I spend a chunk of time at the end of every year reflecting on the twelve months past, and thinking about my aspirations for the twelve in front of me.  It’s not really about resolutions so much as it is about being intentional and paying attention.  This year, I was inspired to also think about having a theme, and I landed on practical magic (notably despite the late-90s Nicole Kidman/Sandra Bullock movie).
 
The inspiration for the choice was my desire to find a way to visit my son in New Zealand this Spring.  He will be spending a semester at the University of Auckland, and I had begun putting the word out to friends that I was looking around for an opportunity to speak or lead a workshop there that would both justify and pay for my travel.  It occurred to me that it is when I take this approach to life – working hard at getting lucky, or practical magic – that I am both happiest and most successful.
 
Practical magic shows up in a number of different ways in my life, but there are four ways that stand out: meditation, going outside, generosity and asking for help.  I think of these as intentional practices that reap unanticipated benefits.  They also fall squarely into my favorite definition of play – any activity undertaken for no apparent purpose.  I remain a fervent believer that the most defining moments of our lives often happen in these privileged interludes, and that building effective educational and work environments – building a meaningful life - require extended time for play and reflection.  It may seem like a contradiction in terms, but being intentional about having no apparent purpose at times is one of my keys to being happy.
 
So a bit about each of the four; meditation to start.  A while back, Jim Thompson, the founder of Positive Coaching Alliance, and I decided that we would meet every 3 months to check in and provide a sounding board for one another.  We did it for a few of years, and it was a professionally and personally important experience for me.  One of the things that I took away was Jim’s description of how he made time every day for quiet reflection.  I had read assorted books about mindfulness and meditation over the years, but never really established a practice.  Jim inspired me to really commit, and I have been sitting every morning from 20-45 minutes ever since.  I attend a meditation retreat every Fall to go a little deeper, and I am convinced that the practice has helped me to stay a little more present when times are hard, kinder when people cut me off on the freeway, and grateful when good things happen.
 
Going outside. I have always loved being outside.  Playing sports, running through the neighborhood at dusk as a child, backpacking, hiking, running, mountain biking.  And when my kids were babies, I remember the revelation that the single best way to get them to settle when they were fussy was to step outside with them.  Maybe it was just the change in setting, maybe it was that it made me settle and they could sense that, but I took away the insight that going outside almost always freshens up my perspective.
 
Generosity.  I’m not necessarily talking about giving money, (though if you’re reading this and inspired to make a donation to Playworks, that’s awesome!) but intentionally doing something nice for someone else is some of the most powerful practical magic I know.  A compliment, letting someone go ahead of you in the grocery store line, sharing your cookie – really, the joy that sharing affords is weirdly outsized given the magnitude of the act.  Maybe it’s because it frees us from the oppressive reality of being so constantly self-absorbed.  Maybe it lightens the load of wanting stuff that seems to be such a natural by-product of capitalism.  In any case, I am convinced that when you are feeling the most needy, the best way to help yourself is by being actively, selflessly kind to someone else.
 
Last but not least, asking for help.  I find this one particularly challenging.  Maybe it’s extra white of me, but I internalized a fair bit of the Horatio Alger, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps myth as a kid.  Turns out it’s total BS.  We don’t do anything all that important all alone. You need to find great co-founders/co-workers, have great friends, collaborate, disagree, compete and share to actually make a go of it.  We need each other, and asking for help is how you transform vulnerability from a liability into a super power.  Hard-core, full-on practical magic.
 
I have some mixed feelings looking ahead to 2020.  Even as Nick Kristoff points to the myriad ways the world has improved, I worry about politics and climate and our basic ability as humans to be kind to one another.  So I am asking…  please join me in practicing a little practical magic – however that shows up for you – in the hopes of making 2020, and the world, a little brighter.
 

​ At the outset, I should acknowledge that I’m not really a fashion person.  My basic aspiration, when it comes to putting on clothes is to be warm/not naked, and in cases of more formal/professional events, to achieve appropriate. Happily, I have created a professional life – as one of the nation’s thought-leaders on recess – which makes very few demands on me in this area.  The only problem, really, is that roughly 2-3 times each month, I am asked to attend an event where some level of effort is required AND, not infrequently at said events, people take my picture and post on social media.  As a result, there are lots of pictures of me at various events, all wearing the same thing.
 
So I decided to try Rent the Runway.  I think it’s fair to say that pretty much everyone who knows me found this to be almost unbelievable.  But I went for it, and to make it more fun, I decided to approach it like a design experiment.  I chose to make my first test in conjunction with a trip to Washington, DC for an event where I was speaking, but that was pretty low stakes.  I jumped in the way I would on any prototype, taking notes, capturing the various steps through artifacts and pictures, and gathering information through interviews and other research.
 
I stay with my parents when I travel to DC, so I mentioned my experiment to my mother.  Much to my surprise, my mother had very strong feelings about Rent the Runway, based almost exclusively on her reading of this article in the Daily Beast (and raising all sort of questions, including ‘my mother reads the Daily Beast?’).  I reminded myself that the whole thing was a prototype, made note of my mother’s feelings, and continued on.
 
Once in DC, I made my way to the brick and mortar store in Georgetown, where I elected to take my dress back to my parents’ home to try it on as opposed to using the on-site dressing rooms.  I suppose it would have been easier to return, had I not been happy with my selection, but I was I definitely happier and more comfortable trying the dress on in the natural lighting of my childhood bedroom.  Go figure.
 
Pleased with the fit – and the dress – I asked my mom to take a picture of me for the prototyping process.  “Why, exactly, do you want me to take your picture?” my mother inquired.  I explained the idea of capturing the process as a part of prototyping the design, and my mom’s enthusiasm was an almost immediate confirmation of just how human a capacity design really is.  Just like play and storytelling, I thought, we are born to design.

​I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about organizational experience design lately, mostly as it relates to work culture. I am convinced that organizational experiences are more likely to be effective/healthy/successful when they emphasize human capacities.  Along this same line of thinking, I believe that my experience of Rent the Runway was a pleasant one precisely because I treated it as a design experiment.  The whole experience was a prototype, so whatever happened was going to be OK. And my parents played along – they became a part of the story, they became a part of the designed experience itself.
 
Undoubtedly, one could become completely obnoxious in bringing design into all aspects of family life, but my experience with Rent the Runway and my parents did make me wonder about how much angst could be spared if families brought a light-touch design sensibility to holiday dinners, weddings, vacations or even morning rituals around getting out of the house.   As much as anything, I came away from my Rent the Runway experience appreciative of the chance it gave me to play with my parents.  

I've been working on launching a new organization with Susie Wise called Workswell.  As a first step we've built a prototype for a mini fellowship concept that we're calling the microLAB.

The basic idea is that workplace culture matters, and no matter what your role - you are the person to take it on. You know when culture feels good and when it feels bad.  Building off Playworks 23 years of experience building culture in schools, lessons learned at the d.school about design thinking, and a career of storytelling for change, Workswell is an effort to support corporations in seeing these things as critical design levers in creating effective culture.

At the heart of the microLAB is Organizational Experience Design – OXdesign – looking at workplace experiences such as new employee engagement, meetings, space, feedback and performance reviews as critical design levers. OXdesign is an actionable approach to ensuring that people understand that culture matters and have clear opportunities to put it into practice daily.

HOW IT WORKS

The microLAB is a curated four-month experience designed to support you in developing the habits and mindsets to transform your work culture. Through easily accessible strategies employing play, design thinking and storytelling, the microLAB introduces proven practices that transform individual performance and culture to build the capacity of your team. Composed of four all-day sessions supported by workplace engagements “back at the ranch,” the microLAB offers a group of 8-14 individuals an opportunity to learn about culture from diverse participants and for workplaces to invest in change that is designed to be embedded in the day-to-day realities of work.

Hosted at Playworks’ national headquarters and training facility in downtown Oakland, the microLAB is an experiential learning opportunity.  Over the course of four months, you explore – and, most importantly, test – new ideas, tools and approaches, based on your workplace’s specific needs and opportunities.  Key to the microLAB experience is the overarching theme of finding and telling your own story, and each microLAB culminates in a community-wide celebration where participants tell their story at a gathering they design.

​Session 1: EMPATHY
An intro to your cohort and the best practices of play, design thinking and storytelling
+ QUICK WINS (back at your office)
Empathy interviews with co-workers and leading a new game with a team

Session 2: SYNTHESIS
Experiment with new tools, rituals and games to support sense-making
+ DIG IN
Leading staff in a brainstorm session around meeting design

Session 3: PROTOTYPE + TEST
Deep dive into giving and receiving feedback and an intro to the use of artifacts
+ LEAD A SPRINT
Take your team at work through a rapid design cycle

Session 4: TELL YOUR STORY
Your chance to take the reigns from games and design thinking activities to the final celebration and talks!
+ BUILD ON!

Interested? More information can be found here

This piece was originally published on LinkedIn on September 12, 2018

I was thrilled to see Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff’s New York Times Opinion piece, How to Play Our Way to a Better Democracy, which made the case that kids’ access to play is foundational for a functioning democracy. The authors hinted at this, but I think it is worth repeating Stuart Brown’s insight that it seems likely that play has survived evolution, despite being a risky activity, precisely because of its importance in the development of healthy communities.
Reading the piece, however, I was struck by the challenge of making this insight a reality in the daily lives of children. The limitations on access to play go beyond hyper-concerned helicopter parents and testing at schools, to include real concerns around neighborhood safety faced by more low income parents and the realities of living in a litigious society if you are a school administrator. 
How, then, do we create an environment that still enables children to learn from the risks of play so that they can handle challenges and failures, and develop the skills of self-regulation, conflict resolution and collaboration?
As the founder of Playworks, I’ve long known and admired Professor Gray’s work and the importance of free play. Playworks, a national nonprofit which this year will support safe and healthy play for 1.25 million kids in 2,500 schools across the country, has been criticized for grown-up intervention at recess, and Peter expressed skepticism when he initially heard about our program. But when we had Peter out to see the program in action, he told me that he was impressed by what he saw. Adults were playing alongside students at recess in a way that did not minimize student leadership and ownership of the activities at recess. Peter is still a bigger fan of unsupervised play, but he saw in our efforts an opportunity for kids to learn the strategies that enable free play to thrive in a school setting. 
Much as the older kids in the neighborhood normed the use of rock-paper-scissors and trading players to even out teams when I was a child, Playworks coaches give the students a baseline level of safety in which they can own their playtime, increasing the likelihood that they will get to experience teamwork, compromise and a respect for the rules – ideal lessons for them as they grow up.

About a year ago, I spent a week with a group of other nonprofit leaders at the MIT Media Lab Open Leadership Camp. We explored the idea that open technology is a framework with relevance and importance for the social sector.

I’m not a big technologist, but a very simple definition of open technology is technology that is developed in the open with full transparency and a process that allows anyone to participate freely. Playworks has had this orientation since our founding, which makes sense since play is, in many ways, the original open technology.  
By their very nature, games are intended to be tweaked and adapted, improved by new users with the modifications shared, debated, and then further modified. At Playworks you can see this approach in the Game Library that we make available online, our trainings, and more recently, our work with districts to build capacity to maintain the Playworks approach long after we leave.  

The qualities of Open that really appeal to me are that open technologies are intended to be understood, designed to be extended, and organized around participation. Whenever we’d talk about deciding whether or not to make something more broadly available—or open—it felt almost as though it were one of our core principles.
Most recently, Playworks launched RecessLab, a site designed to help principals and teachers re-discover the power of play. Recess Lab has tools and games that develop kids’ social skills on and off the playground. It also includes a Recess Checkup, a brief online quiz, so schools know how they’re doing.

RecessLab has been taking off, and as a result, we’ve been having some conversations about what it means to be a Playworks program. Which brings me back to the idea of Open.
At the MIT Media Lab, I had the chance to talk with folks from Mozilla about lessons they’ve learned in applying Open, especially in the development of Firefox, a popular web browser. It doesn’t seem like software development and recess games have that much in common, but Mozilla’s experiences felt familiar. Mozilla exists because of it’s passionate users. But as Mozilla grew, those users did not always have clear information about the organization’s vision and motivations.

Similarly, Playworks exists because so many people share our belief that play brings out the best in every kid. But because experiences with play are so personal, in the absence of concrete information people don’t always know who we are and what we stand for. 
Mozilla’s experiences led them to create the Mozilla Manifesto, a set of principles that helps define the organization for others and serves as a north star. This winter, Playworks has been crafting something similar. I am pleased to present Playworks’ Six Simple Principles of Play!
​
We hope these principles will be a helpful tool in creating space for even more play, by creating even more openness. Please let us know what you think—they are intended to spark conversation, thought, and most importantly, to encourage more play.

This blog appeared on March 26, 2018 in Youth Today

​Google recently did a deep dive into its practices to identify key indicators for employee engagement and effectiveness. Google’s Project Aristotle found that successful teams shared two key characteristics. First, they found an equality in dialogue, meaning the distribution of ‘talk time’ happened naturally instead of hierarchically. Second, team members had a higher-than-average ability to read one another’s emotions based on facial expressions.
 
In my experience, the best way to create an organizational culture that supports both of these indicators is to bring play into the workplace. In fact, I believe that Playworks has survived and even thrived through 21 years of challenges and opportunities because play permeates our organizational culture.
 
Why Play at Work
 
Playworks works with schools to build healthy school cultures through play. We do this through both direct services and training, and this year we will reach 1,800 schools and almost one million students through our efforts. Researchers have closely evaluated our impact and play’s extraordinary ability to bring out the best in kids. Less visible is how play brings out the best in our staff.
 
The same programming that we bring to kids—the same emphasis on play as a tool for promoting trust and rapport—is also an important part of how we operate. For example, we have a foursquare court in our office where staff can play when they need a brain break. Getting out from behind our screens to play together helps us practice greater empathy, better understand our peers, and sharpen our social and emotional skills; exactly what play does for children, too.
 
The research on play is clear: play is singularly effective in contributing to our abilities to make decisions, work collaboratively, self-regulate, and practice self-awareness. This is not to say that all play is inherently constructive, or that empathy naturally springs forth when people are playing. Intention and norming by leadership are essential.
 
Leading Through Play
 
There are few safer ways to look at a power structure than through play, and few easier ways to dig into a person’s character than through playing. As the founder and CEO at Playworks, I am aware that how I show up to play has an enormous impact beyond the more obvious minutes spent. People are watching to see how competitive I am and if I am a good sport when I lose. They are watching to see how I respond to other people leading, doing things differently than I might, and making mistakes. Am I playing safely? Am I paying attention? Am I showing up on time and staying present? 
 
Organizational culture is the sum of the values and behaviors that contribute to the unique psychological and social environment of an organization. Play is an often overlooked opportunity to cultivate organizational values in a low-stakes, non-verbal, easy-access way. Through play, we articulate expectations, experiences, philosophies, and values.  The way I, and the rest of our leaders, show up during play has an important norming effect on our culture. By extension, play affects our productivity and performance as an organization.
 
Here are three strategies you can use this year to infuse a little play into your own organization:
 
First, start every meeting with a check-in question. 
 
At Playworks we start every meeting with a random question. Check-in questions remind us of our shared humanity and the three dimensional nature of all our lives. They also invoke play’s ability to help signal a transition and compel us each individually to be present in the meetings. 
 
Once, I was presenting at a school district meeting and there were two board members who were known to really dislike one another. Before I started talking, I asked people to go around and say their name and first concert, and it turned out that both of these gentleman shared Earth, Wind and Fire as their first concert. You could see the look of complete shock on both of their faces that they had this in common. It didn't change everything, but I heard from another board member later that they treated each other with slightly more respect and kindness thereafter.
 
Questions can be personal but are rarely particularly intense. Favorites include, “What was your first concert?” “What’s your favorite holiday food?” “What was your best Halloween costume ever?” “Favorite movie of the year?” Answers are quick, and you always have the right to pass.
 
Second, try silly brainstorming. 
 
The idea that play contributes to creativity has been popular in Silicon Valley for a while. I spent a year as a fellow at Stanford’s d.school learning about and experimenting with design thinking, and I was constantly struck by how many parallels there were with Playworks approach. The use of games—often borrowed from improv activities—is integral to the design thinking process.
 
One of the things that I learned at the d.school was that when it comes to brainstorming, it really is about quantity and not quality. A playful way to encourage creative thinking is to start brainstorming with absurd parameters, like ideas for solving a problem that invoke the worst ideas for solving a problem, or solutions that would cost over $1 million, or solutions that are illegal. It is easy to say that there are no bad ideas, but actively pursuing them in a playful way can lead to some surprising collaboration and creativity.
 
We used those brainstorm questions when designing services for districts. Inviting principals into our process—and making it fun—helped us test our wildest and most conservative ideas on the fly. We came away from the exercise with new ideas for what districts really needed that we never would have thought of on our own.
 
Third, indulge in recess at work. 
 
In addition to the foursquare court, we have a group recess at Playworks  a couple of times a month. For organizations that work with kids, this is a great time to encourage program staff to test new games and activities with the administrative staff.
 
We also try to have a recess when someone new starts to introduce them to our culture. More recently, we also have recess whenever the auditors are here for their annual visit. Having the auditors is naturally a little stressful for the finance team, but including the auditors in foursquare, and watching one's auditor play four square with intensity, somehow really changes the whole audit experience.
 
The important thing to remember is that, just like with kids, the goal is inclusion. It is important to modify games so that everyone can participate, and feels safe and like they have choice and voice in the process. Done right, these experiences can lead to a greater sense of commitment to shared goals, which will ultimately make your organization successful.
 

For the past six years I’ve made a practice of taking some time at the end of the year to look back at my accomplishments and challenges, and to make plans and set goals for the coming year.  It isn’t really about New Year’s Resolutions, so much as prioritizing on steroids.  My friend R. Paul Herman (founder at HIP Investor) shared a framework I liked  - looking at your life in 6 dimensions: health, family and friends, purpose (career essentially), balance of life, love and financial stability. He also suggests setting an overarching theme for the year.
 
Over the years I’ve also found some other great resources – Alex Vermeer’s  8760 (the number of hours there are in a year), which is a lot like Paul’s process, but with more mind-mapping.  There’s also Chris Guillebeau’s How to Conduct Your Own Annual Review, and Cal Newport and his writing on Deep Work.
 
The whole process can be really engaging if you’re into this sort of thing, and have the time an inclination to think this way.  My general observation is that people like thinking bout themselves, and I’ve often wondered how, given this, we’ve managed to take the annual review process at work – generally a whole work-based system for thinking about yourself and what you’re doing – and turn it into something almost universally despised.
 
Along these same lines, I was recently asked to lead a World Café table on personal brand, and it was a good exercise in thinking through what I actually believe personal branding to be.  Far from self-promotion, my experience of personal branding is about self-discovery, with a goal of personal and professional growth – basically announcing your goals and what you see as the best aspects of yourself with an eye towards getting better.
 
And if you are reading this, you are probably aware that I have now launched my personal website.  I had played with the idea of doing so during a few past annual planning sessions, but was motivated to do so this year with the specific goal of generating more public speaking opportunities. I have been broadening my work beyond Playworks with Substantial , and I’m exploring a new for-profit effort that will be focused on organizational design and development for corporations and looking for a chance to join a for-profit board of directors – all if which seemed to add up to a good reason to launch.
 
My annual plan also calls for a monthly blog, so you can track my progress against these other goals here. Thanks for visiting and helping to hold me accountable – I hope you’ll check back in.  And if you end up creating a plan for yourself along these lines – or if you figure out how to make annual planning at work more enjoyable – please let me know!

Dear Kids of the United States,

It’s been quite a year for us grown-ups in the United States, and it occurs to me that you may be wondering what’s going on. Maybe you’ve noticed many adults in your life having a lot of serious conversations. 

The basic story is we haven’t been doing a great job of communicating well with one another. And we grown-ups have to figure out how to do that better.

As I’ve been thinking about how to do that, I realized there is something really important to share with you.

You, America’s children, are far more powerful and influential than you know.  There are many historical examples of exemplary kids—like Ruby Bridges and Malala—who helped to change the world for the better. And there are also lots of examples of everyday heroics—like when I got my parents to stop smoking when I was 8.  Kids all across our country championed recycling and seat belts before they were popular, defended schoolmates who were being picked on, marched for justice, registered voters and raised huge sums of money for causes they believed in.

In this spirit, I offer three concrete suggestions of things you can do to use your power and influence to help people get along.

#1 Ask Questions. 
I know some teachers want you to give them the right answers to everything.  In life, though, asking the right questions is way more important. If you are wondering about something you’ve heard—on the news, in class, on the playground—ask a grown-up, like a parent, a teacher, a coach, or a librarian—librarians are the superheroes of question-answering. Just by asking questions, you’re making a difference. Questions make people think, and that’s always a good thing.

#2 Play More. 
Sounds crazy, but you playing well with other kids actually makes the world a better place. The more you play, the more joy is released into the atmosphere, and the more you and your friends learn to solve problems and work together.

#3 Be Kind. 
This may seem like it couldn’t possibly be that important, but being kind is the single most important thing you can do to make a difference. This small action has an impact way beyond what you imagine because your kindness not only influences the people you’re being kind to, it also affects people who see you being kind and . . . BONUS, the person who benefits most of all from your kindness is you.

All of the grown-ups at Playworks are 100% committed to ensuring that you and kids everywhere have access to daily, safe, and healthy play.  Beyond that, we want to make sure that schools are kind and respectful places, where learning and joy happen and where you are able to discover your best selves.  

We know you are capable of far more than what grown-ups sometimes believe about you, and that this includes extraordinary leadership. We grown-ups have a lot of work to do to make life in the United States better for everyone, and I, for one, believe we will do a better job if we have your leadership to guide us.

Many thanks for all your help with this. On behalf of the grown-ups, I am so glad you’re here. 

Play on,
Jill Vialet