In case you missed us at TEDx San Diego, here is a quick recap.
Five members of the Ziksana Consulting Team– our fearless thought leader and visionary genius Akshay Sateesh, our Research and Development guru Hayden, our savvy and stupendous strategy boss Annie, our epicly awesome designer and get ‘er done champion Courtney, and our captain of content Abbey– hit the streets of San Diego to enliven the time between Ted presenters with playful challenges that identify how people prefer to play.
We set out to spread the message of Ziksana: who we are, what we do and why we do it. To catch you up to speed, Ziksana Consulting is a creative consulting firm that makes work productive through the science of play. We as a team are incredibly proud to be a part of this movement.
So you know who we are, but what does that word “Ziksana” actually mean? In Sanskrit, it means “the art of learning”. We’ve got a knack for developing leaders and teams to work better together using what we know about the neuro and social science of play to develop people towards performing at full potential.
We at Ziksana Consulting came prepared to expand on the Age of Magic theme by emphasizing the intuitive notion that when we play games together, magic happens.
Like a choose your own adventure game, we invited TEDx participants who stopped at our booth to first choose how they wanted to play the giant version of Jenga. We asked, “Do you want to play for ‘The Journey’ or ‘The Destination’? In other words, we asked players to identify their play preference to recognize if they tend to play to get creative, to indulge in the process of play, OR if they tend to play to achieve the end goal. Different contexts promote different play preferences, and so we encouraged players to pick a way that suited them at that time.
The results were astonishing. For both ways of play, we saw some incredibly innovative towers that were built in ways we were not expecting. It’s incredible what somebody can create and manifest in just 60 seconds!
Check out some of the magic we captured:
These mini play experiences were potent examples of practices Ziksana wishes to share professionals of San Diego and beyond.
We believe it is crucial, maybe more now more than ever, to roll up our sleeves to work harder towards our greater initiatives to develop leaders with outcomes of play: the capability to think creatively, practice new skills without judgment, connect and see new opportunities, and the ability to understand people’s motivation.
Participants who played with us at TEDx San Diego received 2 free tickets to PlayTank(™), our 90 minute creative workshop where professionals to practice leadership skills.
If you’re interested in our PlayTank series, email Courtney Hale at courtney@ziksanaconsulting.com
