Forced fun fails. Cas Holman and IDEO's Michelle Lee map eight play types on the Creative Confidence Podcast; Holman's book 'Playful' arrives in October.
Adults are taught early to treat play as the opposite of work. Cas Holman, the play designer behind the Rigamajig building system, argues that split is the problem. On the Creative Confidence Podcast, she and IDEO partner and executive co-managing director Michelle Lee made the case that a playful mindset works as a leadership skill, not a warm-up exercise.
Holman has spent decades designing open-ended play systems. Rigamajig is used in hundreds of schools and museums. Her work appeared on Netflix's "Abstract." Workshop clients include Google, Nike, the LEGO Foundation and Disney Imagineering.
The definition is plain. "Being playful in your thinking could mean having an open mind," Holman said. "Being flexible in how you approach problems."
Leaders who hear that tend to ask for a formula. Holman recalled a CEO at one of her workshops who wanted clear directions to pass down to his team. The moment play is treated as a means to an end, she said, it stops being play.
"Forced fun doesn't work," Lee said. "No one likes forced fun. We can't make someone play. We can set the conditions to invite someone to play."
Part of the problem is vocabulary. Adults reduce play to games and silliness, which is why it feels out of place under deadline pressure. Holman's book "Playful," written with science writer Lydia Denworth, lays out eight play types that cover what this behavior looks like in adults:
Holman stressed these are not rigid categories or steps to follow. Each can show up as free play, open-ended exploration without a predetermined outcome, or as social play done alongside others. When play is defined narrowly as performative or extroverted, she argued, it alienates people who think and learn differently.
Naming the type changes what a leader can ask for. Instead of a generic invitation to be playful, leaders can design work around a specific form of engagement, whether slow reflection in a planning session or exploratory play in a brainstorm. Play does not have to live in warm-ups or off-site breaks.
The clearest place the mindset shows up is in questions. "The question can either open up curiosity, or it can limit it," Holman said. She cites a standard exercise. Asked to design a shoe, students replicate familiar forms. Reframe the brief to "How might we protect feet?" and the ideas multiply. "Shifting the question can lead to completely different outcomes," she said.
Lee tied the same logic to team process. "Diverging is what gives us more possibilities to choose from," she said. A brief that hands teams a solution speeds things up and narrows focus. A brief built around an underlying need keeps the team in a divergent mindset longer, which can cut rework later.
Holman's second argument starts with a design observation. Adults design work to remove friction, favoring speed and ease in ways that strip away learning and creativity. Children's play builds friction in on purpose; a game that is too simple stops engaging. Holman sees that resistance as the fuel of good work. "Easy is boring," she said. "Friction is where the good stuff is."
Lee put the same point more plainly. "If the goal of golf were ease, you'd just put the ball in the hole."
The most common question leaders ask, and the hardest to answer directly, is the return on investment. Mina Seetharaman, the podcast host, noted the tension lands hardest in corporate settings obsessed with ROI, where the slower route can feel like a cost. Holman accepted the trade-off and reframed it. The playful route often extends the ideation phase and shortens what comes after, she said. The process takes longer, and the team ends up with an outcome it would not have reached otherwise.
Lee pointed to a metric companies already track. "If you introduce play into your workplace, it changes the mindset," she said. "It makes people excited to come to work, and that ultimately helps your bottom line."
Holman warned that a playful process inside a rigid system produces the wrong kind of friction. "Trying to force an innovative process into a system that's not innovative means you're always going to run up against things that don't fit," she said. Holman and Lee drew the same conclusion. Processes and reward systems have to shift to support the behaviors leaders say they value.
Holman's argument arrives in book form this fall. "Playful: How Play Shifts Our Thinking, Inspires Connection, and Sparks Creativity," written with science writer Lydia Denworth, is due in October from Avery, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
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