AI can process, predict and produce. But play develops the human qualities that make people brilliant together…
AI has arrived in the workplace with all the subtlety of a thrash metal band. It can summarise, analyse, generate, compare, code, plan, translate and produce copy before most of us have had a coffee.
For many organisations, this is incredibly useful. Used well, AI can speed up processes and free people from tedious tasks to focus on more interesting work.
However, there’s no doubt that AI is changing the kinds of questions we need to ask about work.
For a long time, many organisations prized the qualities machines are getting so good at, such as efficient information processing and pattern recognition. These things still matter, but if AI can help us do more of them, faster and cheaper, then the truly valuable human edge surely starts to lie somewhere else: that is, in being fully human.
There is a risk, in the age of AI, that organisations become even more obsessed with efficiency: more output, faster turnarounds and smoother systems.
Efficiency is a wonderful thing when it removes drudgery, but efficiency is not the same as ingenuity.
A team can produce more and more, while thinking less and less. It can automate the dull bits and still fail to ask brave questions. It can generate hundreds of ideas and still have no feel for which one will make people care.
So judgement and originality are still going to be more important than pure speed. And ‘inefficient’ working is known to produce great ideas. How many gloriously unproductive-looking conversations in the kitchen turn out, weeks later, to have been where the good idea began?
That is where the human edge becomes so important.
The World Economic Forum predicts rising demand for skills such as creative thinking, resilience, flexibility, agility, curiosity and lifelong learning.
These are the qualities people need when the landscape is changing: the ability to ask a better, more unexpected question; to read the room, sense unspoken feelings and take the right tone; to build trust with someone who sees the world differently; to change course when a plan starts to collapse; to distinguish what matters from what is merely measurable; and to make the imaginative leap towards something that hasn’t been done before.
AI can generate possibilities and options, but humans have to decide which possibilities are worth pursuing. AI can offer words, but humans still have to decide what needs saying – and what is better left unsaid. And qualities like humour, warmth and empathy are genuinely important in themselves, while a robot can only ever imitate them.
So human development is always going to be critical in any workplace. And that is where play comes in.
In play, people operate within rules, but the outcome is uncertain. They have to respond to other people in real time, try things, adapt and use trial and error. In play, they experience pressure without the full weight of ordinary consequence.
That makes play a kind of rehearsal space for uncertainty. Think of a game that asks people to solve something together under time pressure, such as a treasure hunt or an escape room.
Nobody knows exactly what will happen, so they have to become alert, flexible and inventive – and they have to communicate well with one another and bring the right kind of energy. In other words, they have to behave like human beings at their best.
Play gives people a low-stakes way to practise high-value behaviours: taking risks, adapting quickly, recovering from mistakes and trusting other people.
At Sharky + George, we talk about the Transformational Power of Play through three essential conditions: Space, Connection and Flow.
Space means creating a distinct arena where the ordinary rules can soften. In a workplace, people spend much of their time inside invisible structures of role and habit. Play creates a different kind of space, where everyone can become equal players in the same game. That gives them permission to experiment; people are unlikely to be imaginative if they feel judged before they have even begun.
Connection happens when people are not just present, but truly involved with one another. Real play builds real trust through shared action. This becomes even more important as work becomes more mediated by screens and systems. The more digital the workplace becomes, the more valuable genuinely human moments can be.
Flow is the state of total absorption that occurs when people are stretched in the right way – that is, when the challenge is clear enough to focus the mind, but open enough to allow initiative.
When these conditions are in place, play becomes a way of developing the qualities organisations increasingly need: the adaptability and creative problem-solving we call Ingenuity; the trust and social intelligence that build Belonging; and the energy, courage and resilience that create Vitality.
One of the strangest things about AI is how quickly it can produce something that looks finished, like copy, campaigns and strategies. AI is also good at flattering you, and appearing incredibly confident that it has the answers.
But the ease with which we can produce outputs also means we need to become better judges of what is actually good.
When options become cheap, discernment becomes more valuable… Will this idea really speak to people? Will it fit with the culture we actually have, rather than the one described in the values document?
Answering those questions requires judgement and empathy, as well as imagination and intuition. You need a grasp of context and personalities. And they require teams to feel safe enough to speak honestly, debate properly and try things that may not work.
Play helps create the conditions in an organisation to develop those skills of bold experimentation and real collaboration.
In other words, play is not a retreat from technology. It helps people become better users of it: more curious, more discerning, more collaborative and more willing to ask the question the machine has not been asked.
Who can say what the future holds? But one thing we’re pretty confident about at Sharky + George is that people will always need to play, and that play will always be beneficial.
The best future of work will surely not be humans versus machines, or humans pretending to be machines, but amazing technology combined with human qualities.
As machines become better at processing, predicting and producing, the human edge becomes more valuable. And play is how we keep that edge alive.
Read more about these ideas in our free white paper The Transformational Power of Play.
