VANNOY:

Hi, everyone. Mike Vannoy, vice President of Marketing At Asure. And today I’ve got a, a really cool topic. We’re gonna talk about productivity. We talk about employee engagement attracting talent, developing talent. We talk about those topics a lot here in the show. But today we’re gonna talk through about productivity, I think through a, a different lens that we don’t always think about productivity, diversity, equity, inclusion, d e i all important initiatives. But, but how, how about looking at this rather than from what’s what’s the process which we should follow? What’s the tech stack we should be using to enable and empower all this? But how do we think about this through, through the lens of play? And, and joining me today is Gary Ware. Gary is the founder of Breakthrough Play. He’s a TED Talk speaker. He’s an author. Gary if he encourage everybody after this show come, go out and check out your TED Talk, it’s, it’s awesome. He founded his company Breakthrough Play in 2013. He helps professionals level up their confidence and creativity and happiness using play. And to do this, Gary incorporates techniques that professional imp improvisers use to create amazing experiences with no script. Gary, welcome.

WARE:

Hey, I’m so happy to be here. Thank you.

VANNOY:

Yeah. Awesome. Okay. So may maybe, maybe I just give you a, a a softball here, here to start out. Can you kind of set up just like, what, what is your concept? What is your, what is your approach thinking about play as an approach to productivity? Cause a lot of times I think we have been, just like, you talk about in your talk, you talk about how you were kinda raised, you got, you got work time, you got play time, and they’re separate things, right? We think productivity, it’s cracking the whip, driving harder, harder, harder. This, this is kind of a paradoxical for, for a lot of people thinking about how to improve productivity with play.

WARE:

Agreed. And that’s why I am here to shift the narrative and get us to look at play from a different lens. Most of the time when we look at play, we think of something that is a frivolous activity. Why should we be doing it? Oftentimes goofing off. And yes, that is one area of play. Play is very complexed. And as a way to get us to look at it through the right li right lens, I want you to think about when you’ve played a game, whether it is a team sport or maybe a solo game. You’re playing that game. I can only imagine that you’re completely focused. You are in, you know, you’re, you’re deeply involved in it. When challenges come up, you look at it as an opportunity to get better. And that is, you know, the mindset that we need to impart into our teams. You’re right, crack cracking the whip, you know, some, you know, external motivators that has, you know, less to do about the work and more about either people’s agenda. And that will help from a tactical standpoint. If you want everyone to be perfect, do you know do things exactly the same way. However, we’re in a time period where doing it exactly how it was done before may not be the most efficient use of our time. We need to be a little bit more creative. That’s where a playful mindset comes

VANNOY:

Int Tell me why that might be. So pretend I’m a skeptic. I got my arms crossed and I’m well, Gary, that just sounds like a bunch of modern horse crap. And and, and, and all I need is my employees just to work harder. What, what, what’s changed? Why, why has, why, why won’t the same old approaches work?

WARE:

Well, look at it like this. The World Health organization has recently put burnout as a health concern,

VANNOY:

Right?

WARE:

Just because your employees are working harder does not mean that they’re working at the most efficient level. You know, more hours does not equal more more output. Us as humans, there’s a lot of research to support this. Us as humans, we do a very bad job at being able to recognize our ability to do work. And their I believe it was Microsoft recently as of the pandemic, they had their employees, and I don’t even know how you sign up to do this, but they had their employees wear these EKG machines, their heads, and they manage, they monitored their brain waste throughout the day. And then they found that employees that went from meeting to meeting to meeting with no breaks by like the fifth meeting, you looked at their brain scans, and it was like their brains were completely fried. However, the employees that took as little as a five minute break in between meetings to do something that is, you know, non-related to the work, they went to each meeting feeling refreshed and able to, you know, be at the top of their game. So as, as an employer, as a leader, which employee do you think is going to be the best for you? You know, the one that is refreshed, or the one that is just putting in the time and is completely burnt out and fried?

VANNOY:

Gary, you gotta send me a link to that study you find after. I, I wanna read that, that, that’s actually super cool. Something I think about is, you know, I mean, so anybody watching, listening to the show today you know, if you’re a restaurant, people are, you know, you’re, it’s an on-premise business, right? But there’s, and, and so if, if, if you’re wait staff, you’re, you’re, you’re on site and you’re, you’re serving customers, you don’t have a lot of control over going from meeting to meeting, so to speak. But increasingly, we, you know, we talk about this world, this modern world of flexible work, flexible location, flexible time, flexible schedules, flexible all, all around. And studies are pretty clear. We, we’ve written a lot on this in our blog and, and done webinars in this if you have both ends of a spectrum completely virtual and completely show up in the office, they’re equally disengaged, right?

According to the Gallup polls, it’s the people who flex in the middle. And not just that there’s no magic percent, it’s the people who have flexibility to do both, that are the most engaged employees. And something I think about is, you, you talk about going from meeting to meeting the beginning of the workday and end of the workday. This is one of the things that I think has materially changed, right? Because this thing doesn’t let me have an end to my day, right? No. And so, and so, maybe that’s okay. Like, I think a lot of people would think that’s a bad thing. I’m, I’m kind of like, okay, that’s, that’s the reality we live in. But that means, so if I’m gonna be on this thing at night, or I’m doing email at night, I’m preparing something for the next day at night. That means I also have to take my rest times. Maybe it’s the five minute increments during the day. How, how does that relate to, to play and rest in your mind?

WARE:

Yeah. Well, in order to be playful we need to be rested. So rest and play are two very important things that we overlook. <Laugh>, we, we, you know, we’re, we’re not bringing the playful spirit to work. We’re not using play to its advantage, and we’re not resting. Because, you know, for the first time in a generation, we could be reached at a moment’s notice you know, at a, at a moment’s notice, someone can, you know, send a message and it can get our attention. Before that, to be honest, the only people that should have be able to be reached at a moment’s notice we’re doctors and probably drug dealers. Those are the only people. But now you’re right. So these technologies have, their intentions were to make things easier. However, we didn’t realize that we would get conditioned to check them.

 Again I’m trying to think of who, who did this study. But it was basically, they had bonobo chimps, and they, they set them down and they had them do a sequence. And if they got the sequence correct, they got their very first their, their favorite juice, which is blackberry juice. But here’s the thing, they, they said, alright, then they got hooked. The, the, the Bonobos would not, they would just like, sequence, sequence, sequence, yeah. Then they said, what if we don’t give them the same intensity of blackberry juice? So say every now and then, maybe it’s maybe, you know, 10% black, you know, 90% water. Would they stop producing? Well, guess what? They produced even more because they wanted that output. So if you think about email and comms and stuff like that, and alerts, things that we get it because we are conditioned to like, oh, this could be an important, this could be my boss.

This could be, you know, something that I need that needs my undivided attention. Every alert, every interaction that we get, we jump on it because we are conditioned to do that means light up. And it is draining all of our resources. So again, technology was meant to be productive, but the way that our biology is created, it is not having the same effect. And so, you are right. We need to actually have an intervention to realize, like, I I’m with you, of if some people are more productive in the early mornings or the evenings, and because we have technology, we should a adapt. Which means that in those times when we’re not working, we should be able to step away. So that’s where the rest comes in.

VANNOY:

So you, you, you talked about, you’ve talked about three buckets here. I I know you, I I should say, I know you talked, you have three buckets. We talked about two of them around playfulness and how that impacts productivity. One is rest. Another one is creativity. We, we haven’t, yes. Say, say more about, and we’re gonna, I know we’re gonna get, we’re gonna unpack what is playfulness? What does this actually mean? How do we incorporate this in our workplace? But what does playfulness have to do with creativity? And maybe more importantly, why should we care?

WARE:

Okay. in the book, prior to perform by Lindsay McGregor and Neil doi they, they broke it down. They basically said, we have there are six ways to motivate a person. There are three intrinsic and three extrinsic. And if you want to motivate someone to be tactical, as in to just do, you know like George, I like, I look at it like George Jetson. George Jetson’s job is to push a button. If, if I might be dating myself with the Jetsons, but it was something I, I watched. I

VANNOY:

Got you. I got you.

WARE:

Yeah. And he would just, he just pushed a button. And again, so to optimize for tactical performance, that’s where the extrinsic motivators will come in. And the extrinsic motivators are emotional pressure. As in you make a mistake, you could be fired or economic pressure as in, Hey, guess what your bonus is on the line because of this. Or inertia. It’s how we’ve always done things. So if you optimize for those three things that you can get tactical performance, you can get people to do an exactly the same way over and over again. Now, creativity, the ability to think of new and no ways of doing things by optimizing for extrinsic motivators, you’re not going to get creative performance. You’re not gonna get people that are going to think of new ways of doing things, because we have, I don’t know, like a global pandemic that showed up.

 Because if they’re scared, they’re gonna lose their jobs. If they’re scared that they’re not gonna, you know, get their pay, you know, all those things that are outside of the work, you’re not gonna get creativity and how you optimize for creativity, it’s play purpose and potential play. The work in and of itself is, is engaging. And this could be for anything. And, and I know, you know, some people will justify, so you’re saying janitors well, you know, some, some do. You know, some see it as, wow, this is actually you know, a really fun challenge. How can I clean this you know, this area faster than I’ve done before? You know, they gamify it. So play is seeing the work as a challenge that you are overcoming, being involved in the work itself. Purpose. that’s the outcome of the work.

Wow. going back to the janitor example, wow, I clean this laboratory as a result of doing that. These scientists are creating breakthrough formulas that are saving the world. Again, it’s tied to the work. It’s purpose, the output of it, and potential. Oh, wow. You know what? By me doing my work better, I potentially can move up. So if you can optimize for those three things, you can help people be more creative. Because again, it’s all about the work, and it’s tied to the work. The work is at the center of everything. And that is people you know, be able to think outside of the box when something that might show up that we haven’t even thought of. So that’s where the creativity comes from. And I like to think that just about every job requires some form of creativity, even if you are just a janitor. You know, even if you are, you know at the bottom of the rung you know, yeah, we, we need to be creative. And this is where people you know, can thrive because you can say, Hey, this is what my outcome is for you. How about you be creative in your way of, of figuring that out.

VANNOY:

Yeah. I, I think I, I mean, I really believe this, that creativity is, it already is maybe the most important skillset and, and capability that we need from employees. It, and, and you, and you provide good examples of, you know, it goes to every, every employee, even the, the line employee and how you could truly improve engagement. Ga gamifying things. I’m just having, I’m going, I’m going on a tangent. I remember as a boy mowing my parents’ lawn on the big riding mower, and I didn’t, it just clicked on me for whatever reason. It was so boring. It was so stupid. I hated it. But I gamified it. I counted how many rounds it would take me to go around, and it was a game for me, how many, how few rounds I could do it in. So I would always try to clip to the closest that, right.

Stupid little things like that. But that’s gamification of a ma of a mundane task, right? But then I translate this into modern day for 20 years. You know, big companies have been talking about the the pending labor shortage, right? If you look at productivity per GDP based on employment levels, based on birth rates, and baby boomers retiring, we’ve had this, we’ve had this pending labor shortage, pretty baked for about 20, almost 30 years now, right? Election cycles and pandemics and things like that in economic cycles they kind of mask it and make you think it’s something the short term. But the reality is, the ups and downs of it might be a a little different. But th this has been coming for a long time, very predictably, right? And, and there is a shortage of workers. And the shortage of workers is gonna continue to get worse, not better.

Which is why, you know, somebody, so many economists are right now forecasting a recession, but no one’s really saying that they don’t know how big a recession it may or may not be, cuz it would probably be one of the first recessions ever that actually had more job openings than, than job seekers, which is usually the opposite, right? And so we’re in this weird time where times could be tough, but we still need more people, and we need these people to figure out how to do things differently than we do them today, right? It, the, the, it, it takes about the same number of people to produce a car today as it did 30 years ago. Well, it’s all robots on the assembly line, so all those people are gone, but it’s all people designing computer circuits in, in, in electronics. It’s the same number of people.

But the job, the how is completely different, right? And, and this is, this is where creativity is this gonna be more important than ever before, is regardless of what is the short term of our economy, the, the labor shortage is real. It’s here to stay and we’re gonna have to figure out how to do things differently. A anything else, Gary, that you would want to talk about? Kind of the setup of why creativity, productivity, rest, before we kind of talk about, okay, what the heck does that this actually mean? How might I actually implement some of these ideas?

WARE:

You hit the nail right on the head. And, and I like to say, you know, the way that we did things before is not going to get us to where we want to be.

VANNOY:

Yeah.

WARE:

As a result of that, we need to get creative, because if we don’t, I like to say we’re gonna go the way of the blockbuster or, or you know, Polaroid or, or whatever the case may be. So take Blockbuster for example. I’m always curious what was going through the CEO’s head, like, right when he’s like, wow, we have the idea for Netflix, but we did nothing about it because we always thought, again, inertia, you know, how we did it is how it’s gonna be. You know, and, and this is a true story, blockbuster, the, the employees of Blockbuster, they had the idea of doing like a mail-in situation, you know, a streaming situation. However, times were good people were, you know, going and, and renting videos. But

VANNOY:

Kodak invented digital imaging, but they were in the film business. Right?

WARE:

Exactly. They, so it, it’s one of those things where, you know, if we are just sitting on our loyals, you know, expecting things to just continue as it as it is, you know, look, look at Blockbuster, you know, everyone, you know, misses blockbuster. However, you know, they weren’t able to continue going on. So that’s the main thing is like, how can we, and, and I really hate using this word because it seems very cliche, but it, it, you know, it’s very appropriate right now. How can we futureproof our companies and businesses so that we can continue making an impact from years to, for years to come.

VANNOY:

Yeah. All right. So this is really interesting stuff. I like conversations like this. It’s, we’ve also been pretty theoretical up to this point bring bringing home for people and, and we’re not wrapping, but make it, make this real for folks. Specifically, how do companies implement playfulness in, in the work environment?

WARE:

Yes. So what I mean play like I said, it plays a mindset. Play is also a way of doing things. So let’s take the mindset. We need to start shifting our way of thinking from play as being a sort of nice to have like, or a waste of time to realizing that play is essential to doing good work. Because in her book, super better researcher Jane McGonagal, she talks about the difference between people that can utilize play to its benefit versus people who think that they’re, you know, using it. And then, and it’s to their detriment is the mindset. So if you see play as the ability to help you be more productive, you’re actually gonna take advantage of that compared to the people who don’t. And then they play anyway. And then it’s more of an escape.

And then it leads to the demises of the company because you know, it’s the same activity, but seen through two different lenses, you get two different results. Take for example, someone who sees play as a way to be more productive when they go on a break, they’re gonna say, all right, you know what I can tell my energy is waning. I’m gonna take 10 to 15 minutes and I’m gonna do this playful activity as a way to power myself back up so that when I go back to my work, I’m energized. I can be more of a clear thinker I can, you know, get straight into the work. I can be more productive compared to someone who you know, doesn’t wanna deal with something. And that’s how they, they deal is, oh, I’m just gonna just sort of goof off and play.

Well, guess what? That is gonna become the habit, and you’re not going to be productive. So mindset is everything. The other thing is play is something that it needs to be recognized from the top. Because leaders, believe it or not, you have an impact on your, your company. I remember working for an organization where they gave us ample opportunity to play, or at least, you know, what they thought was play. You know, they, they, the foosball tables, and they had, you know, all of these things that seem very playful. However, the leaders didn’t play. Matter of fact, they were always working in their office. And, and again, I get it, you know, they have busy schedules and, you know, they, they have a lot going on. However, if it is, you know, if they’re not setting the example that this is something that is acceptable, no one’s gonna take advantage of it, right? Leaders have you know, they have this sort of you know, how they model things is, is what gets done. And so as a leader, you know, how are you modeling you know, this behavior so that it can be seen as acceptable across the board?

VANNOY:

Can can you share some, an example of, of where you’ve seen this work? Because I think what you just said is, is kind of everything just read Ben Horowitz’s latest book. I think it’s not super recent. You are what you do, not what you say, or some, something along those lines. Basically, your, your brand is what you do, right? Yes. gi give give a practical example of what that looks like in the workplace.

WARE:

Yeah. So, and as, as simple as you know, I’ll start with leadership. You know, the fact that if a leader realizes that, you know, as humans, we’re not very good at recognizing when we you know, need to you know, take breaks when our brain is waning. Being able to not only see that in themselves, but see that in their employees, and take a moment to recognize, man, the last couple of weeks have been rough. We’ve been heads down, you know, what, next week, let’s make sure that we institute maybe going home, you know, like as a team, you know, 20 to 30 minutes early, you know, as a way to like, sort of make up another way as a leader, why are you taking your breaks in your office? You know, you’re setting the the the precedent that that is how we operate.

You know, you need to rest too. So you know, if we are in office, you know, take time to go out there’s a amazing book on innovation, and it shows that leaders who actually interact with other people, they come up with better ideas. So as a leader, you know, why not take that time to, you know, get out, you know, use that for networking again, it’s gonna set, it’s gonna set the precedent that, oh, I can go away for lunch. I can, you know, just the little is these little habits. Also, you know, recognizing, you know, team schedules, you know, why are we booking so many meetings back to back to back? You know, if we know that you know, meetings are important you know, start to look at them and say, are these meetings essential? Can this meeting be an email? You know, do we have to get together, like start to change the behavior of the organization to make room? And this is in the column, you know, so that people aren’t burnt out,

VANNOY:

Right? I used to have a, I’d say one of my best managers I’ve ever had. He, he, he got tremendous productivity from his team. But he, he incorporated play all the time, right? So always contests, little, little mini micro contests, because, so, like, it was, it was a sales leader, an inside sales leader. So these people are on the phones, they’re grinding, right? You’re, you’re making one in 150, a hundred, a hundred hundred 50, 200 dials a day. It can be mind numbing work if, if, if you try making 200 calls in a day and, and e equally spread throughout the entire day, your, your brains mush halfway through the day, right? And so his approach was, don’t treat it like it’s a marathon. Treat it like you’re doing sprints. But any of us, if you’re an athlete, you know, you can sprint as hard as you can, but then you have to stop and take a break.

No one can go full sprinted forever. So he’d say, we’re gonna hit it as hard as we possibly can. And at the end of this two hours, we’re all gonna take out 20 minutes and we’re gonna play Xbox. And whoever wins gets to wear the crown during the, and he makes some stupid crown during the game. And so there’s this competition. They’re always see who can do the best, and they would get as much done in that two hours that other, other peoples might, might get done in four or five or six hours. But then you have two or three of those two hour blocks of just giving it throughout the day, and there’s playfulness for the rest. You got more productivity, you got more team loyalty. I, I, I, I just think that’s kind of what success looks like, if you can pull that off, right?

WARE:

Yeah. Agreed. And what I, what I love about that approach is that, and I don’t know, what’s it, Moore’s Law, like it was one of those laws like, we will fit, like as much time as we give ourselves, we will fit as much like into that space.

VANNOY:

Parkinson’s law.

WARE:

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. And with Parkinson’s law, like it’s like, all right, cool.

VANNOY:

Have work will work will expand to fit the allotted time given to produce the output. Yes.

WARE:

Yes, yes. Exactly. So what I love is we’re time boxing, and then we’re saying, all right, let’s go. And then we’re realizing that, hey, look, we, our brain can only have so much capacity, so why not do something away from the work? Guess what? Your brain is always trying to solve problems. You taking time away from the, the, the work, your brain’s still making connections. Your brain’s probably thinking if, again, this sort of call center situation, Hey, how am I going to, you know, make this next sale? It’s still working on it, but you’re just taking time away. Now we’re having team bonding. We’re, we’re connecting. Right? So now the team is being stronger and teams that, you know, I like to say, teams that play together, stay together, because now we are when you’re having this peak emotional experience, what’s happening in your brain is you’re creating what is called a dose.

D o s E, dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins. These are the neurochemicals that help you, one, be creative. Two, realize that you belong. And you know, the other thing, you start to trust each other. Because if you’re having fun and you’re enjoying your environment, your brain’s gonna look around and say, oh, Charles is here. I guess I’d like Charles, you know you know, we’re, we’re, we’re having this experience together. Yeah, I, I, you know, he’s probably not a bad guy. And then when there’s a situation when you need to support Charles, you’re going to be more likely to do that because you had that moment of connection. So, yeah, that again, it, it seems like, you know, oh wow, that is like, you know, not everyone can do it. Well, maybe you can’t do it like that, but how can you do it in your own way? Start to institute some of these things.

VANNOY:

Yeah. Hey, let’s move on to d e I. So I feel like this topic is so misunderstood. Sometimes it’s a political lightning rod topic. Sometimes it’s a department, sometimes it’s this other thing that we’re supposed to do versus an integrated way of doing business to become more productive <laugh>, right? Yes. can, can you, can you maybe share your thoughts on, and, and I’ll, and I’ll won’t use the acronym, cuz I think that just plays into those stereotypes. What is it about diversity, equity, inclusion that go along with playfulness when it comes to productivity?

WARE:

Again, going back to the, the whole play. Let’s just do play for play’s sake. When you are playing with someone like, let’s take a sports team. You have each other’s back <laugh>, you know, you’re going through the thick and thin, you have each other’s back. You are going to do what you can to support each other. You are going to see what are people’s strengths. You’re going to amplify those. You’re gonna elevate those. And, you know, they’re on your team so you know what their weaknesses are. So you are going to you know, jump in and support each other. You know, people that are on a team, people that play together, you know, they, they want everyone to win, you know, because we’re playing the game. We’re all winning. I love, I love using the analogy from the movie, the stand lot.

 A again, I might be dating myself but in that movie, if you haven’t seen it you know, we have we have smalls. He’s new to new to town. He’s not necessarily good at baseball, but he sees these kids playing in the sandlot. They’re playing baseball. He gets up the courage you know, to talk to Benny, the jet, you know, he’s this all-star baseball player, and, you know, they, they embrace him. And you notice on this team, there’s kids of different ages, different sizes, and they just want to play the sport of baseball. And when smalls happened to borrow his dad’s baseball that was signed by Babe Ruth, and it is hit over the fence of you know, their neighbor, which is guarded by this big mastiff called the Beast. They all work together to get this ball back.

Now, what does this have to do with work? Again, everyone has each other’s back. They just want to keep the game of baseball going. And that’s, that’s how it should be. You know, we, we, you know, you’re right. D e i, like, a lot of times it’s politicized but at the end of the day, how can we create an environment where people feel like they belong, where they can say what they need to say and we can get the work done. And that, and when you play, you create that environment where people feel like they can fail. They don’t have to posture, they don’t have to mask. They can just be their authentic self.

VANNOY:

Yeah. A a any, any examples to, to share where, like a specific thing an organization could do to implement play as part of a D E I strategy?

WARE:

Yeah. So I, I’ll share why this works. First, so I, I told you about the book Super Better with Jane McGonigal. In that book, she talked about a a study where it was in Thailand where we had elders that were lonely. And we had you know, the younger generation that was men missing mentorship. And so they did a study where they paired an elder up with a young, young person. And for a month they would spend time together for about an hour. The control group, they could do whatever, they can just talk, they can watch tv. As long as they spent time for an hour together they, you know, that’s all that matters. Then in the experiment group, they had them play Nintendo Wii you know, Nintendo Wii is that you know, it’s the one where the controllers you have to move with it.

You can do bowling, you can do tennis and, and things like that. And then after a month, they, they gauge both groups to see how well did they you know, did they like their their counterparts. And surprisingly, you spend an hour with someone or not surprisingly, I should say you get to know them, you like them better. So Affinity was up across the board. This is where the surprising thing happened with the experiment group. The people that did the Nintendo Wii, not only did they have an affinity towards the person that they connected with for the month, they had an affinity towards that whole group in that the younger the younger generation saw all older people as you know, they had saw them in an a higher esteem. And the older people saw all younger people in a higher esteem because they played you know, for a month. And to explain what happens is when you’re playing, your brainwaves are sinking up. Yeah. and you have that, you know, d o s e, dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins. So it is, it is telling your brain that, Hey, I see this person. They are like me. You know, we may look differently, however, like there’s more of us alike than we are different. Then you start to trust and you start to connect. So if you can incorporate a playful, huh?

VANNOY:

That, that, that’s super interesting. My brain is going crazy on this topic. I’m thinking, cuz like if a person of a different gender, race, age maybe just geography, therefore we have accents and dialects and and whatnot. The person I’m interacting with really acts as a proxy for everybody else that looks and sounds and feels like, right? Yes.

WARE:

Yes. And then, and then because you had this experience together this is another interesting thing about playfulness in games when you are playing a game, because this is how it works. When you’re playing a game, you have to take all of your beliefs and set it aside for the rules of the game. The rules of the game supersede everything else. Take for example, golf. Golf is not a logical game if you’re trying to be efficient because the rules of the game is you’re trying to get a, a ball into a hole that is hundreds of yards away. It is not efficient to use a club to do that. You know, however, you take all of your sort of logic and stuff in super, you know, set it aside for the rules of the game. You use a club and, you know, that is, you know, I I’m not good at golf.

 And so it can go poorly. However, I still enjoy it. I still play it, you know, even though it’s frustrating. And I say that just to say that when you’re playing a game, you may not like, you know, take a team that maybe is a bit dysfunctional. You invite them to play a game. They play this game. And maybe the game is almost embedded with, with with some things that we can talk about later. Well, guess what? You’re just playing the game. And in that moment of playing the game, your brain is making connections. Your brain is realizing that, oh, wow, you know what Dave from accounting you know, this is all unconscious. He is, he’s helping me out in this game. He has my back. So then, you know, you go through a debrief and you start talking about, oh, what did we learn about this game? Oh, you know, you, you’re starting to connect the dots again. You’re having a bonding experience with the people around. And then because play is simulation when the, you know, when come to a stressful situation, you’re gonna remember that time when Dave had your back. Yeah, yeah. And maybe you’re going to be more likely to be more empathetic towards Dave than had you not played this game.

VANNOY:

Gary, maybe a conversation for another day. But I got this kind of framework building in my head that I mean, you think about like professional sports it’s maybe the most it, it’s, it’s performance based, right? It’s as capitalistic as you can get because it’s all about out outcomes and performance. Yes. And they all have their own sets of rules, whether it’s golf or basketball or football. It’s really super rules based. And everyone has to conform to the rules. And these happen to be some of the most diverse teams, if you will, that we have anywhere, including, you know, the work teams. Yeah. So I’m thinking this, my mind’s going around this whole rules base, like, what, what is the desired goal and what are the rules that we work as a team to get there as a, as a facilitator of this play and creativity to, to, to, to drive diversity and equity and inclusion along probably a topic for another day, but

WARE:

Yeah. Oh man, man, you got me thinking. Yeah. But I love this. That’s, yeah.

VANNOY:

All right. All right. We’ll, we’ll save di for, for, for another day. Let, let’s, let’s talk about emotional experience. Yes. When it, when it comes to team building, again, e e examples, how, how do you, how do you do this in the team building? You facilitate lots of workshops for, for companies, you know, what, what, what does, what do you take people through to, for this team building experience?

WARE:

Yeah, and so one of the things about this is that I like to say the games is a way to experience some of the bigger things that we’re trying to learn in a low stakes way. I’ll give you an example. I was working, speaking of sports. I was working with a professional sports team with their sales department. Okay. And I was taking ’em through a team building experience. And one of their desired outcomes was to be more cohesive. Again you know, they recently went through big churn. And so they have a lot of new people and they want them to be more cohesive. And we were playing this game that was designed to get people to realize that you’re not good at multitasking. And again, <laugh> the, the way that the game worked is I first, I I played into their competitiveness and I sort of edged them on, and I was like, I don’t think you can, I don’t think you can get through this successfully. They had no idea what they were getting into. So of course, they got overly competitive. Yeah, alright,

VANNOY:

Great. Well, you don’t think I can watch me now? Right?

WARE:

Right. Yeah. And so then they got in the game, the game was set up. That is not possible. If you play the game by the rules, you will not be successful. And again, this is one of the interesting things about play and, and stuff like that. You still, they’re playing the game. They’re still gonna be trying super hard, even though it is not successful. You know, they will not be successful. Nonetheless, we, we play the game. We’re going through the debrief lesson learned. They’re like, all right, great. I, I’m realizing the moment I change my attention over here, I don’t know what’s happening over here. I am missing my main objective, you know, you know, problem solve. However, there was this one person I was asking observation, you know, what are you gonna do differently as a result of this game? And this individual was like, wow, this game was she, she said, this game was a model of work for me over the last like three to six months.

And I’m realizing that how I have been operating as a leader is not successful for me, nor my team. Because, you know, in this game I tell them that they have one main objective. They have to listen to a story of someone that’s in front of them and be able to retell as much detail as possible. However, they have little side objectives that they have to also complete in, in sequence in time. And they learn that when they go back to quiz them on their main objective, they are not successful at all. Because the moment they tam their attention, they’re not listening, yada, yada, yada. And this is how this leader realized. They said, wow, I’m not getting my main objective done because I am being a bottleneck for all my team. I am. I set this up because I thought this was me helping them.

Yeah. And in reality, I’m stressed, they’re stressed, we’re all stressed. And, and then they had a discussion on how to sh shift that. Now this happened because we created an environment through this game where everyone felt, you know, they felt a high level of psychological safety that they can have a discussion. Now, think of this outside of this. If someone were to come up to them and say, Hey, you know, I hear you’re micromanaging your team. You know, that person may get defensive or, you know, they may think that their job is on the line, but because we created a play like experience, they felt comfortable discussing that, you know, and it had nothing to do with the game, but everything to do with the game. And so this, the, the beauty of these types of experiences, you create this level of psychological safety where people can have conversations, real conversations about what’s really going on, and start to make shifts so that when the stakes are higher outside the game, you’re more likely to do what is necessary.

VANNOY:

Yeah. ironically reminds me of, and I’m sure you’ve seen that the in internet famous video of, of a game, these people playing a basketball game, and the participants are asked to, you know, what, what colors and what numbers people are wearing and what they’re doing. And hey, by the way, did you happen to recognize, notice the gorilla that ran through the middle of the, the court? What are you talking about? That never happened. You replay it literally as a gorilla runs through the court. Right. It’s, our brains can only focus on so many things at the same time. So that’s awesome. Listening to your, to your Ted talk and, and reading some of your materials online that interesting about the relationship between play and, and improv. Speak more about that.

WARE:

Yeah. So for, for me, how I stumbled along improv, it, it was by accident. I didn’t have theater training. I honestly wanted to optimize my professional experience. And a mentor of mine said, Hey, you could be a better, better public speaker if you take an improv class. And at first I was a bit terrified but then I decided to take him up on that. And I was pleasantly surprised. Not only yes, did it help me get better at public speaking, but I found that it was a source of play for me. Because most people, when they think of improv, you know, they’ve seen shows like, whose landing is it anyway? You know, they, they see the output, they see the performance aspect. So when you’re invited to take an improv class, they’re scared because they’re like, wait a second, I need to be, I need to be funny on the spot.

And that’s what, not what an improv class is. An improv class is training you to be able to do that. And how it’s doing that is through play. We play these games that are going to help exercise that part of your brain, the part of your brain that is not judging if you make a mistake, the part of your brain that can think on your feet, the part of your brain that is all about supporting your your scene partner. Because improv is a, is a team sport. <Laugh>, you know most improv that I do, like we are, we we’re called an ensemble. And so we have these principles, these guiding, you know, these guiding factors that help us do that. And one of them is, make your part look, make your partner look amazing. And so when we’re on stage, less about us and more about, we say, we as greater than me.

And so how can we create an experience where we all shine? And so nonetheless, doing that you know, going through these classes, I started to see the world differently. You know, you asked my wife, she’s like, wow, you’re, you’re becoming a better listener. Oh, okay. Yeah. Again, I’m doing it in this low sticks environment. And I like to say, how you do anything is how you do everything. So once I left the theater, you know, because I’m, again, doing it through play, I can’t help but to do it elsewhere. You know, in improv we talk about building on people’s ideas. So, you know, you, you do that over and over again. You get these reps in a playful environment. You go into the boardroom, you can’t help but to be a supporter of ideas and building on other people’s ideas. And so I immediately started seeing the connection between improv and business. So just as, and I was a newer leader at the time, and looking for something to you know, just help my team, I started bringing these improv games to the office, and we would play them you know, on Fridays, we would do them before meetings. And over time, you know, the team that I manage, we started, you know you know, trusting other on a deeper level, our performance started increasing. And I like to think that the catalyst was the fact that we were playing.

VANNOY:

Can you like, like, let’s be really practical, like Yes. Give an example of what one of those games might be.

WARE:

All right, great. So I worked for a digital marketing agency, so a lot of times we need to be able to see things from a different perspective or think of ideas. You know, our clients are like, oh, hey, what do you got for me? What do you got for me? And so one of the games that we would play, it’s a very simple game. And we would do this as a warmup before we go into a client meeting, so that we’re priming our brains to think creatively and to think differently. And it, again, it’s very simple. It has three rounds. The first round we we’re just observing. We were wa and like, when we were in person, we would walk around the, before we dial up our client, and we would just point at things. They’re like, oh, you know calendar, you know, picture window.

Next round, we would point to something and we would say what the previous thing was. So if the first thing I pointed to was a pitcher, then I point to the window. When I point to the window, I would say picture and point to the bookshelf. I would say window. And then the third round, we go around and we point to things and we say anything other than what it is. So I point to the window and I say, tiger you know, I point bookshelf and I might say grass, or whatever the case may be. And this activity is starting to prime your brain to see things differently and be able to think on your feet faster. And we would do that before a meeting as a way so that we can be more <inaudible> for our clients, so that as they start, you know, giving suggestions and whatnot, instead of maybe getting defensive, we start to see things from their point of view. You know, simple games like that. Again, the games seem very like silly. However, they have a deeper meaning to ’em.

VANNOY:

I bet that game’s actually really hard, right? Because we,

WARE:

It’s challenging. Yeah. We,

VANNOY:

We think we see the book, we think we see the, the cup, we think we see a phone in the way the brain works is we see a representative model of what we think a phone is, what we think the cup is, and to point to that and say, point to this and say a phone, it, it’s, I actually had to like, think about it. It was, that’s, that’s, that’s not easy. That’s, that’s kind of a cool, cool example.

WARE:

Yeah. And it, and it, so to that point, so that’s something that we do as a way to warm ourselves up. If I was doing it in a team building environment, I would ask the question afterwards, what was challenging about that? You know, someone would say, oh, yeah, I really had to think about it. Or you start to find, some people were starting to set unintentional rules, unspoken rules. It’s like, well, I, everything had to be unique, or it had to be, I’m like, oh, who said that? Say that, you know, where else does that show up? That we give ourselves like unintentional rules, and then we can have a discussion around that. But you’re absolutely right. These games aren’t necessarily easy. However, going back to the sports analogy you know, take for example, basketball, you know, they’re doing free throws. They’re doing three pointers. They’re doing these reps so that they can be able to, in a moment’s note, do it from muscle memory. And that’s what we’re doing through these activities.

VANNOY:

Yeah. Very cool. Before we go to our last topic, we’re gonna talk about preventing burnout and, and, and rest and whatnot. How, how would you guide our audience and our listeners today to resources available? Is it you, is it just simply Google? How, cuz I think, I think these games are not intuitive to most. No, they’re re So where, where sh where would someone start?

WARE:

Yeah. you know, on my site, breakthrough play.com, I have a number of activities that you can facilitate. You know, you know, a leader is looking for some games to do with their teams. You know, I’m more than happy to help you. Again, my background is from improvisation. I call it applied improvisation. So it’s using improv in a different context. I’m pretty sure you can, you know, Google improv games and find a whole list of them. You know, the challenge is you’re trying to get that deeper thinking from them to know like, all right, if I do this game, what am I trying to get out of them? But there are books on Amazon that you know, that you can purchase that will give you those debrief questions. You know, if you’re, if you’re looking to institute this within your team or you can hire a facilitator. There’s so many resources out there.

VANNOY:

Yeah. Cool. All right. Last one. Burnout and, and growth. Yes. I think we, I think, I think at the top of the hour, we, we, we started the conversation with burnout, right? And how the world has changed. Yes. And we have our digital tethers, our our, our, our digital umbilical cords that we cannot escape from anymore. A pandemic labor shortage. All these things have fundamentally changed the way we engage with our employers, with our, with our clients, our employers, clients work. All this leads to burnout, and it absolutely has impact on, on productivity. What practical advice do you have for our audience today to, to avoid this in, into reenergize?

WARE:

Yes. well, we talked about rest. So, you know, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll leave that. One thing I will say on rest. Rest, not all rest is created equal. There are three types of rest. There is macro which is the rest that you get every night. Again, I’m not one to say you need to get eight hours, but I’m just saying, you know, are, the question is, is the rest that you’re getting restful whether it’s, you know, four hours, six hours, eight hours, that’s the macro rest that replenishes our brain that gets ready to, you know, tackle the day ahead. Then there’s micro talk about that too, the breaks that we’re having throughout the day. How are you spending the time in between meetings, in between work and is it conducive to rejuvenating your brain? It shouldn’t be time spent checking email, because again, that is not helping.

 You know, it doesn’t mean that you need to go play checkers, but, you know, maybe you’re getting up, getting away from your screens, walking out in nature. Are you taking some time, you know, you know, with you know, colleagues again take for granted the water cooler you know, that might have seen as a waste of time. But again, having that, those connection points really help us trust each other. And then there’s the rest that most people don’t really think about, and it’s called mezo. Mezo is actually taking time away from work. You know in the US I think we, we take the least amount of vacation times you know, than any other country. It’s important you know, by taking that time away, as I mentioned, your brain’s still thinking about stuff, but it’s giving you a chance to be inspired.

Now, if you don’t have the ability to take vacations, you know you know, this where we can be creative, something that I’ve been instituting throughout you is, I’m calling them mezzo Fridays. So you know, clocking out a little bit earlier than I would normally do on a Friday, and doing something creative, something that is you know, energizing for me. So tho those are, those are breaks. But the main thing is that we’ve been conditioned to work and overwork. So if we want to you know, start to combat burnout, because if we, you know, you know, we’re, we’re the type that, you know, if we left ourselves up to our own devices, we will work more than we need to. There needs to be a mechanism to do that. And I learned this from researcher BJ Fogg, he’s a researcher from Stanford.

 He has has this book called Tiny tiny Habits. And he talks about when you make tiny changes, they have big outcomes. And he talks about having a recipe. And this is something that I work with teams to institute, and it creates a trigger so that you’re more likely to take these breaks. And it’s like this, after I blank, I will blank because it will make me feel blank, for example after I have a long meeting, I will take 10 minutes to, you know, stand up stretch, because it will make me feel energized. You can, you know, you’re thinking about what is the trigger, what is the action, and what is the result of that? Because again, the end of the day is that if we don’t tie these things together, we’re not going to, we’re not going to shift our behavior.

VANNOY:

You know what, Gary, that’s a, that’s a perfect wrap. I think. So I, I, you know, I set up at the beginning of the, the hour. You’re a speaker, you’re an author you’re a consultant, and, and you facilitate, give, you know, give you, gimme a 22nd unadulterated sales pitch here. Tell us, tell us how you work with clients. And we’ll put a survey up at the end of this end of the show here for anybody. Get in contact if they, if with you, if they want.

WARE:

Yeah. So if you are a little bit curious from watching this, and like man, how can I take advantage of, you know, play and playfulness in my organization? You know, maybe you’re looking for some team buildings or some team bonding, you know, that’s what I’m here for. I utilize the power of play and apply improvisation as a training tool to help teams connect on a deeper level be more productive be more creative be more confident. And yeah, so I, I’m happy to have a conversation. I’m happy to provide resources on games and activities that you can implement on your own. And if, you know, if you feel called to you know, I’m happy to be a facilitator as well.

VANNOY:

Awesome. We’ll we’ll be sure to, to follow up Gary and to everybody else. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for joining us today. So much of what we talk about in HR has to do with compliance. It’s, it’s rules based stuff. And at the end of the day, what is, what is all this for it’s rules around employees? Why do we have employees to be productive? Right? So, getting the most from your employees, really. I think, I think a bit ironically, and somewhat tragically, I don’t wanna get too deep. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in HR about the rules, about staying compliant with legislation that we forget about the human aspect of human resources and how do we, how do we build great teams that are highly productive, that, that you know, one plus one equals three and, and everybody gets behind a mission to, to accomplish your goal.

That’s really what our, what our, what our real purpose is. So if you’re a smaller growing business, you probably can’t afford a hundred thousand dollars SHRM, certified HR professional which is exactly why we offer fractional HR services. So we’ll meet you where you’re at, whether you need employee handbooks, some basic training to stay compliant we can guide you through that all the way out to HR support for your managers including possibly your completely outsourced HR department where your employees literally call us as their hr, as your HR department all for pennies of the dollar of what you would have to pay for staffing your own HR function. So if we can help in any way there’s a survey after the, the, after the show. Let us know if you wanna talk to Gary, if you wanna talk to somebody about our HR compliance services. We’d happy to talk until next week. Gary, really enjoyed meeting you today.

WARE:

Likewise. It was so much fun. I can talk about this for hours, and I know you can too.

VANNOY:

Yeah, you know what, I’ll, I’ll invite you back. Let, let’s unpack this topic around diversity, equity, inclusion around the rules of games and, and, and how do we better run our businesses by declaring and communicating the rules of the game as a way of course, we can incorporate play, but how do we, how do we use rules of the game and the goal of the game as a way to improve D e I I’m, I’m interested in that topic, so love it. Good to meet you, Gary. Thanks everyone for joining us, and we will talk to you next week.