Ready For Some Fun?

Last night, over dinner out with a colleague, I asked if she had experienced any fun changing something at work lately. She tilted her head, furrowed her brow and said...fun? Who has fun anymore? I'd like to have fun, but business is tough...where have you been?"

Her response made me question myself.... where have I been? And, seeing her reaction to the mere suggestion of fun and change, made me wonder if part of our resistance to change in the workplace is that it's not, well... fun?  

A big part of transforming self, teams and organizations is learning; understanding and adopting alternative methodologies, creating innovative processes, practicing fresh skills and adjusting to different types of people. Decide to change anything - and you'll be thrown a learning curve. 

If you Google 'fun and learning' you'll find a gazillion (1047 to be exact) web sites for learning games, simulations, activities tools and toys - for KIDS!  

If Internet ranking is any gauge of our interest in pairing up fun with learning, we appear to believe that having fun while you learn ends when you leave grade school. Really? I don't think so.      

I just spent two days with 15 fully mature adults teaching them coaching skills - and we had fun! In fact the descriptor 'fun' showed up more times than most other words on the evaluations.  Oh, they learned. They worked hard to grasp coaching concepts; they struggled with the finer points of listening and question asking, they grappled with doing the 'dance' between being a manager and a coach, and more. But they also laughed, threw things at each other, chose up 'sides', ate chocolate (there's only one thing better than a training session and that's a training session with chocolate) teased each other and real-played their way to a new set of skills.

On June 10 and 11, 2005, at Yale University, Dorothy Singer, Roberta Golinkoff, and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek hosted a conference called PLAY = LEARNING. They reported that, "We held the conference because of the pressures on young children NOT to play but to learn disembodied facts, even in the crib. (sounds like many training programs - doesn't it?) We lament our culture's increasing emphasis on drill and practice at the expense of play.... we hoped to do our bit to counter the trend that makes PLAY a four-letter word in our society." 

So, is there any fun in your change initiatives? I developed Transition Poker to help you with that. When folks in my Leader's Summit sessions are learning how to be strong change leaders, we take those ideas and, well... play with them. They get dealt a 'hand' of change realities and then they place their bets. By the time the game is over, players have a much fuller understanding, and confidence, about exactly what, and how, they will navigate the high-risk, high-reward territory of organizational transitions.