So, what do you actually do?

This feels like a very valid question for anyone to ask of a new business (let alone our Mothers, who have…concerns). So, this is our blog to tell you (and our mums) what it is we are doing, offering, changing in the world.

We believe that practical solutions and traditional processes can solve problems. 

We believe that organisations have the wisdom and know how to solve their own problems and make the change in the world they want to see. 

We believe that humans want to do great work, with people they feel safe with while enjoying what they do.

We believe all that (and much more) after working together in the land of high growth start-ups, and researching academia from the lands of system psychodynamics, psychology and management theory that explores productivity, organisational systems and work experience. From all this we learnt many things, but the most important is: 

You and your organisations are the best people to figure out what you need to work well.

And also: 

Understanding how play works and the mechanisms that impact groups can make all these things happen way faster and with way more success.

So, we reckon what's needed is someone to help you with frameworks, knowledge, and a practical space to play in, in order to build the organisations, teams and communities you want, in order to do the things you want to do.

Like this tasty metaphorical framework we cooked up! It's called ‘The Playstate Peach’ and it's all about laying out the fundamentals needed to create a playstate in the teams you are building.

But, what on earth is a Play State?

Play is a concept from the fields of psychology, psychoanalysis, education and early child development and can be thought of as a space that's co-created between two or more people, where those people can figure out all sorts of cool stuff like who they are, how the world works, how each other works and really… anything. Play is a whole special thing that has helped humans learn and develop since, well, since before we were humans. Play is awesome.

At Playgrounded we think of a Play State as being a condition that can occur in a group where everyone is both playing and helping others to play at the same time. It’s kinda magic.

We think to get that magic happening in a group you need to focus on fundamentals, and our tasty PLAY STATE PEACH holds all that in a neat framework that can help you think about it in your day to day. Here is it 👇 (ain't’ it pretty?!)

So, what does it mean?

First there is the seed or stone of our peach, and it’s all about MISSION.  A group needs to be focused on a Mission or central task because this is the thing that makes the group, well, a group. This needs to be clear and understood by all the humans in the group. Think of it as the reason the group exists in the first place. It can be as broad and long standing as a company mission, or as short as the practical tasks of a 15 minute meeting. But what matters here is that the group is focused together on one thing; there can be diversity of thought about how to achieve the mission, but what that mission actually is needs to be clear and agreed to by all. As a final thought, not only does a clear task, understood by all, help that task to be achieved, it also does other cool things like keep us safe when we are working - knowing that our time in a group is all about one shared mission, makes us more able to work together safely in diverse communities.

This gets us on to the second bit, the flesh of our Peach: SAFETY. No matter how well defined your mission is, if you’re not safe, you can’t do it. It's the ancient truth of ‘You can’t bake a cake if your hair's on fire’ (that's not ancient, we made it up, but you get the vibe, yeah?). It’s easy to see this principle at play in work that we have traditionally seen as dangerous, like cleaning windows on a skyscraper - no one would begin work if there wasn’t a safety harness in place. This is the same for all groups as humans cannot think deeply, collaborate, communicate and a whole host of other complex things if they are, or feel, dangerously unsafe. It’s just a fact. Here we are talking about safety in totality: physical, psychological, social. All of it. It is as though the flesh of the Peach that is safety, holds the central task and helps the group work towards it. In a group that strives for safety, awesome things can happen like building authentic relationships and the vulnerability. That encourages curiousity to learn and know more, and allows the wonderful weirdness of humans to exist while we work on task together.

So if safety holds the mission, what holds the safety? That's our third layer and it's all about BOUNDARIES. Think of boundaries like the skin of our fictional Peach; boundaries hold the ins of the peach in, keep the outs of the Peach out and let some things pass through, but only what is approved. Now, in an organisation of humans, it's a bit more abstract, but nonetheless extremely important. Organisational boundaries are the processes, ideas, plans and values that keep the group working on their central task; they tell the organisation who they are and how they work. And they are a funny old thing because while they are the domain of official leadership, they are everyone's responsibility to maintain.

But you will have noticed, dear reader, that we totally skipped over the whole PLAY STATE layer in our pretty Peach metaphor. That is because we reckon that a good organisation can do its boundaries, safety and mission real well, but still be missing something special. It’s the Play State.

We believe that once you have task, safety and boundaries working well, a Play State can occur naturally in an organisation that supercharges the potential of your teams. A wise leader can see this Play State emerging and support that to occur, authorising those within the team to take a playful mindset that enhances the collaboration, condor, creativity, responsiveness, engagement, joy and general good times of people as they work. This goes counter to a whole narrative about work that has been fed to us for a while now; that play and work are separate things. Not only do we think this is ass-backwards, we also think that this false narrative is holding organisations back from doing amazing things, causing a whole bunch of workplace trauma and stifling innovation and creativity. What we need now is a new lens to view ‘work’ that give leaders (and anyone in a team can lead) the ability to support the naturally emerging play inherent to any functioning group, so that you get that wonderful alchemy when a group just…works, and everyone in it feels proud, engaged and like they are having a butt-tonne of fun getting things done. 

Sounds good, yeah?

But that’s not all the Play State Peach can offer!!! The Play State Peach can be used as a diagnostic tool. If your team (or teams) aren’t collaborating, learning, engaging, innovating, problem solving, communicating effective feedback, self-authorising, repairing after rupture (or avoiding hard topics all together) or enjoying work, then the conditions to enter a play state are unlikely to be defined and working effectively. We can then look at what else might be going on across the whole peach, and work to make work better. It can help you and your teams make sense of what might be holding you back; cos no one wants work to suck, but sometimes we need help to figure out how to ‘un-suck’ it. 

Now, here's the last bit where we FINALLY TELL OUR MUMS (also you) WHAT WE DO!!! The Play State Peach is a framework that is big on the what, but not massive on the how. When we consider how you might go about creating a Play State in your organisation 👇

We help hybrid & remote teams build authentic, human connection embedded via story-telling so it’s safe enough to play with work.

Most hybrid teams are finding collaboration, innovation and creativity difficult because they don’t feel safe enough to take the risks you need to do great work, together. 

Companies try ping pong tables, casual Fridays, Amazing races, forced office times, axe throwing, funky ties, leadership training with microskills you can never remember and promises ‘to get round to it when we have time’. But, some of these create more barriers to collaboration and connection. They distance people from each other and the organisation. AND ones that do work are so short term that they have no flow on effects into the organisations. 

They have no relationship to the reality of people at work. 

What they need is processes that generate authentic connection now and into the future so people can work better together. 

Enter Playgrounded. Our fancy suite of products helps you embed collaboration and connection into your existing processes so you can get more done and have more fun. 

Imagine your team loving what they do and loving doing it.

Work isn’t working. Work shouldn’t be this hard. We’re on a mission to make work better. 

So, there you have it. Reach out if you are interested in hearing more.

Oh, also, sign up to our email list cos we do blogs and make videos regularly, get on that for lots of cool free content and tasty brain thoughts.

🍑 ✌️ 😎