What I learned from a clown about growing an effective engineering culture

Introduction: Play and Engineering Culture

Georgina and Stefan introduce their talk on how play can improve engineering culture, emphasizing the importance of practical solutions combined with play for faster and more enjoyable problem-solving.

Georgina's Initial Skepticism Towards Play

Georgina shares her past negative experiences with "play" in the workplace, viewing it as a distraction and an added stressor for teams, especially in her role as an HR leader.

Meeting Stefan and the Buildkite Experience

Georgina and Stefan discuss their collaboration at Buildkite, where Stefan, initially a play consultant, became the Director of Play and Connection. Stefan shares his initial concerns about Georgina's process-oriented approach but discovered the power of play combined with processes.

Defining Play: A Systems Psychodynamics Perspective

Stefan explains the concept of play from a systems psychodynamics perspective, drawing parallels between how babies learn through play and how adults can leverage play for learning and curiosity in the workplace.

The Disconnect Between Work and Play

Georgina highlights the current disconnect between work and play, citing data on disengagement and lost productivity due to poor collaboration, and emphasizes the need for a better work experience.

The Industrial Revolution Model and Its Limitations

Georgina and Stefan discuss the Industrial Revolution model of work, its emphasis on efficiency and command-and-control, and how it no longer suits the needs of the digital revolution.

The Digital Revolution and the Need for a New Model

The speakers explain how the digital revolution requires a shift towards collaboration, creativity, and play for innovation, emphasizing the importance of team effectiveness and leadership's role in facilitating this.

Introducing the Peach Framework

Stefan and Georgina introduce the "Peach" framework, a metaphorical model for creating conditions for authentic play in groups. They explain the importance of shared tasks as the foundation of a group.

Safety and Boundaries: Key Elements of the Peach Framework

The speakers emphasize the importance of safety for task completion and explain how boundaries, managed by leadership, are crucial for creating a safe environment where play can thrive.

Exploring the Boundary Layer of the Peach

Georgina and Stefan delve into the different aspects of the boundary layer, including task clarity, management systems and processes, organization in the mind, containment and holding of emotions, and authority.

Leaders Go First: Authorizing Play

The speakers emphasize the role of leaders in initiating and authorizing play within their teams, using examples from Buildkite to demonstrate how leadership can spark a playful and productive work environment.

Play and the Giant Peach Framework: A Dr. Seuss-style Story

Stefan performs a Dr. Seuss-style poem illustrating the Peach framework, highlighting the connection between play, task completion, safety, and boundaries.

Putting the Peach Framework into Action

Georgina summarizes the key takeaways and provides actionable steps for implementing the Peach framework, including investigating boundaries, seeking data, and authorizing authentic play.

Homework: The Wise, Witty, Charming Leader Workbook

Stefan introduces a playful workbook designed to help leaders explore and implement the Peach framework, emphasizing the importance of play for unlocking potential in the future of work.

But... I always hated play at work

Three sad-faced cloud-like shapes in blue, dark green, and light green are placed around the text.

A Systems Psychodynamics definition of Play

The slide has a bright pink background with graphic designs including two green smiling star shapes, one on the top left and the other on the right, and a red siren in the center.

So play at work is...

  • enjoying the difficult task of learning (and we must learn when we build things for the market)
  • only effective when it is authentic to the group
  • collaboration & innovation
A pink smiling sun icon above the text and a colorful border at the bottom.

Play is work
Work is play

Slide with playful designs including smiling starburst shapes in pink, green, and blue.

BUT...

The problem is, the world hasn’t found a way to bring play & work together & make work work

Illustrations of smiling star-shaped figures in green and blue, positioned on a pink background.

We know work isn’t working...

  • Workers are the unhappiest they’ve ever been [BambooHR, 2023]
  • Only 31% of workers are engaged and energised at work [Gartner, 2023]
  • 25,000,000,000 hours per year lost to bad collaboration [Atlassian, 2024]
Pink cartoonish sun icon with a smiling face at the top of the slide.

Why is work not working?

Slide with colorful smiling abstract shapes in green, pink, and teal.

Industrial Revolution

  • People came together in the same time & space to work on a physical thing
  • A distinct separation of play and work
  • Efficiency via policing the individual
  • Command and control
Slide with a red alarm emoji next to the title 'Industrial Revolution' in a pink-bordered box, a playful purple sun-like figure in the top right corner, and colorful border at the bottom.

How to make work work with play?

Illustrations of smiling star shapes on a bright pink background.

THE PLAY STATE PEACH HELPS YOU CREATE THE CONDITIONS

Illustration of a peach with concentric layers labeled: outer pink layer as "BOUNDARIES," orange layer as "SAFETY," dark center layer as "PLAY STATE," and green core labeled "MISSION."

SAFETY

Diagram of intersecting circles labeled "SAFETY" and "MISSION PRIMARY TASK," surrounded by words like "CONNECTEDNESS," "CURIOSITY," "RELATIONSHIPS," and "VULNERABILITY."

BOUNDARIES

A diagram illustrating nested sections with various labels such as Mission, Safety, and Boundaries, each surrounded by related terms like Connectedness, Curiosity, Relationships, and Management.

Systems psychodynamic view of leadership is that of managing what is inside the boundary in relation to what is outside the boundary

(Obholzer, 1994; Rice, 1963, 1965).

The slide features decorative elements, including a smiling green star shape with a red siren light on the left side, and a green smiling shape on the right side.

Boundaries tell the organisation who they are and how they work

Slide with a beige background featuring smiling abstract green shapes at the top left and bottom right corners, and colorful strips along the bottom edge.

THE PLAY STATE PEACH

A diagram illustrating a peach-shaped model labeled "The Play State Peach," with layered sections representing concepts like "Containment & Holding," "Safety," "Task Clarity," "Management," "Boundaries," and "Authority." The center features a green section labeled "Mission Primary Task."

To lead is to go first

Pink background with smiling star and flower-like shapes in green, blue, and black.

Play & the Giant Peach

Illustration of a smiling peach with eyes closed next to a standing cartoon bear.

Play & the Giant Peach Framework

A colorful diagram of a peach-shaped character with limbs, labeled with various psychological and safety concepts. To the right, a smiling cartoon bear stands upright.

One sunny day, I was walking to work with thoughts in my head that jiggled and twerked, and wiggled and wriggled and giggled all, funky.

Those thoughts needed thinking, it was time to get thunky.

Illustration of a smiling bear standing on grass, with three red lines above it and a sun in the top right corner.

They were about groups and all of their weirdness. How some are so fun and do all their business, but others are painful and fill us with dread.

What makes them different? The thunk said in my head.

Illustration of a bear with a thought bubble.

And then I looked up, because with all of my thunking my shoes had been choosen’, my journeys conjunction.

Illustration of a cartoon bear's head partially visible, surrounded by clouds.

The city was gone, my eyes, they reported I was surrounded by trees in a massive peach orchard.

An illustration of a person looking at a dense forest of trees filled with peaches, depicting a peach orchard.

At the end, dear listener, what did I see? Something amazing you will not believe! You will not believe it, but I tell you it's true.

It was giant and golden, full of wisdom. I knew. It was ripe, it was juicy. A mighty great peach! And from its mouth it announced with its fruity, bold speech:

Illustration of a smiling peach with a face, accompanied by a simple bear figure, both set against a plain background.

“I am the Play Peach and I am here to tell you some things that in knowing, you'll know that you well knew. But you forgot it, you see, as you grew up in growing and growing, you forgot quite a lot.

Illustration of colorful xylophone and stacking toy with a cheerful bear waving, accompanied by colorful dots.

You bought your first pantsuit and a fancy new tie, and work was for working, where fun goes to die.

Illustration of a person wearing a tan suit with a pink tie on a plain background.

But ready yourself for lesson number one:

Working is easy
when you let it be fun.
Because while I'm a peach,
play is my domain.

And enjoyments are feeling

hardwired in your brain
to help monkeys to learn and repeat shit, that's hard;
when repetition is playing
it's like a growth in gold card.

Illustration of a peach with a leaf, using its arm to write on a blackboard. The blackboard has the words "Work = Play" written on it.

"It's engagement, you see" she said with a big peachy smile "and when it is there, groups turn up the dials on safety, on quality, on pace and group fixin' the problems you face from the risks that you mix in, you produce way more stuff and faster, much faster. The quality's better in the tasks that you're after. And management's no longer about servant and master - it's a collaborative creation, making change that will last-er."

Illustration of a peach with a smiling face on the right side and stylized orange tree leaves with peaches on the left bottom corner of the slide.

“I get it!”
I cried,
“your wisdom's infectious.
But how do we do it?
I want your prospectus.
And what are the conditions
that let the play start?”
And what she did next
nearly stopped my heart

A cartoon illustration of a bear standing with its arms raised, next to a bush with peach-like fruits. The bear is smiling, and there are colorful bars at the bottom of the image.

with a smile and a wink
that showed she'd done it before,
she reached in her peach flesh
and pulled out her core!
Or her stone from her centre,
to be quite precise,
and she held it aloft
with a grip like a vice.

Illustration of a peach with a face, featuring closed eyes with long eyelashes and red lips. A green leaf sits on top, and an arm extends upwards holding a brown stone with red accents.

“I am a metaphor”, she said with a grin,

“a framework,

a model

to hold the play in.

A play state

is what you are looking to build.

But first,

fundamentals

need to be instilled.

Illustration of a layered circular diagram within a stylized character. The innermost circle is labeled "Mission Primary Task," surrounded by layers titled "Play State," "Safety," and "Boundaries," with related concepts such as "Engagement," "Vulnerability," and "Management."

Inside this peach stone, there lives a great seed. Its growing is knowing the peach tree succeeds. It's the same with a group - they exist for a task. A group without mission is no group. Can I ask;

have you ever seen a human faint in a crowd? Individuals become a group as they make us all proud and help them together. The task unifies humans. A mission helps latent groupy ac-cumen.

Task focus and clarity does lots of great things. Without it, you're stuck like a bird without wings. So stage one of the Play Peach metaphorical framework is: groups must focus on task. If you don't, you're a lame jerk.

A green leaf shape with the words "MISSION PRIMARY TASK" on it.

But that's not enough, little human, not by a lot. The task can't be all good if the safety is not. If your hair is on fire, you can't bake a cake. To think safety's not important is a fucking mistake. But safety's not boring. Oh, no, no. Far from it. It helps us take risks like a rope when we plummet. It's also the place where connection resides.”

And the peach stopped and pointed at her yellow insides,

An illustration of a brown figure with a flame on its head, standing next to a pink cake with lit candles on a dark green background.

“as my flesh holds my seed safe in its centre, safety is like a creativity dispenser. In safety, you find vulnerability and candour, and it lets humans be weird and supports healthy banter. And these things are the things we need to do our task good. So safety's a must, not a could, would, or should.

That is stage two of our ripe metaphor!” Stage three became clear as her skin hit the floor.

Illustration of overlapping circles labeled "SAFETY" and "MISSION PRIMARY TASK," with words like "VULNERABILITY," "CONNECTNEDNESS," "RELATIONSHIPS," and "THE WEIRD" surrounding them.

“Finally, there's boundaries!” she triumphantly announced, as she picked up her skin like a deflated bounce house.

“Think of organisational boundaries like a figurative skin - they're the things that you do that hold your ins in.

Abstract background with overlapping organic shapes in shades of peach and green on a tan backdrop.

Without appropriate boundaries,
safety cannot exist,
Nor can tasks,
so well managed boundaries are a must,
I insist.
They are broad and wide ranging,
a large category selection.
But don't let the broadness
make you do a deflection -

Illustration of concentric circles labeled from the center outwards as Mission, Safety, and Boundaries. Each circle contains related words such as "Curiosity," "Vulnerability," "Connectedness," and "Task Clarity."

They are about defining the task and its systems and process and containing the feelings the organisation will possess and what it means to be this unique collection of humans. And also a bit of protection.

Because group boundaries evolved way, way long ago when role differentiation changed our M.O from monkeys who ran ‘round and did all the things, to communities, with craftspeople, and the skills that it brings.

Abstract illustration featuring multicolored arrows, lines, a circle, and a leaf arranged in a dynamic and overlapping pattern on the right side of the slide.

While boundaries are held by one and by all, they are managed by leadership, who will make the calls by watching the boundaries, making sure what goes in is as good as what leaves. Do that and you’ll win.”

Illustration of a stylized peach with closed eyes and a smile, resembling a face.

My brain, it was spinning from what she had told me. Now the framework was in me, a new thunk did unfold me. “I get the peach model and I love it. I do. But what about play? You're the Play Peach, aren't you?

Bear-like figure with a large head and two curved shapes resembling ears, set against a dark green background.

Like Willie the Wonka at the end of that film, she eyed me with pride, like her art in a kiln. “You saw it!” she said “You noticed what's missing. They're group fundamentals, and I'm not dismissing their importance. In fact, it's quite the reverse, without them play can't be a thing we rehearse. But when they are there, authentic and true, a play state can occur in the work that we do.

A visual diagram shaped like an apple with concentric rings labeled: outermost ring - "BOUNDARIES"; second ring - "SAFETY"; third ring - "PLAY STATE" with terms like "PRODUCTIVITY," "LEARNING," and "CREATIVITY"; central area - "MISSION PRIMARY TASK". Words like "CONTAINMENT AND HOLDING," "CONNECTEDNESS," and "RELATIONSHIPS" are placed at various positions around the rings.

And that's when our creativity beacons get lit

and collaboration
and learning
and candour and grit
and productivity
and solving of problems
and fun
and engagement
and joy
that helps us get our shit done.

Illustration of a tree with eight round fruits on it.

The trick",
said the Play Peach
with a gleam in her eye,
“is to always be learning
and give things a try.

And know that in aiming for playing you'll learn
what your group needs as a going concern.”

Illustration of a peach with a green leaf, holding a stick of chalk and writing "Play & learn" on a blackboard.

The orchard was fading,
as was her voice.
The Play Peach suggested
a fruity new choice.
And my thunks and their thunking
showed a new way of being
and one offered a simple phrase that I was now seeing:

Illustration of peach trees with peaches on them set against a muted green background.

play takes some work, and work is just play. Old models of working are way past their day. And as my feet found the pavement headed to work, a Peachy voice in my head said with a wry smirk,

An illustration of a brown bear with round ears facing a stylized cityscape, with a sun and birds in the sky above.

“imagine a world where the word play isn't dirty and workplaces could be just a little less hurty. Now imagine that world and work is just...fun and people could do more and get their shit done”

The slide features a large yellow circle in the top left corner and a colorful strip with abstract green, pink, and blue shapes at the bottom, resembling a landscape.

the end

Slide with a maroon theater curtain background, featuring a yellow box with stylized curved lines at the sides.

SO, WHAT CAN YOU DO TODAY?

  • BOUNDARIES - look at the boundary layer, investigate each section
  • Seek data in peachy safety layer ways
  • Use that data to influence, and define boundaries
  • Authorise play that's authentic to you and your organisation, not force it
  • Communicate communicate communicate

SO, WHAT CAN YOU DO TODAY?

  • BOUNDARIES - look at the boundary layer, investigate each section
  • Seek data in peachy safety layer ways
  • Use that data to influence, and define boundaries
  • Authorise play that’s authentic to you and your organisation, not force it
  • Communicate communicate communicate
Cartoon-style illustrations of a pink star with a smiling face and a blue star with a smiling face.

BOUNDARY EXPLORATION WORKBOOK...

The wise, witty, charming leader's super-cool, super-fun holiday workbook about boundaries

Image containing a QR code alongside smiling star and flower illustrations.

Play unlocks potential

Slide with playful starburst shapes in green, pink, and blue with smiling faces around the text.

Thank you!

Boundary workbook

stef@playgrounded.co

playgrounded.co

@playgroundedco

g@playgrounded.co

PLAYGROUNDED - MAKE WORK BETTER

Illustration of a bear and a woman on either side of a large QR code.

So our talk is what I learned from a clown about creating awesome engineering culture.

What I learned is that practical solutions and traditional processes can solve problems, but play makes it way faster and way more fun.

That's it.

It's done.

Talk is done now.

Bye bye.

See you for the next session.

But the thing is that word play, I always hated that.

When someone would bring that into the workplace and say, We're gonna play now.

I'd cringe and go, Ugh, do we have to?

What you are suggesting is never fun.

always distracts me and the team from the work that we have to do.

Creates a longer to do list for everyone.

And my role was always HR leader and so I led HR functions and thought about the company from a people experience perspective.

Always wanted to support people by helping them do great work and build great relationships.

And my experience with Play Consultants was never that.

It was always adding to the stress people had because they'd still come up with all those issues that they raised with managers and leaders about work not working, things being really hard, people issues.

And then I met Stefan.

How did you meet me?

I, in 2020, that year of the pandemic.

Stefan and I found ourselves working together at Buildkite.

I came in to head up the people function as we grew from 15 to 100 and something people.

and Stefan was already there.

He was introduced to me as someone with a very different but complementary skill set to me.

And, then the magic started.

The magic started.

You'll note he was not introduced me as a play consultant, despite the fact that he was.

I suspect that we had other play sceptics in the room introducing him.

And actually, that's a really good thing to jump off now.

the thing that G said about when she heard the phrase play, she would cringe.

I want, I would love, let's see if we can get an honest voting system here.

Put your hand up if you're one of those people who is like the moment someone starts talking about play at work You're like, oh hell no.

Yeah, we love all of you in fact we celebrate you because we both think that's actually a really good sign of people that want to use, actually want to use Play in a really smart way, which is to actually get work done.

Whereas, and I think sometimes we are sensitive to people coming in to talk about Play because we've seen people come in to do Play, which has nothing to do with the work.

And that, that has caused frustration.

But we still love play and I am an absolute tragic for play when we, when I started at Buildkite, I, was a play consultant and then when COVID hit Buildkite, which is an awesome organization, reached out to me and said, we know you're a bit screwed at the moment, because you have no business anymore.

Would you like to come in and do the work that you do but with our company?

And then I fell in love and became a director of Playing Connection and didn't leave for four years.

when I heard that G was being hired, I got nervous because I knew that G was a process person and I was worried that when G started as my boss, I soon would not have a job afterwards.

And actually what I learned from G is the opposite of what G said in that first slide.

What I learned is that I was going around to organizations and doing play work with people, and it was not changing how they did their job.

And that was making me sad.

I felt like a children's clown for adults that would come in, do some fun stuff, and then see you next year, and nothing would change in the organization.

And I really believed that play could help them.

What I learnt from Gee is that when play is paired with processes and task- in the previous talks there was a lot of stuff that I would describe as task based focus.

When that's done, play becomes this supercharging force that makes amazing things happen in an organization.

Happened at Buildkite.

It was awesome.

We've talked about play though.

I've been using that word a lot.

This little signal here, the emoji, is, you're going to see it in the talk, this is our nerd alert.

And I am the academic nerd who has studied a thing called system psychodynamics.

And I am going to give you some academic nerdery.

On the concept of play, we're going to define it.

And system psychodynamics is just this amazing, academic field of study that has been going since about the mid 1800s.

And it's only job is to look at groups and see how we can help groups successfully achieve their task.

And it looks at any field in academia and takes cool information to help groups succeed in their task.

In the last talk, we heard about frameworks and that people have been studying this for a while.

That place, System Psychodynamics, is when you'll find all the juiciest of frameworks.

So if you want to have a look, check it out.

In System Psychodynamics, they have a concept of play.

It is taken from Early childhood development, the study of babies and how their brain computer switches on.

And is that my phone alarming?

No.

No, you turned that off.

Good, excellent.

the concept of play is how a baby learns everything about everything.

So when a baby's brain is switching on, it needs to learn about gravity, it needs to learn about how it poos, it needs to learn about its feelings towards its family.

And what happens is, an adult facilitates play to happen so that the child can learn everything.

And you know this, because if I put a baby in your hand and said, teach it how its hands work, you would not go- the hand has 136 different bones and- you wouldn't do that, what you would do is go, hi, and then the baby would do things, maybe get a bit distressed and maybe you go, it's okay.

Or you have fun.

You'd make it.

That's probably my beard.

you'd make it enjoyable for the baby to learn..

What does that have to do with play at work?

Play at work, that same mechanism of play is alive in every single one of you.

Humans are one of the few animals that play in deep into adulthood.

So play at work is enjoying the difficult task of learning.

And if you're going to be a technology company making new products, you need to learn about what the market is doing.

If you're a leader, you've got to learn constantly.

So it's all about learning.

Yep.

And be curious.

Play is how we become curious.

It's only effective when it's authentic to the group.

Think of that example of the mother and the baby.

If it is not authentic to the relationship they have, play does not work.

That's why play consultants that come in and go, Hi, everyone.

We're going to all stand up and be a vegetable and you cringe.

That's why it doesn't work because the relationship isn't there.

It's not authentic to the group and it is the place where collaboration, creativity and innovation are born.

That is what play does.

So play is actually work and work is actually play.

They are the same thing.

But the problem is the world hasn't found a way to bring play and work together in a way that actually makes work, work.

Because we know that work isn't working.

We, there's so much data out there, empirically, as well as anecdotally if you look anywhere on LinkedIn, it's full of people having terrible experiences at work.

It's full of workplace trauma.

It's full of things like restructures that are moving people around and having very, negative experiences for people.

And the result is that people are really unhappy and we spend a lot of time at work.

And so we want to try and help people have a better experience with this.

Approximately five days a week.

Only 31 percent of people who work are saying that they are engaged and energized at work.

That means that over two thirds of us are not engaged with the work that we're actually doing.

And the result is that 25 billion hours of work is lost to bad collaboration.

So it's not that we're not working enough, we're just working harder and not smarter.

So why is it not working?

Here's another nerd alert.

We're going to try and go quickly on this, but we're going all the way back to the 1760s for the Industrial Revolution.

Because the Industrial Revolution is basically the framework of how we're working now.

It's where we got out of cottages and into companies.

And it was where people came together in the same place in the same time to work on a physical thing.

There was a distinct separation between work and play because it was the first time that people had to work outside of where they were hours.

They had management structures which meant that the person who was doing the little piece of the cog in the machine in the production line had their very specific task to do, and in order to get direction on it, they literally just asked the person above them, who was the person who knew where it was, how the whole thing worked.

And that's why command and control became a thing.

Manager, leader, told you what to do.

And in order to be the best and to make the most money and to make the most stuff, you worked on efficiency.

So you worked on policing how an individual did their work.

And a simple way of holding it in your brain is Industrial Revolution was about machines and what we did with human beings is we tried to make them a cog in that machine.

So everything was designed to make a human part of a machine.

But we're deep into the digital revolution now.

The internet was Invented ages ago, but what we require from it is people to work across times and space, and we're working on abstract things rather than a physical thing.

In that, we're a knowledge, ideas industry, particularly the people in this room.

A lot of us, what we are working on is software, which is tangible, but is not a thing I go and look at as a, thing on the thing, when I put my finger in here and I move this thing.

It's something we interact with in a very different way than we used to.

Excuse me.

in order to work like that, we rely on the effectiveness of teams and groups.

The reason we lean into system psychodynamics is the whole academic principle is about a group of people working together, and it's our role as leaders to help those groups work better.

And, creativity and collaboration are required.

For us, play engages people to innovate collaboratively.

So how do you make play Work.

How do you make work with play?

There's a lot of work.

That's a great sentence.

The, we could talk about this for hours and sometimes we do.

What we want you to take away is that the model for the way work was designed in the Industrial Revolution.

Now, those, that way of designing it makes no sense.

We are working in a different way now.

How can you change work now to be better for human beings and also produce better products?

You need a different model for holding what work is in your mind.

We love you, leaders.

We think it's really hard being a leader at the moment, because if you go on the LinkedIn, or you go on the internet, what you hear is a whole lot of, Hey leader!

Be more empathetic!

Be less empathetic!

Put a KPI on it!

Don't put a KPI on it!

Blah blah blah blah!

There's a lot of yelling at leaders about how you've got to do things better.

And we actually think that doesn't help.

My background is training as an actor.

And if a director came up to me after I'd worked on stage and yelled at me about 20 things that I was doing wrong, I would be worse the next time I went on stage.

Really good directors give you a simple thing to hold in your mind that then can affect your practice while you're in the action of doing it.

We made for you a tasty metaphorical framework.

You can think peach now.

Yeah?

So we want to give you the information in the form of this peach.

And this peach is there to help you create conditions where authentic play can emerge in your group.

Because when it does, it solves a whole bunch of complex problems in one go.

We're going to build it from the seed out.

Here's the thing.

We want you to hold in your brain that the thing that makes a group is a shared task.

That is the definition of a group.

A very smart academic who studied groups called Wilfred Bion wrote about this thing and he explained it in a really simple way.

If you have 20 people lying on a beach that don't know each other, they are not a group.

The moment one of those people starts to drown and everyone works together, to help save that person, they become a group because they have a shared task.

So being really clear about the primary task, the mission, the shared task of the group is important.

You can think organizationally if you want to, but you can also think there's a 15 minute meeting to decide whether to change the button to green or yellow.

Yeah.

And the task of that is to make the decision in that moment.

So being really clear on task helps to unify a group.

So they have a shared group identity.

I'm going to add another thing that I like to say, sorry.

We, diversity in organizations is not only really good to have, it is necessary because we have different ways of thinking.

At the task layer though, we get to say a thing.

That is the one area where there is no diversity.

The agreement on why we are working together.

The task is understood by all and agreed to by all.

People can completely disagree on how to do the task, but that is the one thing in an organisation for which there is not diversity, in an ideal organisation.

So, group, task, holds it together.

However, next layer, safety.

You cannot do the task if you do not feel safe enough to do the task.

It is impossible.

You cannot bake a cake if your hair is on fire.

We know this for a fact.

That's why safety is so important, because it supports the task getting done, which is the reason the group exists in the first place.

The challenge is though, you can't tell people, be safe, do safe.

Who's been in a meeting where someone's gone, we're, going to have a meeting and we're going to be psychologically safe.

Great.

Now we're psychologically safe.

Excellent.

Yeah.

That is not the way safety works.

Safety is tacit.

It is subjective and it is different for every person.

So if we're saying to you, leaders need to make safety.

How the F do you do that if it's completely subjective?

You do this.

Boundaries.

Boundaries.

This is what leadership is.

Leadership is managing the boundaries of a group so that safety can exist, so that the task can be achieved.

That is the layer at which you have the ability to pull levers and change things to promote the safety.

To promote the achievement of task.

great.

Boundary is a weird word, right?

It's people you, I've said that to people in the past and they've gone, Oh, you mean I just shouldn't sexually harass somebody.

I'm like, that's one of them.

That's, that is our boundary.

But it comes down to a whole bunch of other things.

Steph, you're the system psychodynamics fellow.

Are you ready for some system psychodynamics nerd words?

System psychodynamic, the system psychodynamic view of leadership is that of managing what is inside the boundary in relation to what is outside the boundary.

But what does that mean?

Boundaries tell the organization who they are and how they work.

They're the border at which you can pass on information to make that happen.

That is the task of leadership to do.

And now I think we go into oh, yeah, you're going to do this bit.

This is the chunky bit This is the okay.

So we've told you your job is boundaries What do we mean?

we've tried to categorize things into chunks so that when you feel a problem or you see a problem arising in the company, you can go to one of the sections in the boundary and go, I think it's there.

I can hold that.

I can find out more information.

I can clarify.

I can communicate better around that.

So the first one is task clarity.

There's a statistic that came out recently from Atlassian that only 24% of executives say their teams are working on mission critical work.

That means over three quarters of us are doing other stuff.

We're not working towards the thing that the whole company is working towards.

And it's leadership's job not just to define what that is, find out where the information is getting miscommunicated.

Talk about vision, mission, strategy.

A whole bunch of stuff we've, Andrew and Ben have talked about earlier today.

Oh, can I add a thing?

Yeah.

Also, at the task clarity boundary, you're also looking outside the organisation to think about if the task is actually the right task.

So for example, organisations, tech companies that have failed.

Have often not been listening outside the organization to realize that the task that they're telling everyone to do is actually the wrong task It's solving the wrong problem.

So it's also about reassessing what the central task is Think Blockbuster and their six billion dollar line for overdue returns.

They went under because they didn't adapt to streaming.

So, management is the next thing.

That's all the systems and processes.

We won't go into a huge amount of detail about this because there's so many other talks and content out there about that.

But that is do people know how to do work?

And do people know how to do the things around work?

Simple stuff, take leave.

Do people know how to do that stuff?

Do they have the tools to do it effectively?

Organization in the mind.

Now, this is a system psychodynamics term that when Steph used to say it to me, I'd be like, on earth does that mean, Steph?

It is too obscure.

But to be clear, G never said this, but I verbalize it as I would start talking about organization in the mind and G would give me the face look that said, shut up, nerd.

Basically, we've used it after some kind of a lot of discussion because I kept saying to him, how's it different from culture?

And where we got to.

And this is a fundamental belief that I have.

The thing when you talk about culture is people have different experiences of that.

It's weaponized.

I had it in my job title for a time.

I'm like, do culture.

the, thing about organization in the mind, if you listen to those words, it's how do the people in the company think about the company.

So that includes, it used to be you'd go to an office, you'd sit in your cubicle, and that was the company.

You'd have rituals and things that maybe helped you the end of the week.

But now that we work in distributed companies, even if we go to one office, we've probably got an office in another country or another state or something.

Leadership's job is to constantly be talking about the company and understanding the experiences that people have and how they then visualize the company so that if there's some really bad stuff happening in there, leadership can find out and start to make actual change that helps people have a better experience.

Also, it creates belonging.

So one of the biggest successes that I'm proud of for us at Buildkite is we were working in a completely remote organization, but if you had have asked anyone, what is Buildkite, they would have been like, ah, Buildkite, kinda, it feels like, we're in a room.

All cookin sausages together.

everyone shared an image together of what Buildkite was, cause we worked on really promoting it, so they felt that they could belong to something, even though we were all just working in our living rooms.

Containment and holding is the next one.

This is about the feelings.

And when, we say feelings, we use the system's psychodynamic words, containment and holding, because that is about using the experience of work for your group of people, your team, and actually using that data to do something effective to make change for the company.

There's, as a former HR leader, there's a huge amount of, burnout that happens amongst us and leaders in general when the industry has been shifting us towards managing people's emotions and feelings and it gets really dangerous because it puts managers in positions where they're ending up being trying to be therapists and no one is qualified for that and everybody is in danger at that point and so when we think about it as containing and holding the emotion and then acting in a way that helps the company, it's far more effective for the people and helps them engage far better and less dangerous for everyone.

The last one is authority.

We've chosen to keep it in here but You can think about it in terms of task clarity and management.

It's, does everyone know what their job is?

Do we know where responsibilities lie?

And, how does hierarchy work?

But it also means things like, are people taking up their authority when, in an appropriate way?

So we use the fire warden example.

If there was a fire over there and the fire warden was in the bathroom, somebody would hopefully go, there's a fire over there, let's evacuate.

And you want that kind of appropriate, self authority happening in your company.

But the reason we're considering removing it is that it's what the things you can actually do are more around what is the job, what are the responsibilities and those sit in the management task clarity layer.

So that's what you can control.

If you demonstrate the attributes in the safety layer, as, Andrew and Ben talked earlier, curiosity, if you can demonstrate your curiosity through finding out and building these processes, you can connect with people, build relationship, be vulnerable in your leadership, and bring, the weird is about bringing who you are.

That's not about doing anything unlike, that is, just something that's authentic to you.

If you can do it in that way then you can authorise a play state.

And this is the thing, the definition of a leader is a leader goes first.

So you can work on that peach, you can make your tasks clear, you can use your boundaries to make the safety happen.

And great, you're doing a really great job.

You have made a really awesome organization.

But if you want to create a play state, which is where the team is now engaged in its learning, engaged in its work, solving problems for themselves, authorizing themselves, connecting with each other.

If you want to create that state, you have to create the spark and leaders go first with it.

And so that means authorizing play to happen within your system.

And it makes sense if you want play to happen.

A junior isn't going to start suddenly doing playful things.

They're going to look up to see if that is allowed by authority in the room in the same way that a baby with a parent looks to that caregiver to see if it is safe to play, yeah?

Now, at Buildkite we were so fortunate, because I don't think this has ever happened anywhere in the world.

We were at a company, just when it was growing, 15 people.

And then we grew to 121 people.

And what happened was, the very head of the company authorised the play.

Keith Pitt, the CEO, is a very playful person.

He used to be a magician, and I can remember so many times this happened, but I want to give you one very specific example.

We were in an all company meeting and he had made a meme about something to do with the product.

It was something about shipping code.

Something.

And it was very funny.

It was animated.

It was great.

It went for about two minutes.

And he went, everyone, I've got to show you this thing.

And so we all, in the all company meeting, gathered around our computers to look at this funny joke that Keith had made.

We all laughed.

And then I said to Keith, How long did that take you to do, CEO?

And he went, Oh, about a day.

And I said, Keith, is that an appropriate use of the CEO's time?

And not as a joke, he very honestly owned it and went, absolutely.

It's completely a good use of time.

Because it was explaining the product, it was doing it in a playful way, it got people to engage with the task, and then, here's the magic.

After that, everyone else started doing it.

Teams started creating presentations about what they were working on, but in an award style show.

Some people started writing songs about the work that they were doing.

We started drawing pictures together, and it engaged people in what the task was.

Because he started the spark.

So if you want a play state to emerge in your teams, you're the one that's going to have to kick it off.

In a way that's authentic to you and your teams.

Now, we're back at this slide because leaders go first.

What are we doing in this room right now?

We're leading, yeah?

So if I'm going to stand here and say, you need to make a play state in your groups, it is beholden on me to demonstrate this skill for you.

We are now going to give you an international debut of a children's, an adult's children's book, written in the style of Dr.

Seuss, written by me, illustrated by Georgina, which presents everything we have just said in a children's storybook.

That's what we're going to do now.

You have to do something to help this work.

I want you to get yourself, loosen yourself up, and remember when, you used to read, your parents would read stories to you when you were younger, or caregivers would read stories, and you'd be like, oh, it's story time.

Just do something now that puts yourself in story time.

Because you are getting the premiere of the children adult storybook called Play and the Giant Peach.

Or, Play and the Giant Peach Framework.

So get yourself ready.

Now I am both, I've memorized it and I'm reading.

So you'll see me doing a lot of this at the same time.

get ready.

Premiere it begins.

One sunny day.

I was walking to work with thoughts in my head that jiggled and twerked and wiggled and wriggled and jiggled.

All funky.

Those thoughts needed thinking it was time to get funky.

They were about groups and all of their weirdness.

How some are and do all their business, but others are painful and fill us with dread.

What makes them different?

The thunk said in my head.

And then I looked up, because with all of my thunking, my shoes had been choosing my journey's conjunction.

The city was gone, my eyes, they reported.

I was surrounded by trees in a massive peach orchard Through the trees was a track, so I straightened my back, cause I knew on this track were the answers I lacked.

At the end, dear listener, what did I see?

Something amazing you will not believe.

You will not believe it, but I tell you it's true.

It was giant and golden, full of wisdom I knew.

It was ripe, it was juicy, a mighty great peach, and from its mouth it announced with its fruity, bold speech.

I am the Play Peach, and I'm here to tell you some things that in knowing, you'll know that you well knew.

But you forgot it, as you grew up.

In growing and growing, you forgot quite a lot.

You bought your first pantsuit and a fancy new tie, and work was for working where fun goes to die.

But ready yourself for lesson number one.

Working is easy if you let it be fun.

Because while I'm a peach, play is my domain, and enjoyments are feeling hardwired in your brain to help monkeys learn and repeat shit that's hard.

When repetition is playing, it's like a growthing gold card.

It's engagement, she said with a big peachy smile.

And when it is there, groups turn up the dials on safety, on quality, on pace, and group fixin.

The problems you face from the risks that you mixin.

You produce way more stuff, and faster, much faster.

And the quality's better in the task that you're after.

And management's no longer about servant and master.

It's collaborative creation, making change that will last.

I get it, I cried, your wisdom's infectious, but how do we do it?

I want your prospectus, and what are the conditions that let the play start?

And what she did next nearly stopped my heart.

With a smile and a wink that showed she'd done it before, she reached in her peach flesh and pulled out her core, or her stone from her center to be quite precise.

And, she held it aloft with a grip like a vice.

I am a metaphor, she said with a grin.

A framework, a model to hold the play in.

A play state is what you are looking to build.

But first, fundamentals need to be instilled.

Inside this peach stone, there lives a great seed.

Its growing is knowing the peach tree succeeds.

It's the same with a group.

They exist for a task.

A group without mission is no group.

Can I ask, have you ever seen a human faint in a crowd?

Individuals become a group as they make us all proud and help them together.

The task unifies humans.

A mission helps latent groupie acumen.

Now I'm just going to pause here and just tell you that you just heard the best piece of literary poetry that has ever existed in the face of the world.

Yeah, okay.

Task focus and clarity does lots of great things.

Without it, you're stuck like a bird without wings.

So stage one of the Play Peach metaphorical framework is groups must focus on task.

If you don't, you're a lame jerk.

But that's not enough, little human, not by a lot.

The task can't be all good if the safety is not.

If your hair is on fire, you can't bake a cake.

To think safety's not important is a fucking mistake.

But safety's not boring.

Oh no, far from it.

It helps us take risks like a rope when we plummet.

It's also the place where connection resides.

And the peach stopped and pointed at her yellow insides.

As my flesh holds my seed, safety Safe in its center, safety is like a creativity dispenser.

In safety you find vulnerability and candor.

It helps, it lets humans be weird and supports healthy banter.

And these are the things we need to do our task good.

So safety is a must, not a could, would or should.

That is stage two of our right metaphor.

Stage three became clear as her skin hit the floor.

Finally, there's boundaries, she triumphantly announced as she picked up her skin like a deflated bounce house.

Think of organizational boundaries like a figurative skin.

They're the things that you do that hold your ins in.

Without appropriate boundaries, safety cannot exist, nor can tasks, so well managed boundaries are a must, I insist.

They are broad and wide ranging, a large category selection, but don't let the broadness make you do a deflection.

They are about defining the task and its systems and process and containing the feelings the organization will possess and what it means to be this unique collection of humans and also a bit of protection.

Because group boundaries evolved way, way, long ago when role differentiation changed our MO from monkeys who ran around and did all the things to communities with craftspeople and the skills that it brings.

While boundaries are held by one and by all, they are managed by leadership who will make all the calls by watching the boundaries, making sure what goes in is as good as what leaves.

Do that and you'll win.

My brain, it was spinning from what she had told me.

Now the framework was in me and you thunk did unfold me.

I get the peach model and I love it, I do.

But what about play?

You're the play peach, aren't you?

Like Willy the Wonka at the end of that film!

She eyed me with pride like her art in a kiln!

You saw it, she said, you noticed what's missing.

They're group fundamentals, and I'm not dismissing their importance.

In fact, it's quite the reverse.

Without them, play can't be a thing we rehearse.

But when they are there, authentic and true, a play state can occur in the work that we do.

And that's when our creativity beacons get lit.

And collaboration, and learning, and candor, and grit, and productivity, and solving of problems, and fun, and engagement, and joy that helps us get our shit done.

The trick, said the peach, with a gleam in her eye, is to always be learning and give things a try.

And know that in aiming for playing, you'll learn what your group needs as a going concern.

The orchard was fading, and as was her voice.

The play peach had suggested a fruity new choice.

My thunks and their thunking showed me a new way of being, and one offered a simple phrase that I was now seeing.

Play takes some work, and work is just play.

Old models of working are way past their day and as my feet found the pavement headed for work, a peachy voice in my head said with a wry smirk, imagine a world where the word play isn't dirty and workplaces could be just a little less hurty.

Now imagine that world and work is just fun and people could do more and get their shit.

Done the end.

Now it's my job to try and land the plane after the poem . So what can you actually do with this?

Boundaries?

Look at that boundary layer.

Investigate each section.

So go in find, find out what you can about how your team experiences the task, the organization, or all the things in there.

Seek data in the way that the peachy flesh layer to ask you to demonstrate.

Use that data to influence and then redefine the boundaries.

Your job is to constantly be redefining and re talking about these things.

Authorise play that's authentic to you and your organisation and don't force it.

The reason that play consultants don't work is because if the boundaries aren't working then play won't actually help you.

It'll just distract people.

And communicate, communicate, communicate.

Talk about it a lot.

We have a homework.

Slide too.

. We're so sorry.

We do, but this one is a, can you guess who named this?

Steph named this workbook called The Wise, witty, charming Leader.

Super cool, super fun holiday workbook about boundaries.

It is designed in the way that you did primary school workbooks.

It's just an investigation tool and it's designed with a little bit of play so that you can try and lean in as a leader because leaders go first because we think play unlocks potential and the future of work is play.

Thank you.