Why you should be game for serious fun

Of all the annual talent cycles, one of the opportunities I enjoy the most is getting to know 联合国儿童基金会 's incoming Junior Professional Officers or JPOs. (Our job titles and business unit nomenclature of specialists, chiefs, units, sections and divisions are a daily reminder of our origin story of the mid-1940s!)?

That JPO title somewhat obscures who these incoming colleagues really are — among the youngest, freshest #talent in the organization and hopefully future leaders in the development and humanitarian space. Unburdened by the concept of ‘business as usual’, they are innovation assets.

Each year I get to spend time with the incoming JPO class and you can bet I’ve rejected death by presentation in favour of human-centred interactivity. So what might that look like??

Competitive snakes and ladders on an adult-sized board. (Let me know in the comments if this is something you’d like me to share a “How to” on as it is easily adaptable.)

And playing “What’s Your Innovation Super Skill?” a culture card game designed around appreciative reflection of the array of skills that individuals and teams bring to innovating everywhere and that previous cohorts of both senior leaders and JPOs (here’s looking at you cohort of 2023!) helped to test and iterate. (More about that in a future post.)

Here’s what I’ve learned over the past years of running these serious fun sessions with talent at all levels:?

1. A good mix of action and fun makes content accessible and more memorable than classroom-styled delivery and slide decks. Or if you prefer, research and practice indicate a positive relationship between kinesthetic intelligence-based learning and on-task behaviour and performance.?
2. It is as logically faulty to suggest that less experienced or younger talent are less able to make strategic decisions, as it is to suggest that more experienced or older talent are less able to be innovative or forward-thinking.
3. Especially rich questions and discussions arise when the room is filled with an array of expertise ?? #transdisciplinary Last week this ranged from expertise in auditing to adolescents, technology to logistics, employability and emergencies to education.

Thanks for rolling the dice together with us UNICEF Innovation --? Samanjar Chowdhury , Nooramaria Parikka , Shannon Lindsey , Taichiro Fujino , Clara Bütow , Katherine (Katie) Wellington , Sofia Curradi , Sonja Novikov - Bruderhofer , Marine Terrettaz , Aya Takase , 罗道勋 , Sayo Hattori , Fabrizio Giovanni Vaccaro , Alice Bertella , Chisato Yanagisawa , Therese Marie Bostrup , Luca Bretton , Renee Ormond , Takumi Mito , Lisa Tanaka, Ayumi Yasuda and Yoshie Osawa, as well as Douglas Miller and Lubna Saikaly , Nazira Anher , Eden Fekade and Beilei Jiang.

And shout out to the JPO class of 2023 whose iteration and feedback helped refine methods, Andreas Yngve Rugova , Maija Lyytinen , Sonia Preite , Yoko Inagaki-Harris , Natsumi Yamada , Erika Tsuruyama , Rié L. , Haruki Kurihara , Satoshi Watarai , Jan Geleijnse , Nicholas Hauger , Pragna Jui Chakma , Nicoline Lavanchy , Semhal T. , Natsuki Kawai, ANutr , Mami Kyo , Momoka Ishida , DaEun Han , Oumou van Rijen , Eng Gwaliwa Peter M. , Marcus Olsson , Samuel K. , Jenny Yi-Chen Han , Carolin Frankenhauser , Yang Luo, Paula Flor Crespo Penaloza, Diana Rujema Mbabazi, Petur Thorkelsson, Liya Abraham and Larissa Demel.