Work Is Broken. Play Can Fix It. 

Work is broken. You can feel it. Staff are laid off even when quarterly results are achieved. Doing quality work leads to more work with no additional compensation. Leaders are rewarded for short-term profits at the expense of employees. The numbers tell the tale: 69% of workers aren’t engaged, half are job-hunting, and 30% feel underpaid.

Let’s discuss how we got here and explore what we, as leaders, can do through play to help get us out of this mess.  

But before we do, I have a request. If you choose to continue reading, you commit to taking some action. We’ve done enough complaining within our silos. It’s time to act. Are you ready? 

How did we get here?

In the 1970s, mass layoffs were unheard of, and shareholder value wasn’t a primary measure of a company’s success. Economist Milton Friedman introduced a new economic perspective on business management: The Friedman Doctrine, which argued that “a business’s primary responsibility is to increase profits for its shareholders.” As a result, the desires of employees and customers were deprioritized to achieve one myopic goal: profit at all costs. This mindset was supercharged when CEO and C-suite compensation became linked to shareholder value.

Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, became the poster child of this new form of capitalism, using fear and mass layoffs to drive revenue. He became known as Neutron Jack because wherever he appeared, employees disappeared while leaving the company’s buildings and infrastructure intact, similar to the effects of a neutron bomb. At the end of his tenure, Jack Welch received $417 million in severance.

In the 1990s, McKinsey made the case that increasing executive compensation leads to higher shareholder profits. The phrase “It’s just business” entered the corporate vocabulary, and we began to separate work from being human. 

Simon Sinek has spoken directly to where that has led us: “Capitalism, when it works, is good for the customer and the employee. The capitalism we have now is good for the leaders, and it comes at the expense of the employees and sometimes even the customers.”

Prioritizing profits at the expense of employees and customers became the new way of running businesses, which inevitably broke work. A testament to how broken work is: Boeing’s outgoing CEO, Dave Calhoun, oversaw deadly safety failures. Shareholders responded by rewarding him with a $33M pay package. In the world of work, profits trump lives. 

The pandemic lifted the veil on how disposable leaders saw staff to be, even asking them to risk their lives for profit. It also revealed how tired the workforce was of being treated this way. The canary in the coal mine moment was the Great Resignation (4.5 million people quitting each month), and it can be argued we have not bounced back from that.

It’s hard to know what we have learned from. Harvard Business Review published The Messy Link Between Slave Owners and Modern Management. They found that “several of the slave owners’ practices, such as incentivizing workers (in this case, to get them to pick more cotton), are widely used in business management today.” These management tools have separated us from our humanity, all in the name of increasing the bottom line.

This is terrible. So, what do we do about it?

We need to acknowledge and learn from missteps. As I mentioned at the outset, we need to take action. We can start by asking ourselves some tough questions:

• Who truly benefits from the way we currently run our business?
• Are employees, customers, and communities thriving, or is success concentrated among executives and shareholders?
• Are we rewarding the wrong behaviors?
• Based on Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy, people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always gain control, while those dedicated to goals and wanting to implement change are ostracized or eliminated. Are the bureaucrats or changemakers in charge?
• Have we dehumanized work? 
• Do our policies and practices treat employees as disposable assets rather than people with lives, families, and aspirations?
• Are we ready to shift from extractive capitalism to a more sustainable and humane system, even if it requires difficult conversations and new leadership approaches?
• What would a workplace look like if we built it around human thriving instead of just profit?
• What values and structures would we implement if we were to design work from scratch today?

Where does play come in?

I define play as work where you are so immersed in the task that you forget about the time.

Your superpower/play is what makes you come alive at work. Play has incredible power, not only to make our lives more fun and interesting, but to create real, meaningful change. 

When we examine the questions and answers above, we can also determine how to utilize your play to address these issues directly. How can we think about play in a more radical way that takes all stakeholders into account – not just shareholders, and returns the system to a more just, worker-focused one?

Play can be used to create incredible change, when used in a few different ways.

I have identified three ways play can help mend a broken workplace. Each is described by the power and privilege an individual has to make a difference. It’s easy for me to write an article encouraging you to cause mischief in your workplace for the sake of good when I don’t have to deal with the repercussions of the actions taken.  So, as the phrase goes, “you get in where you fit in.”

Play as Recovery: Rest Is a Radical Act

This is for the staff member that doesn’t have the privilege to rock the boat or risk losing their job for the sake of the greater good. With this approach, find the play that grounds you, reminds you of who you are, and use this as your respite from the chaotic, toxic world of work. Rest as resistance is a crucial part of the work ahead. A potential role in this type of play is being the fun person at work who can help other staff members tolerate being there. It’s a crucial role that you will never receive additional compensation for, but your joyful and healing demeanor might be the reason some staff stay.

Play as Resistance: Remaking the System From Within

This is for the staffers that have enough power and privilege to challenge the powers that be, while looking out for people. Similar to Harry Potter and friends, the mischief they cause is to look out for community. 

An example of play as resistance in Harry Potter is seen when Professor Umbridge issues decrees that threaten Hogwarts’s culture. The Weasley’s brothers used their playful mischief to challenge the toxic system that was sucking the joy out of everything, all for the sake of the common good.

Subversion through joy. Play confuses oppressive systems because these toxic work environments rely on exhaustion, fear, and compliance. You disrupt the narrative by playing, laughing, dancing, and creating. You remind people that there’s another way. So, change those boring, soul-sucking meetings to something worthwhile by taking up the space held by the narcissists. Find allies and dismantle unnecessary hierarchies to create an oasis where others can rest and bond through play. 

Then, utilize play as a way to build collective power. Toxic workplaces thrive on isolation. When teams bond through play, they develop a sense of solidarity. Solidarity leads to rebellion. Rebellion leads to change.

Play to Create an Alternative Utopian Workplace

This is for the staffer who has the power and leverage to change the system. They have the decision-making power to create a new way of working.

Play isn’t just escapism; it’s how we prototype better worlds. Give yourself and the teams you are part of the freedom to imagine how things could be different. Embrace an experimental kaizen process to build a compassionate work culture that allows for both profit and purpose, which can be achieved through play.

Explore new systems of work, such as 4-Day Work Week, Employee-Owned, Job Crafting, and even instituting play as policy.

Challenge the way we measure success. Instead of ROI, identify ROP (Return On Play) built on humanity and compassion.

We must remember that all our current systems are just ideas people created. This means these systems can evolve, and new ideas can replace the outdated ones of the past if we are willing to navigate our way through the chaos. The community and compassion we can build through play will be what heals our broken workplaces. We just need the will to do it.

About Jeff Harry

Jeff Harry combines positive psychology and play to heal workplaces, help teams build psychological safety and assist individuals in addressing their biggest challenges by embracing a play-oriented approach to work.  Jeff was selected by BambooHR & Engagedly as one of the Top 100 HR Influencers and has been featured in the NY Times, Mashable, Upworthy, Huffpost, Shondaland, Wired, NPR, NatGeo, & Forbes.

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