Laurie's Blogs.

Simon Sinek posted a fabulous video on LinkedIn.  (P.S.  If you don’t know who Simon Sinek is, you need to google him, read some of his books, and follow him on any media stream you can find him.)  The title of this posting is A New Way to Think About Business.  Check it out here:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtlL1azSJGs

Essentially, the video talks about game theory whereby games are created based on someone winning and someone losing.  For example, when kids play games of this nature often there is screaming and yelling, accusations of cheating and someone always ends up crying.

Whereas ‘playing’ has an entirely different dynamic.  For example, when kids do something creative like Lego or drawing, it can go on for hours.  People can come and go, but the ‘play’ could go on all day.

Simon brings up the Business is like PLAYING.  It’s creative.  It’s an ongoing process of building, changing, adapting, adding colour, changing things around, leaders can change, employees can change, structure can change, but the business can still exist.  So, it’s more like PLAY.

This is a whole new way to THINK about business.  As such YOUR business being successful does not mean that someone else’s business fails.  Likely more importantly, someone else’s business succeeding does not mean that yours is losing.  

Take this to a professional level and think of all of the players in the field of animal rehab.  For fear of getting more political than that, I’m just going to leave it there!

I went through some of the comments on the YouTube link and decided to share some of the most relevant:

What business should be:

1) Helping your audience as best as you can

2) Being able to play and be creative in order to do #1 better

3) Make money to support #2

“Play leads to brain plasticity, adaptability, and creativity. Nothing fires up the brain like PLAY” ~ Stuart Brown

Yes! Lots of research out there on the value of play in fostering creativity and innovation. Not to mention the value-add to company culture when teams can connect through play, rather than just checking off project to-do lists. A team that is connected and thriving will be significantly more productive than a disconnected and/or disgruntled team.

Maybe “playing” doesn’t only work for businesses, but with life as well. We are so caught up with the idea of “winning” that we’ve neglected the journey to the finish line.

So, I would love to hear your thoughts on this!  I made a survey so you can fill it in and be anonymous if you choose!

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/23FXWCW 

Thanks!

Cheers!   Laurie