Flourishing in the Magic Circle: Learning for Organisational Change Through Games and Play

Learning interventions frequently fail to achieve desired organisational objectives because the design of learning rests on faulty assumptions. Chief among these is that the successful achievement of individual learning outcomes necessarily aggregates into organisation-wide change. This assumption fails to recognise that change relies on complex systemic factors far beyond the learning of individuals, including other people who effect, affect or are affected by the change, the environment in which the change will occur and activities happening in the change domain. The Organisational Learning Change Model (OLCM) (Le-Fevre, 2020) both illuminates these assumptions and suggests a viable alternative for creating learning within organisations; learning which nudges systems towards greater flourishing. The model is agnostic as regards tools and techniques, but a playful approach is highly recommended, because play supports the principles of the model, including the primacy of autonomy and creativity. Games provide analogues for many of the preferred ways of being and doing in an organization which has adopted OLCM.