Go play outside!
Koen Vriesacker
building and improving collaborative environments for impact | ecosystems, networks, alliances, clusters | sailor
Dirt on clothes, hands and knees stained from climbing in a tree. The warm sun on your skin and the itch of nettle stings. The senses are treated and stretched when playing outside. The brain gets a shot of fresh oxygen, thinking is sharpened and new ideas start to flow.
I'm from the time, a long time ago, that it was considered normal to spend all weekday evenings outside. Strolling around with friends, finding adventure and playing with whatever we could find.
fast forward some 30 years... And here we are. Sitting behind a desk with a laptop. Somehow along the educational and professional roads that are considered as 'the way to behave', most of us loose this outside playground time. We loose the disconnection of the professional and personal systems we operate in. And together with loosing that treasure, we loose the sense of fresh oxygen and sharpened thinking. We loose the new flow of ideas that comes from this detachment.
Is that a bad thing? Well, I do think so. We live in an age where brainpower, innovativeness and sharp thinking is crucial. As a society, we face some really wicked challenges that require all the ingenuity that mankind can produce. So, it's a really bad thing that we put a self-inflicted limitation to these powers.
The solution sounds easy: Go play outside! The question is: what is the corporate analogy for playing outside? Is it a refreshing walk in the woods, a relaxing moment in a park or a garden?
The solution sounds easy: Go play outside!
No, that's not where the outside playgrounds and fields are in the business world. An outside playground needs to live up to a couple of criteria: It needs detachment from the behavioural systems that coordinate our activities. It needs to broaden our senses by fresh stimuli (think of the way a new and unfamiliar scent easily jumps into awareness) and it needs a social network like a group of friends to hang out with.
think of the way a new and unfamiliar scent easily jumps into awareness
So, where do we find this type of environment that also lives up to the requirement of organisational value creation? The answer is the following: It's in the setting of interorganisational collaboration projects. Those projects offers a setting where the newness of rules, the unexpected input of new collaborators and the insights are treated on a healthy and refreshing shower. collaborative projects -while remaining result oriented and useful- act as a tool to pull your team into a new boost in brainpower and problem solving skills. It offers a break from the treadmill and a boost in wellbeing.
So, my advise remains the same: Go play outside! Or, as redefined in business terms: go play in inter-organisational collaborative projects. Send out your designers to collaborate with a startup 1 day a week. Allocate your governmental staff to operate in a private business as a deep dive. Stimulate your management team to take up a role as a guest teacher. Give teachers the opportunity to participate in the industry. The opportunities and possibilities are endless, it only takes a walk outside -along with the breath of simulating and fresh air- to make them pop up in your mind.
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One hour in a collaborative project is worth 10 hours of in house training!
Noventus is dedicated to design and develop collaboration between organisations and institutions, with the aim of delivering a positive impact on our socio-economic environment.
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