Firefly News Flash, May 2018, The Firefly Group

Your ETR (Estimated Time to Read): 10 minutes
Your ETII (Estimated Time to Implement Ideas): 5 weeks

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May 2018
A Tribute to Bernie DeKoven

Say It Quick a thoughtful message in exactly 99 words	Discoveries bits of serendipity to inspire and motivate	Ideas fuel for your own continuous learning	Activities tips and tricks you can try today
Competition's Curse - Establish Your Own Standards	The Bookends of a Life - The New Games Book and Junkyard Sports	Playing with Bernie DeKoven - Fun-filled Learning	Rules of Play - Play hard, Play fair, Nobody hurt

Say It Quick

Through his life's work, Bernie DeKoven taught us about play and the value of fun. What's great is that fun and play have lessons for us at work. Learn more and inspire your team beginning with this 99-Word Story.

Competition's Curse
"You made me do that! I don't usually swim that fast," Gary said when we'd swum a few laps together. I hadn't known we were competing so I was surprised at his remark, even though it was in jest.

Competition can be an inspiration to challenge oneself. But I'm interested in why Gary didn't claim his new speed for himself. He did all the swimming yet wouldn't give himself any credit.

A focus on competition prevented him from establishing his own standards.Can Gary get his new time again, or will he need a competitor for inspiration?

Discoveries

The Bookends of a Life

Recently, the world lost a playful soul embodied in the life of Bernie DeKoven.

Bernie was all about play for the fun of it. He invented toys, was on the ground floor of computerized games, and created novel ways for people to relate to one another by moving and laughing together.

For me, the significance of his play-filled life can be described in two books Bernie wrote: The New Games Book and Junkyard Sports.

The first, published in 1976, was a reinvention of how we can play together. Instead of focusing on winners and competition, the activities in The New Games Book stressed inclusion and collective winning. No one was ever "out" and no one had to wait their turn. Everybody played all the time and everybody had fun.

When I first encountered the book, a friend asked, "But how can a game be fun if no one wins?" To my knowledge, that fellow never had a chance to play any New Games. If he had, he would have quickly learned the limits of a competitive approach. Indeed, in business, world affairs, education, community organizing, psychology, climate science, and other fields, we see the benefits of collaboration and the value of including diverse ideas.

Junkyard Sports, written by DeKoven in 2005, came to me nearly 40 years later. It's significance for me is its emphasis on creativity and invention. While The New Games Book focused on play for inclusive fun, Junkyard Sports offered a system for modifying and adapting team sports so that everyone could play with equal enjoyment no matter their skill level.

The book shows how you can make new challenges out of any sport by changing the rules and the play equipment. Make a ball out of newspaper and plastic bags. Use a golf club made out of a nylon stocking stuffed with a tennis ball in the toe. Have two players run around with laundry baskets for the goal in a game of basketball.

In Junkyard Sports, readers don't just find odd, silly games to play. They also gain insight into the process of being creative. They learn to question their normal thinking, see common objects in new ways, and design, test, and evaluate a new invention.

For anyone looking for ways to think anew, I recommend both these books by Bernie.

More Information:

The New Games Book by The Headlands Press, Inc., Dolphin Books/ Doubleday & Company, Inc./ Garden City, New York © 1976, ISBN 0-385-12516-X

Junkyard Sports by Bernie DeKoven, Human Kinetics, Windsor, ON, © 2005, ISBN 0-7360-5207-0

Ideas

Playing with Bernie DeKoven

I first met Bernie DeKoven in 1981 - but he didn't know that.

Just out of college, I was in my first job as the director of a small urban community center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Of the many programs there, I led youth educational and recreational activities five days every week. There was a particular evening for each age group but that didn't stop kids aged four to eighteen from showing up all at once on a Friday night. How to keep everyone happy and respectful of each other? Bernie DeKoven came to the rescue as a contributing editor of The New Games Book.

The games Bernie described in that book and his ideas about play provided hours of fun, built friendships, and created a safe place for kids from difficult circumstances. And those games taught me about the benefits of cooperative play as a counterpoint to the competitive, winner-take-all, ha-ha-you're-a-loser-because-I'm-the-winner mentality of many games. Bernie's games forced me to challenge my assumptions about our society: who it includes, who is successful, who makes the rules. I became hooked on collaboration.

Later, that questioning informed my time teaching English in Egypt. The practice with cooperation guided my graduate school choices. The importance of inclusion influenced my work with people with disabilities. And every training I have designed or delivered since has been infused with collaboration.

These elements of my personal and professional life eventually led me to NASAGA, the North American Simulation and Gaming Association. There I found people who knew the power of a well-played game; they knew that play could teach.

NASAGA is where I finally met Bernie in person. With a serious frown and an elf-like twinkle in his eye, Bernie would lead us in silly games that had no purpose other than fun. Imagine being at a conference, your expenses paid by your employer, and playing a game of three- or four-way patty cake. Totally useless! Except it wasn't. Bernie was interested in fun and what happens deep inside our bodies and brains and beings when we succumb to the joy of relating to another human.

At NASAGA, Bernie introduced us to old games played in new ways. The silly childish games that we played in the sand box were stretched and re-imagined. What if every time someone was caught in a game of tag, that person joined hands with the person who was It and formed a human Blob to catch more players? What if you used 12-foot-long tubes from rolls of carpeting to play pick up sticks? What if you played volleyball but served two or four balls at the same time?

What Bernie taught us was how much fun we'd been missing in our daily lives. We laughed when we played with Bernie and the laughter shook away the layers of pretense we were used to wearing as adults; as professionals. When we played his games, we put on a persona we'd rarely tried - one that was more like our genuine self. We played with being authentic to others and ourselves. So even though teaching was low on Bernie's list, the fun he created showed us that the action of play was a powerful agent for change.

It was in that respect that Bernie was essential to NASAGA. His focus on fun created the lesson that play can strip away the expected and reveal the elemental. And that's the purpose of learning: to clear away tired, dated thinking and expose a new way to act in the world.

Thank you, Bernie for challenging us to play for fun's sake because, in the process, we learned how to be our best selves.

Activities

Rules of Play

The 99-Word Story tells some of the benefits and drawbacks of competition. At the same time that competition might inspire someone to higher achievement; it can also distract that person from determining their own standards or goals. The problem is not with competition so much as our limited notion that, if you are competing, one person will win and everyone else will lose.

The beauty of New Games is that they challenge us to define our own standards of what winning means. Besides gaining the most points, winning could also mean gaining more points than you did the previous time. It could also mean earning points for the team instead of individually, or beating the clock, or playing with precision, sustained effort, grace, or laughter.

Winning could also mean playing in such a way that you can keep the game going.

The New Games book has a motto, "Play hard. Play fair. Nobody hurt." It suggests that that you should play with your best effort; that you can compete. And, as long as you abide by the rules and make sure no one is injured physically, mentally, or emotionally, everyone can enjoy the benefits of play: fun.

What if we applied this motto to something other than play?

Teams:

Play hard - Do your best work

Play fair - Stick to the agreed upon processes for making decisions

Nobody hurt - Make sure everyone can contribute

Business:

Play hard - Over deliver

Play fair - Be ethical

Nobody hurt - Guarantee unconditionally

Education:

Play hard - Set high learning standards

Play fair - Provide opportunities for all

Nobody hurt - Include students when planning learning

Parenting:

Play hard - Model positive behaviors

Play fair - Be consistent

Nobody hurt - Always love

Now it's your turn. Choose one of the following areas of life and what it would be like to play hard, play fair, and have nobody hurt.

Sales
Leadership
Communication
Training
Empowerment
Customer Service
(Your Choice)

Please give this activity a trial with your group then your experience.

If you like what you have read in this issue, I would like to bring the same innovation, creativity, and playfulness to your next meeting or learning event.

Whether you need a keynote speaker, or help with strategic planning, performance improvement, or training facilitators and trainers in your organization, I look forward to your call (802.380.4360) or .

-- Brian

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