Play With All The Toys

When you were a kid you would play with all the toys. You’d get every single item out of the toybox and spread them across the living room or yard and mix ’em all together to create one giant game set.

G.I. Joe’s rode on the back of Hot Wheels cars like they were rocket-powered skateboards while using swords made from Erector Sets and flinging Lite-Brite pegs as missiles to hunt down ferocious giant pink teddy bears and prevent them from destroying a city of skyscrapers constructed of Easy Bake Ovens, Electric Race Car Tracks, and a Toss-Across board.

And the adventure didn’t stop when you inevitably broke one (or more) of your toys — you simply picked up the pieces and made them part of the game as well.

Every day you’re at work is the opportunity to play with all the toys as well.

They’re different kinds of toys, but you have the Microsoft Office Suite of games to play with. There are websites and blogs and podcasts and video tools to play with. And there are different departments with all sorts of fun toys to combine with your own to make the game bigger and better while you play together.

You might be thinking that playing with the kids who work on those other floors in your office might be against the rules, or that you don’t have permission to play with those audio tools to record podcast interviews with your clients or your co-workers.

But what if those perceived roadblocks and boundaries are things you can play with as well?

I say rules were made to be broken — and then you pick up those pieces of broken rules and you play with those as well.

Here’s a great video from a television show called Taskmaster to help illustrate my point.
Contestants were given a set of rules to follow in completing a challenge — to build the highest bridge possible on a tabletop using a limit set of tools (most of which were actually toys!). Watch the video and see if you can identify the lesson I’m trying to share.

Sometimes the “rules” are simply a place to begin.