. The difference, instead, is one of degree. Play and work are ends of a continuum, not opposite sides of a fence. Instead of talking, in terms of work versus play, it makes sense to use the terms "more or less play-like."

Safety

The chief concern of play focuses on psychic rather than physical safety - that a player can be a "fool," a loser," or even a "jerk" without that transferring to normal reality. Safety comes from insulation. That is the essence of play; it is a separate reality involving a willful and conscious detachment from, or suspension of, our normal reality. Each involvement in a play event is "real," but only for one moment in time or space. Participants in play go through a willing suspension of disbelief, and of the rules and ramifications of the laws of nature and society.

The Justice Department doesn't file an antitrust suit for the avarice you display in the game Monopoly. You don't get institutionalized for role-playing in Dungeons and Dragons. You can act out your aggressions, vulnerabilities, and fantasies by playing house, all without paying a price. You can beat somebody into submission on the football field and be cheered rather than jailed. Play is a safe harbor for the soul, because it is a separate reality in which meaning is inverted, or at least different. Actions during play do not denote what they would if performed during "normal reality."

Consequently, the play mentality is fragile and dependent on several other aspects that serve as the foundation of safety, containing and protecting the psychic delicacy of players from the harshness of reality.

Play is episodic. Play utilizes, and needs, boundaries such as those of time and space. Without knowing the where, when, and who of a play situation, participants cannot consciously enter the psychic framework of play. They therefore cannot jettison the meanings that "reality" would give their subsequent actions. Violence is a valued part of football, but only within the field of play and only between whistles. If one player so much as brushes an opponent when he is out of bounds or after the whistle, it is considered "real violence" and penalized.

Let's look at reality. GM doesn't go out of business when it finishes a car. It makes many others. At a minimum, work is eternal; as such, it violates the episodic quality of play. However, there are methods that can be used to bolster the amount of play in work (see Figure 2).

By noting and celebrating the completion of assignments, you can break the never-ending progression of work and capture the episodic sense of play. That's a major purpose of sales banquets and awards ceremonies. But it can also be done at an informal level. One successful marketing manager takes out his violin and serenades an employee each time a task or report is finished. The music isn't especially grand, but everyone enjoys mangled Mozart wafting through the halls, and the targeted employees receive a brief hand from the office crowd when they emerge from the manager's office. Silly? Yes. Does it work? Yes. It brings closure, and it puts the employee at center stage.

Using deadlines represents another way to bolster play. They define the time limit, a crucial boundary of episodes. They also trigger adrenaline as the clock winds down.

Surprising enough, clear task assignments are another important component of play. Nobody enjoys playing bridge until the rules and correct plays are mastered. For some of us it will never be play, because we can't fathom it. Always remember, one reason we like play is that it lets us experience and test our competency. When you don't even know what's expected of you, you're condemned to inescapable incompetency, which is hardly safe and therefore hardly play.

Play has risk-free ramifications. Although huge rewards (points, chips, status) can be obtained within the context of play, the value of these rewards is confined to the play experience. There are no implications or ramifications when one reenters "reality." One can't use the money won in Monopoly to pay the rent. Nor does one start an actual war by playing Risk. In other words, the process or outcomes of play are meaningless in normal reality and therefore safe. Accordingly, participants may behave in an unguarded fashion. Hence the joyous quality of play: pursuit with wild abandon. If, however, the play activity has some transferable utility in "reality," such as an impact on wealth, status, or security, then the fantasy is ruptured and the experience is not pure play.

Work can never be pure play. People do receive promotions and demotions based on the outcomes they produce. Work thereby violates the risk-free ramifications of play. However, this component can be approached by practicing the old rule of good personnel management. First, the supervisor provides the buffer when things go awry. Workers are never put forward as scapegoats. Second, supervisors separate criticisms about work from criticisms about the person. The former is tolerable; the latter turns risk into a personal attack and massive threat. Third, the supervisor praises in public and criticizes in private. Fourth, when poor ideas are proposed, they are never criticized as being stupid. They are warmly received, then turned aside because of the "politics further up the ladder," "economic conditions," or even barometric pressure.

Play is freely engaged. There is no obligation to play. Participants join the activity of their own accord and are free to leave at any time, for any reason, without recrimination. Any efforts to compel or retain participants would have to rely on sanctions that originated, or had meaning in, "reality" - thereby rupturing the fantasy.

In reality, if you don't show up, you don't get paid. You can't tell employees to work only when the urge strikes them. However, by introducing flexibility into the choice of sales territories, procedures, schedules, techniques, and hours, the essence of free engagement can be approached.

Stimulation

The second major component of play is stimulation, the adrenaline rush that wakes up the brain. Just remember that stimulation must travel in conjunction with safety. Threatening to fire someone certainly stimulates them, but in the absence of safety it's hardly play. The kind of stimulation we're looking for relies on uncertainty, strategizing, and power.

Play involves uncertainty. Tic-tac-toe is only play until both players become competent enough to force a stalemate every time. At that point, when all uncertainty ceases, it becomes boring. There must be an element of uncertainty in play. it breeds risk, mystery, and chance that give rise to adrenaline rushes, tension, and excitement.

In most play, the outcomes are very certain-chips, points, victory, defeat-but attaining them is uncertain. However, for most employees, work is the opposite. The attainment holds no uncertainty (if I push the button, the machine will operate); however, the end results are so invisible or detached from their actions that there is much uncertainty about what the outcomes really are. So reality by itself does supply a crucial play ingredient, but some clarity about the end results must be artificially imposed by the manager, or the uncertainty is so large that it violates the episodic boundaries that map out the playing field. This can be done in two ways: educating workers to the context of their efforts, and fantasizing.

Ford Motor Company discovered that giving workers the plant tour taken by tourists suddenly drew a connection for the widget popper at station 367 between her work and what rolled off the end of the line. It also led to a considerable number of ideas on speeding up the production process.

A supervisor at a naval shipyard took this one step further. Once a year he held a one-hour seminar on the shop floor called "why we do what we do." The answer was always the same - to "sink enemies, but be careful, 'cause they're trying to sabotage us." Simplistic, chauvinistic, paranoid, and terribly effective. His workers played. The goal was certain - sink the enemy. The attainment was in doubt - will the enemy sabotage my machine today? One machinist even developed a work flow that eliminated the need for three machine tools so the enemy would have fewer machines to sabotage.

Play involves the use of personal strategy. One of the chief stimulants in play is the creative effort of determining a strategy that will cope with uncertainty. Without the stimulation of this individual input, it is difficult for play to exist. It is easy to see this strategizing in recreational play such as cards, table games such as Risk, and playing house - as players take turns narrating the adventure's next step to achieve some common goal, such as confronting the Martian invaders or getting the baby to go to bed. Even in highly structured play, such as football or basketball, players still exercise a high degree of individual strategizing in terms of split-second decisions and specific executions.

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.

Consequently, incentive games do not provide desired results. Any improvements are short-term gains, expiring along with the time frame of the game. The resulting cynicism actually depresses ongoing performance as employees artificially hold down their "normal" performance baseline to give themselves an advantage in the next competition. Similar results are reported for incentive games outside the sales force field, even though the games themselves are often creative and well-run.

The obvious conclusion is that the window-dressing approach to engendering play simply does not work over the long term - at least not in isolation. If you want the benefits of play, you have to take the risk of tinkering with the tasks themselves at the process level, not just in structure.

References

"A Japanese View: Why America Has Fallen Behind, Fortune, September 25, 1989, p. 52. R. Callois, Man, Play, and Games (New York: The Free Press, 1961). Jay Cocks, "Let's Get Crazy," Time, June 11, 1990, p. 41. J. Huizinga, Homo Ludens (Boston: Dearcon Press, 1950). Leon Jaroff, "He Gives Wings to Dreams," Time, June 11, 1990, p. 52. Carl Gustav Jung, Psychological Types (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1923).

COPYRIGHT 1994 JAI Press, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group