Play is Serious Business Terry Pearce

Untold Play, Terry Pearce’s company, is his vehicle for teaching that games can help people learn. Now, from my perspective, anyone who’s had her 10-year-old genuinely beat her at ANYTHING from Monopoly to Go Fish knows that games can help people encounter and practice and master all sorts of skills. BUT, in his Playful Creative Summit conversation with Alyea Sandovar, Pearce particularly stresses that if we set aside play as we grow older, or if we confine it to non-business settings, we are losing its potential to improve individual and team performance, even in corporate settings. He mentioned Evivve, which he facilitates as a licensed trainer, as a (quoted from the Evivve website) “multiplayer game built on the Immersive Learning Methodology. The game is designed to enhance players’ ability to work with one another through formation and execution of collaborative management strategies” as an example of a dedicated tool for companies to explore the concept of using games in their work environments.

I’m broadly paraphrasing him as I continue this conversation. He spoke of play as redefining the elements of your experience: setting aside deadlines to look more closely, and from as many different perspectives as you can discover, at your tools, your supplies, your teammates, your clients… His example was Martin Luther King, who is said to have realigned and reordered “I Have a Dream” until only minutes before he delivered his sermon.

And play requires persistence. Play involves mistakes, and rather than avoiding mistakes, adopting lessons from those mistakes. Set yourself a challenge. You might even lose Boardwalk.