Introduction

There is perhaps no children’s story sadder than that in Peter Pan. Originally the character of a play by James M. Barrie, today Peter is largely a beloved character seen as entertainment for children, mostly known these days from the classic Disney film or the musical starring Mary Martin that most Boomers grew up with. Peter is the boy who doesn’t grow up, what Shakespeare called “boy eternal,” and who lives in a world filled with freedom and adventure, where there is nothing to do all day but play, be with friends, and have none of the responsibilities of adulthood that, to him, seem oppressive.

But Barrie wasn’t really talking about kids when he wrote the play. He had more serious issues in mind. The inspiration for the Peter Pan story was the death of Barrie’s older brother in an ice-skating accident just before his 14th birthday. His mother’s grief preserved an idealized memory of her son as a child and one who would never grow up. Barrie’s anger and frustration at losing both a brother and, to some extent, a mother drove many of his creative efforts. Peter emerges as selfish and domineering, and his tragic flaw, to speak in literary terms, is that in order to stay young Peter has to forget his adventures. And thus, he is shut off from the world’s best teacher: experience. His freedom, or what he considers freedom, ultimately comes at a price—that he must always experience the world as a child, divorced from the natural progression of life. He and his friends in Neverland are indeed lost boys, and that’s not necessarily a good thing. The cost of eternal youth is that Peter will not—cannot—take his own place in the world as an integrated, mature human being. Peter is destined to be left behind always. Worse yet, he is stuck with a child’s understanding and experience of the world, one that can never grow. Through Peter, we see—hopefully—that what we wish for is limited and ultimately bordering on the horrific. Peter is doomed to what, at least to me, is a horrid fate: never to change, never to live fully. More importantly, he is unable to access his accumulated experience in order to make better, more satisfying, and productive choices in his life.

All of this brings me to the fundamental question that was the impetus for this book: Is there a way to—sorry to be overly trite—have it all? Can we have the privileges and excitement of being an adult and the joy and freedom of childhood?

I believe we can. We need to rediscover how to play.

Now, I’m not saying to chuck everything and sit on the floor and play LEGOs all the time, lose days in video games, or ride bikes around the neighborhood. Just as play changes at different stages of children’s development, it has relevance to adult lives as well. Play has become a dirty word for adults; it is synonymous with the frivolous, the pointless, the non-productive. Yet anyone who really understands the role that play has in the life of children will understand that it is none of those things. Play serves three essential functions: It allows new experiences. It fosters exploration. It facilitates expression. These are critical for each of us as individual humans, but they also allow us to be more effective in every aspect of our lives, including work.

In other words, to foster innovation, effective and productive work, better interpersonal skills, and greater satisfaction, we need to play. As we’ll see, play in this context has a specific definition. It is not recreation or avoidance. Rather, play, as we’ll define it here, provides an opening to engage more fully in everything we do and ultimately be more productive.

Learning to play is one of the most important things we do as children, but we do it naturally and associate it with pleasure, and therefore it doesn’t seem like work. There’s a popular cliché among children’s experts that casts play as the work of children. However, I challenge that because it sets the two up as diametrically opposite; I suggest they are no such thing, that play and work are essentially the same. You could say work is the play of adults, or I’m suggesting you might give it a try.

Consider this: Both play and work are objective-driven and task-oriented. They have narratives, have conflicts, require ongoing problem solving, are seldom linear, have specific processes, are prone to interruption, thrive on disequilibration (much more on what that is and how it shapes so much of life to come), and are ultimately reflections of the individual(s) involved. The only difference is that we believe that play is fun and that work is not. Or should not be.

So how did we get to this point where “work” is onerous and “play,” if you accept my premise that they share many of the same elements, is not? The answer is that it is cultural. And it goes back to the Bible (1 Corinthians 13:11): “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” Perhaps even further. Every culture has its rites and traditions of passing from childhood into adulthood. But like any good thing, when it’s taken to an extreme it can become problematic.

Yet a childhood that is largely leisure-based and protected from the adult world is a relatively new phenomenon. Whether in an agrarian or industrial world, child labor was essential, both as extra hands and to do things adults could not. Despite the work of reformers, writers, and pamphleteers, notably Charles Dickens, Coleridge, and others, children were essential to such industries as mining, chimney sweeping, furniture building, textile production. and many more, just in Britain alone. With the institution of mandatory public education, which goes back only to the mid-19th century, machines that could do the work of small hands, and a growing understanding of the health impacts of child labor, more and more children were liberated from working. Fast-forward to the 20th century, and what we call modern adolescence really began to take shape after the First World War and blossomed after the Second. Thus, the idea of childhood and youth as a carefree time without responsibility and the ability to indulge in play became part of today’s culture. It is seen as a right of children. The prevailing attitude is: Life is going to be hard enough; let them enjoy being children. (As so often happens, there are many who think that because something has been true in their lifetime—and potentially their parents’—it has always been thus. That’s just the way people are.) And so the idea of childhood as a time of freedom without responsibility, with security, and without serious or long-lasting consequences for one’s actions was born. Buried, not so deeply, in this is the notion that adulthood is challenging, difficult, and unpleasant, so it’s a kindness to shield kids from it as long as possible. And that’s what we do today, to a certain extent in the United States. Before moving on from this, it must be noted that this is a particular phenomenon of the developed and comparatively affluent cultures. There are still parts of the world where children work and assume adult responsibilities from a very early age.

But back in the more privileged world, we have the oft-observed attitude that work is difficult and unpleasant, but it’s necessary to make money, to provide for one’s family and one’s retirement—to shoulder all the responsibilities that Peter Pan so dreaded. The cost of having a good life and providing a good life for our families is the giving up of pleasure on a daily basis and finding it only in escape, whatever that is.

To understand a bit of how that has come about, we need to take a quick glance back at the development of business since World War II. (It’s not that this is definitively the actual beginning of these trends, but for our purposes, that’s far enough.) In the years following the war and as the United States prospered, military-style management was the norm. Simply put, orders were conveyed from up top and people fell into step. Workers did what they were told and were paid in return. As long as they stayed in line, they had job security, and if they demonstrated their ability, got to move up in the hierarchy to be the ones calling the shots. In the years after the war and for those who had survived the Great Depression, security was everything. The desire for that security, predictability, and stability was so important to so many that it trumped other desires. The father—for it was largely men at the time—provided for the family, ensured their lifestyle, and was the family hero. The “responsible adult” became not merely the norm but the ideal, as expressed in much popular entertainment during the Eisenhower years.

And it worked very well. The ability to provide was hugely important to those who had known deprivation and whose parents often, through no fault of their own, had not been able to. If the period is remembered as one of staid conventionality and adherence to cultural norms that were restrictive, it’s important to remember that that is seen through the filter of our current experience and ideas. Some compassion toward the people and their time is required.

I still vividly remember our Jewish neighbor in the suburban development we lived in (with the glorious post-war name of “Holiday Hills”) talking with my parents on our front lawn. He and his wife had lived in Germany as the war broke out, and their families had managed to get out of the country just in advance of Hitler. I still remember him saying, “You can’t imagine what it feels like to have the children running up and down the street yelling, ‘Come see our sukkah!’” If freedom had a cost and that cost was the loss of individual expression and an adherence to cultural norms, then millions were willing to pay it. That, of course, reinforced the system and became for that generation “the way things were done.” Fear of instability and protecting kids from experiencing what they had was a tremendous motivator for many adults.

As in so many other ways, Baby Boomers, the children of these stability- and security-seekers, would totally upend this structure, and the world would change dramatically. As Feste says in Twelfth Night, “the whirlygig of time brings in its revenges.” And those would be seismic.

The downside of the adult seeking to provide security, despite whatever costs to him or her individually, would echo down the next generation and completely transform the culture, yet again. The military model didn’t just appear in business: It appeared in many families as well. Although children had new freedoms, had security, and benefitted richly from parents’ desire to provide the things that they had not had, the archetypal family of the period was led by the father, who was often removed from the lives of the kids, and “youth culture” began to emerge as separate from adults, with its own music, entertainment, toys, and so forth. Add to this the mobility of the post-war years, and the family changed. Multiple generations did not share a town or a roof as much, and it became the norm to go where the opportunity was. This began to create a generational divide that had previously been unknown.

And then came Vietnam. Or, rather, then came the draft for the Vietnam conflict. The generation that had been raised to think for themselves was the first to question en masse the wisdom of the military model. They would not just fall into step. This is, I know, a gross simplification, and much has been written about this. I mention it here only to show the generational shift that would impact all aspects of the culture moving forward and that would challenge—and ultimately transform—the established status quo.

Where it impacted business is that the workforce was the most educated it had ever been, and these empowered people in many instances wanted more fulfillment from their work. Women were beginning to make deeper and deeper inroads into the corporate world, and cultures were changing. The children who had felt distanced from their parents determined that they would be friends to their children and, like every generation before them, were not going to make the “same mistakes” their parents had. And the era of self-realization and finding fulfillment as a result of one’s work began. It was yet another change, and the economy and markets began to expand. This, in turn, gave rise to a period of opportunity and optimism that created the spirit of the 1980s and the sense that everything was going to keep going up. (Humans are particularly myopic in this way. We tend to think that anything that has been going on for two or three years represents “the way it’s always been.” And we are particularly likely to do that when the way it is rewards us.) The longer view of history, of course, shows us that everything is cyclical, and the next turning of time’s whirlygig would set the stage for what we see today.

Three events subsequently reshaped the economy and the culture and set up the current situation: the stock market crash of 1987, the dotcom bubble, and the housing collapse of 2008. (Economists, I know that this is a gross simplification and condensation.)

Put simply, people got scared. As markets became saturated with product and segments matured, the general zeitgeist dictated “Hold on to what you have.” “Be careful.” “Look for the sure thing.” Of course, there have been breakout hits in recent years, and of course some investors have done very well, but aside from consumer electronics (and not even that across the board), playing it safe has been the watchword. Having been scared, the natural inclination is to protect what you have—to hold tighter.

Just look at the auto industry. From the ’50s onward, the new model years were a national event, and families would visit dealerships as an outing merely to see the new introductions. American automobiles represented unique innovation worldwide. Today, the auto industry, like many other industries, is global, and there has been little innovation besides the addition of bells and whistles—mostly technology-driven—in the past decade or more. To understand this, one only need to look at toys and play, which are always a reflection of the larger culture. In the 1970s, kids loved muscle cars and collected Hot Wheels. They were cool and fast, and created the imaginary experience of driving fast, taking risks, and being larger than life. Today, what do we see? Luxury and comfort. I ask you: When was the last time you saw a 5-year-old want to play “luxury and comfort”?

And I see this in all kinds of consumer goods. The goal is not to innovate; it’s to survive. That’s not invalid, obviously. The first rule of every organism is survival. (And though I don’t consider companies people, I do consider them organisms in an abstract way.) But at what cost? In consumer products, that means one or two leaders and a lot of other attempts to ride those coattails. The same can be said of movies, at least to a certain extent. Formulaic, nearly identical movies are released one after another. And whenever there is a breakout hit, the imitators rush in. The results are blandness and battles for market share, and more importantly short-term thinking, the need to get through the next quarter, not lose one’s job, play it safe. These may be necessary, of course, but they don’t drive innovation or creativity—or make people particularly happy in their jobs.

What causes this? Partially it’s fear. From product development to hiring to management practice to even how children play, risk management is the overriding issue. People are scared of trying something new. Every action is calculated not to maximize opportunity but to mitigate risk. Of course, there are many other factors inhibiting innovation, from short-term thinking to a need for immediate results for a month end or a quarter or a year. These all end up having the effect of companies kicking the can down the road, and individual professionals hope that they’ll be on to the next job before the chickens come home to roost and the shit hits the fan. (Loading sentences with clichés can be so amusing.) Levity aside, the creative process can often take longer than a quarter or a year, and boards and executives get scared of investing that, especially when Wall Street is watching.

The problem with fear, short-term thinking, and going for the next quarter’s numbers is that ultimately it is unsustainable. It is not a business strategy; it is a survival mechanism, and we see it way too much in contemporary business.

One quick example before we jump deeper into a possible way out. At this writing, we are just past the holiday shopping season in 2014. It was, at best, lackluster. There were no products—aside from a few electronics—that people were talking about. Consumers concerned about overspending kept their wallets shut. Did it pick up in the last weeks of the season? A bit. But the cycle is likely to repeat in 2015 and beyond because there is a wholly new consumer out there, one that has been created by the very businesses who are hoping to get them racing to the stores to buy. This consumer has been conditioned to wait for sales and has nothing new that he or she “needs” to buy. Even having specific products in hand by Christmas holiday has become less important with the rise of the gift card. The balance of power has shifted—from consumers being targeted with the newest, the latest, the hottest, and so forth, to consumers being in control of when they buy and, in some cases, when they spend. The world has changed, and many companies are still doing things the old way.

To get out of this situation requires a new way of thinking. It requires new ways of creating products, determining profitability, reaching consumers, and building businesses. Obviously, every business has its own specific challenges and opportunities. However, in this new market, new ways of doing business are required.

So how do we get there?

Well, by taking a cue from kids. That is, we can play our way there.

And that’s what this book is all about: how the principles of play can be used to foster an innovative culture. We’ll start with a look at play, what it really is, and how it can be used to change thinking and ultimately be transformative. We can start with remembering that every great idea began as something from the imagination. We’ll then look at the different elements of play and how each of those can be used individually and in the context of a business.

This book was inspired by consulting with individuals and companies that I’ve done over the years designed to foster creativity and new solutions to old problems. It dawned on me over time, particularly because so much of my work has been in the toy business, that what we were really asking people to do was play. I encountered many adults who felt that play was something for kids and that it had no place in their lives. (We’ll get into the difference between play and recreation in our next chapter.) Yet, when they saw the power of play and began to tap into the imagination they thought they had to leave behind, some positive change began to happen.

Given all of this, one might think that adults might play more. But here it’s necessary to make an important distinction: There is a big difference between play as we will define it and leisure activity. In fact, they may be diametrically opposed. Whereas leisure activity is an escape, play is a process of deep immersion, as we hope will become clear in the following pages.

Many of the stories I’ve included here were told in confidence, and so although I don’t identify companies or individuals, the situations are real. Some of these have been resolved and some, as we’ll see, are still in process at this writing. We’re not sure where they’re going—and that’s part of the play process as well.

The good news is that, unlike Peter Pan, we can remember our past adventures, and while not being bound by them, each of us already has a wealth of knowledge and experience to draw from. How that works will become clear in short order. For now, though, let’s get playing.