51. Serious Fun: Why Playing at Work is the Key to Better Culture with Jyoti Jani
Jyoti Jani.
In this episode of Hard at Work, host Ellen Whitlock Baker sits down with organizational design consultant, KEXP DJ, and former Boeing flight test manager Jyoti Jani. Jyoti, founder of SPILLE Play and Chief of Staff at Seattle Arts and Lectures, breaks down why modern corporate environments leave professionals feeling perpetually drained. Together, they explore how to challenge outdated workplace norms, deconstruct "capture culture," and introduce psychological safety into high-stakes leadership environments.
The conversation dives deep into the neuroscience of play—redefining it not as a post-work luxury or child's activity, but as a crucial biological hack for learning, team performance, and creative flow. Jyoti shares a high-stakes story from her corporate engineering career at Boeing that exposed the disconnects in workplace hierarchies. She explains how tools like LEGO Serious Play and improv exercises lower the risk of experimentation, flatten organizational power dynamics, and build genuine trust among teams.
Ellen and Jyoti also reframe organizational culture as a "shared nervous system" and examine how individual burnout directly impacts collective performance. They unpack the definition of power—moving energy per unit time—and offer actionable advice on how to build coalitions, set firm workplace boundaries, and retain human creativity in the age of AI. Tune in to discover practical tools for reshaping corporate systems from the inside out, complete with a live improv exercise mid-episode!
Show Notes
Connect with Jyoti Jani via her LinkTree
Episode Chapters
00:00 – The Risk of Experimentation
Keywords: lower the stakes, psychological safety, creativity, workplace play
00:45 – Intro & Redefining Play at Work
Keywords: Ellen Whitlock Baker, Jyoti Jani, Boeing, SPIL Play, workplace culture
04:08 – STEAM, Art, and Engineering Systems
Keywords: STEM vs. STEAM, human values, organizational design, creative expression
07:07 – High Stakes at Boeing & The 3 Levels of Disconnection
Keywords: corporate hierarchy, power dynamics, freeze response, capture culture
10:15 – LEGO Serious Play & Flattening Hierarchies
Keywords: LEGO Serious Play, democratized communication, trust building, team alignment
14:24 – Pitching Play to Executives via Outcomes
Keywords: executive alignment, KPIs, psychological safety, corporate performance
17:40 – Human Creativity in the Age of AI
Keywords: AI orchestration, decline in adult creativity, industrial productivity, future of work
23:29 – Culture as a Shared Nervous System
Keywords: nervous system regulation, burnout, capture culture, emotional intelligence
31:35 – Power Literacy, Coalitions, and Systemic Change
Keywords: power literacy, collective action, gender pay gap, corporate organizing
37:21 – Live Improv Exercise: Divergent Thinking
Keywords: improv games, alternate uses, lowering perfectionism, divergent thinking
45:36 – Connect with Jyoti Jani & Outro
Keywords: KEXP Wopop, Seattle Arts and Lectures, Creating Culture book, wrap-up
Transcript
Jyoti Jani (00:00)
So all we're doing when we play is we're lowering the stakes to experimentation. And that's why children play is because it lowers the risk that you need to take to try something new. And right now the risks of trying something new are too high and everybody's afraid of sounding stupid or looking silly. But if you just get people to play for a few minutes, it opens up our brains, it lowers the risk to trying new things. And now all of sudden we're primed for an actual brainstorming exercise or something truly creative because we're starting to open up our mind and become less afraid.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (00:45)
I'm Ellen Whitlock Baker, and I help leaders who want to bring humanity and integrity back to work and still have a life left over at the end of the day. After 20 years of navigating the ups and downs of the working world, I started hard at work to help us all build healthier workplaces. I'm here to help you challenge outdated corporate norms, protect your well-being, and give you practical tools to build better work cultures.
Welcome back to Hard at Work, everyone. I'm your host, Ellen Whitlock Baker. And if you've been listening to this show for a while, you know that we talk a lot about the heavy stuff, the grind culture, the burnout, and the systems in our workplaces that leave us feeling, frankly, pretty drained. But today, we're tackling those systemic issues from a completely different angle. One that might actually make you smile. Today, we're talking about play. Now, before you think, Ellen, I'm an adult with a mortgage and a calendar full of back-to-back Zoom calls, I don't have time to play. Hear me out. My guest today is going to completely redefine what play means in the modern workplace. I'm joined by the incredible Jyoti Jani. Jyoti is an organizational design consultant, the founder of Spille Play, a KEXP DJ, a mom,
And a former flight test engineer and manager at Boeing. Talk about a resume. She's also just recently joined the excellent organization, Seattle Arts and Lectures, as their chief of staff, which I know she will be incredible at. and this happened after I interviewed her, so she doesn't mention it in the episode itself, but is really exciting. So, in this episode, Jyoti shares a deeply personal, high-stakes story from her corporate engineering days that completely shifted her trajectory, and I think will sound familiar to many of you. And in the episode, we dive into the neuroscience behind play. Why play isn't just something we do to recover from work, but is a literal biological hack for learning, performance, and creative flow. We talk about systemic culture and the nervous system, how corporate environments create capture culture, which is what Jyoti talks about in her book.
And why culture is essentially our shared nervous system. And we talk about power dynamics and innovation, how simple tools like Lego bricks and improv can flatten hierarchies, build a sense of trust within a workplace, and help us navigate personally in the age of everything is AI. And she even leads me through a live improv exercise right in the middle of the recording.
So, whether you're a leader looking to build a more human-centered culture or someone feeling painfully under-resourced in your current role, this conversation is packed with deep wisdom and practical takeaways. So grab your coffee, lower your shoulders, take a deep breath, and let's dive into my conversation with Jyoti Jani.
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Hard at Work Podcast. I'm your host, Ellen Whitlock Baker, and I am joined today by the incredible Jyoti Jani. Jyoti, so nice to see you. Welcome.
Jyoti Jani (04:08)
Thank you so much for having me, Ellen. It's a pleasure to be here.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (04:12)
Just so happy to have you. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Jyoti Jani (04:17)
Yep, so my name is Jyoti Jani. I'm the founder and principal of an organizational design consultancy here in Seattle called SPIL Play, where I work with primarily leaders and organizations in the STEM and social impact space to develop more high performing, psychologically safe and creative cultures. And a lot of my work is rooted in the concept of play because I'm on a mission to help leaders and teams understand that play is not something we do to recover from work, do with our kids. It's actually a biological hack for learning and performance. And that is kind of the foundation and the founding principles of the work that I do. I'm also a DJ, a mom to two kids, and a former flight test engineer and manager at Boeing, where I spent a lot of years leading learning and development programming and testing airplanes. I call myself a multifaceted, multi-passionate creative who's also passionate about leadership and systems change.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (05:21)
I love to see STEAM happening, this like intersection of math, engineering, but also art and play. And I just am so happy to see that that's a big piece of what you bring to the table because I think we're so we're often taught to keep those things separate and or focus on like what the the practical of STEM. And I just love that you like you talk about in your book, which we'll get into. But the intersection between creativity and engineering.
Jyoti Jani (05:54)
Yeah, I mean, for me, art is the foundation upon which all STEM things are built, right? Like when you look at human civilizations and you study them from the earliest times, we see evidence of artfulness in the earliest civilizations. so it's how, again, it's how we connect, how we communicate, how we create. And if you think of science and technology as all the things that we build that we humans build out in the world, then they really are a reflection of our values, of which art is like the most raw form. Being an artist definitely helps me be more dialed into what I'm building and creating as an engineer, as a technologist, as a leader.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (06:40)
And we're we're just gonna play today, I think. You know, in in honor of your book. Let's learn about play and like and show some play and tell us a little bit about what made you want to concentrate on this. You tell a story at the beginning of the book that's really kind of heartbreaking. Can you tell us what brought you out of your career in Boeing to do this work specifically?
Jyoti Jani (07:07)
start with a story. In 2018, I was managing a team of engineers and at the time I found myself in a large conference room at the edge of the Boeing field runway in Seattle, Washington on the top floor of a building in an executive boardroom where I was filling in for my manager at this senior director level meeting reviewing various flight test programs that were happening at the time. At the time, the slide deck paused on this program, this flight test program that was causing a lot of anxiety and fear at the working level. And ultimately what was happening is our customers, our commercial airplane customers were hiring a competitor to work alongside us. And people were really afraid about losing IP and ultimately about losing their jobs to our competition because we were working like alongside them. And so when the slide paused on this program, I knew I had to speak up. And so I spoke up to the VP at the time. said, excuse me, Tim, a lot of people are really nervous about this program and they want direction on how we can navigate some of the risks while working alongside our competition. And I was really scared, but I knew I had to say something. And he looked at me.
And he said, what do you mean they're scared? They have one directive and that's to make our customers successful. his whole demeanor changed. He became like slightly aggressive and everybody at the table turned and looked at me and time like slowed down in that moment. You know, I was the only woman at the table, the only person of color in the room. And I, I knew in that moment that I wanted to push back, that I wanted to say, well, hold on a second, it is important what people are feeling because if they're anxious, then they're not able to focus on getting their job done, actually. But I couldn't say that. I went into a freeze response. My whole body just kind of shut down. I said, okay, I'm going to disengage and just shut up. And so in that moment, I talk about this as an example of what happens in a lot of corporate environments especially where there's a lot of power in the room and a lot of high stakes situations, is that I disassociated. Like my body went into a freeze response. And then around that room, we became disconnected from each other. Like it became super awkward. Nobody was able to communicate openly after that. There was a very clear social norm that was set about what it's safe to speak up about and what it's not safe to speak up about. So it was affecting our to communicate with each other.
And then all of us, like leaders in that room, were disconnected from the people and what they were worrying about and what was keeping them up at night. And so there was these three levels of disconnection that were happening, like in my body, in my relationships, and in our system, in our collective system. And ultimately, this is an example of like, you know, what is a systems lens that we can take in the workplace and how do we understand that what we're going through personally in our bodies is actually connected to our relationships and what we're building together inside of our organizations. so what I realized like in when I when I left Boeing, I was in a really bad health state. I was going through a lot of chronic pain and went on a whole journey of discovery. But I realized when I left that I needed to feel better in my body. And the biggest clue I had for how to do that was through play and creativity. I had been, you know, in and on a dual track career and both leading engineering teams and engineering programs, as well as leading learning and development programming across the Boeing enterprise. And so I realized that through my work, as a facilitator, leading learning and development programming, that play was a really powerful method. had become certified in a method called Lego serious play facilitation. And I had started to bring my Lego bricks into like the boardrooms, into team retreats and saying, let's play. And it wasn't just child's play. Like I talk about this as serious play and the name of my company spill means play with purpose.
But when we play with intention, there's actually multiple layers of things that happen. So I would bring Lego bricks into a strategic planning session, for example, where there'd be executives and first-line engineers around the same table. And normally, engineers would be really scared to speak openly on a table with an executive. But I'd bring out my bricks, and I'd be like, here's the question. Build a model of something that is affecting your ability to concentrate and do your work. Build a model of something that you hope for this organization. And people take time and they take a few minutes, they build their models and then everybody goes around the table and they share what their model means. And so what this kind of playful method did is it totally like broke apart the hierarchical power dynamics. It made it so that every single person had equal air time. It created a structure for us to be able to share ideas in like a democratic way. And it also opened up creative thinking. It made it easier to talk about topics that we wouldn't normally talk about.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (12:40)
Mm-hmm.
Jyoti Jani (12:41)
Safe, it created psychological safety in groups. And so I kind of had this experience when I was leaving, I was like, I feel bad. I want to help organizations solve these very problems that I have lived experience of. And I knew instinctively in my body that play was how we do that because I had seen firsthand the difference that it was making in the teams that I was working with at Boeing.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (13:04)
Mm-hmm. I love all of that so much. I it's cracking me up because I I'm assuming the engineers, particularly when getting Lego bricks, we're probably like, hooray. Unlike some of us who are like, I don't know what to do with these. But I I love it because it's such a it's a leveler. Like you I mean, you know, everybody, it just puts everybody on the same same page. And it's such that's such a smart way to bring ease to a group, you know, especially like, and I think that's the point of what you talk about a lot is that we're in these systems that are hierarchical, that aren't necessarily set up for all of us to succeed. so how do we bring in those pieces that level the playing field, like you said? And I think that's yeah, it it's it's just such a smart way to do it. And I as I'm hearing you talk about it, how what do you do when or how do you bring this to executives who might be like poo-pooing the idea of play? You know what I mean? Like how do you bring this joy to people who might not be ready for it or who might not think it's like what we do at work?
Jyoti Jani (14:24)
Yeah, well, I had to learn that in my early days of starting my business, I led with the concept of play. Like all my branding, my messaging was like around play and the importance of play. And over the years, I still include play in my messaging, but I'm more focused on outcomes. And so instead of focusing on play as my differentiator, which it is, I focus on outcomes.
And ultimately that is about creating connection. Like executives care about, they do care about psychological safety. They do care about having the information they need to make decisions and to do their job. And the fact of the matter is, is that they're not getting the information they need if people are too afraid to talk to them or if they're too stressed out or...
if there's other interpersonal dynamics happening on their team that they might not even be aware of. So for me, it's about helping them understand that I want the same things that they want, that I want their team communicating effectively. I want them holding each other accountable and having those difficult conversations. I want them coming up with strategic plans and goals and KPIs and actually all having a shared understanding of what those things mean and a shared understanding of their priorities. Because when a team is aligned on their priorities, then they're making the best and most efficient use of their energy. So I talk about those things first and then I say, by the way, we do this with play because that's going to make it easier and more fun. But it's unfortunate, you know, that I have to kind of not hide, but just be as less direct about the concept of play because it is so socially frowned upon. And I think that's a question worth asking. Why do our professional environments frown upon play so much? And, you know, we can dig into that, but yeah, to answer your question, I really focus on outcomes and how I can help them first and foremost.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (16:44)
Yeah, that is so interesting. You have to be a little sneaky about the play. And let's let's talk about that because I think it has a lot to do with a lot of the things that we're afraid to do in work settings or that our norms have set us up to think are not okay. So we've talked on this podcast about showing emotion and, you know, being able to solicit like criticism and feedback is really hard for people to show a work-life balance as like.
As a leader, to model that to other people, like that is those are all things that sort of go against this grind culture that we live in. and play is a piece of that too. So what do you think it is that makes it sort of an initial, like, we don't play at work, we work at work. Like that, you know, we hear work and play all the time as like two different things.
Jyoti Jani (17:40)
It's definitely a cultural phenomenon. if we look at the trends, both from a time perspective, well, so let's look at the trends over time. Like if you look at creativity rates over the past 50 years, they are declining. And so studies show that humans are less creative than we've ever been. And then the other piece of data that's important here is as we age, we become less creative. So when you look at groups of children, they're more creative than adults. There's another famous case study of when they tested a group of kindergartners against a group of like MBA students. And they gave them a puzzle that demanded them to work together and be creative and collaborate. And the kindergartners beat the MBA grads. it's, we're like,
So why are children more creative and why are we becoming less creative over time? And it is a cultural phenomenon. So one, you know, we're parents, like I'm a parent and I think about how much we encourage our kids to be creative. Like you look at a kindergarten classroom, you look at what we sign kids up for in terms of music classes and dance classes and they get to do all this fun creative stuff.
And then, you I have a 12 year old now and once you get to kind of middle school, that it begins changing very rapidly. All of a sudden the pressure's on. You got to do your homework. You got to do your math tests. You got to crank out more. There's not enough, not as much time for play. And by the time we get to like college, we're not signed up for any of those extracurricular creative classes. We are basically turning the crank and being as productive as we possibly can.
Now, I'm not saying that being productive is bad because in fact, our whole education system is kind of optimized for being more productive, which is a relic of like this industrial revolution where being as productive as possible helped us be more successful, more profitable. And so if you look at like, you know, a factory setting, then actually we don't need to be creative. We just need to get this stuff done as quick as we can.
And in those contexts, we don't really need our creativity, but what I do want to say is it's 2026. And now we have automated factories and we even now have artificial intelligence, which is doing a lot of mundane, repetitive task work for us. And that is only going to be more rapidly changing over the next five to 10 years. In fact, a lot of people are predicting that there's going to be crazy job loss in most of our white collar.
white collar job industries. So what does that mean for us as humans and our creativity? What do we have? What can we do that machines can't do? And actually I say that human creativity is the one thing that we need to fact return to and now is important because how do we know if a machine or an AI is doing the right job? How do we know if it's giving us answers that are right or wrong?
How do we know if it's analyzing things and what the gaps are in its analysis? There's a word that a lot of leaders are using today, which is orchestrating. Like we as humans now have to orchestrate these resources to be able to do what we want them to do. But if we don't have our creativity, then we don't know, we're not gonna be able to really do that effectively. And so in this next economic cycle, like we're gonna see people that...are the most creative and are able to wield these tools in the most creative ways are actually going to be the ones who go the further.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (21:30)
This I wouldn't say it's frowned upon but not necessarily emphasized in workplaces.
Jyoti Jani (21:35)
Yeah, it's just a relic of this kind of old world that is actually dying where creativity wasn't valued because it didn't help us be productive. But that's not true anymore. And so we are now having to grapple with the fact that creativity has been devalued and now having to return to it.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (21:57)
Yeah. I want to go back to the word orchestrated because that's cracking me up because an orchestra is an artistic endeavor. And orchestrating is bringing all sorts of different, you know, instruments together to make a beautiful music, right? So I think that's so funny because that is, it's a creative word. it's just like lovely to think about this as our creativity, this this sort of this beauty of that culture, it's the balm to sort of the harder parts of capitalism. It's the anecdote, right, to a lot of what we're feeling right now. And you definitely mentioned that in your book, but you know, I think about all the conversations I've had and when I work with my clients, like how hard the workplace feels right now. It's because there's this absence of time to be creative, space to play, space to even try things out. People are afraid to try new things in a lot of ways because they're not encouraged to think outside of the box. Even though we're in this like entrepreneurial culture where it but it's like only certain people have the space to think outside of the box. How do we counteract that sort of hierarchical issue within the workplace of who gets to play and allow play to be really pervasive throughout.
The whole culture. It's a hard question.
Jyoti Jani (23:29)
Yeah, no, it's a multi layered question. really important is kind of at the heart of what we're talking about. And you know, the reason I use a systems lens, like we started this conversation with this kind of definition of the three layers that are happening in any kind of system, which is the personal, the interpersonal, and then the collective with a systemic. And it starts from the inside out. So as I'm a woman of color,
I work a lot with women, I work a lot with men who want to be good allies in helping redesign these systems. And it starts from the inside out for all of us, because if I am disconnected from my body and I don't know when I'm in survival mode or if I'm burned out, and I'm just normalizing operating in a state of burnout and survival mode, then I will never be able to have the capacity to really engage in healthy conflict. Because we can't engage in healthy conflict if we're in fight, flight, freeze or fawn. We're defaulting to old nervous system behaviors. one of the questions you sent me was like, let's define culture. And I define culture as kind of our shared nervous system.
It's our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, attitudes that shape how we behave individually, in groups, and also collectively. It exists at these three levels in our system. And I like to think of it as our shared nervous system. And so if our individual nervous systems are stressed, then our shared nervous systems will also be stressed. And what we're building together inside our organizations and on our teams, will be a reflection of that stress. And that's what we see, right? And in the book, I talk about this concept of capture culture, which is a mainstream culture that normalizes operating from a place of fear, shame, anxiety, all of the fight, flight, freeze, or foreign states. And so it starts with us as individuals standing up and saying, here's what I need.
Here's what I will tolerate, here's what I won't tolerate. And it really does start with better boundaries from the inside out, better awareness. And I'm a big advocate for emotional intelligence is like the foundational skillset that helps us get there. Play works because it's rooted in principles of emotional intelligence. So...So yeah, for me, it started there, you know, and I use this quote that we only change when the pain of changing is less than the pain of staying the same. That's what
Ellen Whitlock Baker (26:28)
Amen.
Jyoti Jani (26:29)
it was for me. Like I had to hit complete rock bottom. And I think a lot of people probably resonate with that. But again, I'm a relatively privileged, you know, woman of color. And I was able to take time off of work and focus on my health and wellbeing and go through a period of immense healing and growth that consisted of so me investing in myself in so many different ways. Because if you think about it, this concept of culture capture culture is a concept is a culture that drains us, that extracts our energy, that commoditizes our energy and keeps us systematically drained. so how do we counteract that by resourcing ourselves and, and pouring as much resource into ourselves as we can. And obviously that's different for everybody, right? But whatever you can redirect into yourself then starts to manifest in healthier relationships. Then it starts to manifest in more, in you being able to exert your power and authority more decisively in the workplace. It means that you can wield and make decisions inside of an organization more consistently and as a reflection of your power and authority. And that's really what we need is we need women and people that have experiences beyond this like exploitative culture to come in and help rework these things from the inside. But we can't do that if we get into these rooms where power lives and we're disassociating.
We have to go into those rooms and own our power and make decisions and influence people. And so it happens from the inside out. And I am pleased to say that, you know, when I left, since I started my own consultancy in 2018, the seven years that have passed, I've been very fortunate to be able to resource myself to do work that I love. And I feel like a different woman to the one that I was seven years ago. Am I like all the way where I want to be? No.
But I can command a room with way more ease than I ever have been able to. And I know it's because I resource myself from the inside out. So yeah, that's where it starts. It is just resourcing yourself and changing the culture from the inside out, rewiring your nervous system because culture is our shared nervous system.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (29:06)
There's so much in what you just said. I I really like the concept of culture being that shared nervous system because it makes total sense if you're pouring in a bunch of burned out, stressed out people into the collective nervous system. Of course, it's not going to be functioning well. So I think that makes total sense. And it's definitely what we talk about in coaching too. It's like you you focus on you because often that's all you can control too. So, you know, you left your job.
Because you wanted to go to part-time, because you were experiencing this chronic pain. And basically your manager was like, Sure, you can go to part-time, but you still have to do all the work that you were doing at full time. And which made me like snort laugh. and you said, like, the connection I felt to this place was profound. Yet I knew if I stayed, my pain would only worsen, burned out and still painfully undervalued. I made a decision that day. I couldn't stay. I chose myself. And like I got goosebumps because I did the same thing. And it it's like it's it's so it's it's it's sad in a way that we had to leave the workplace in order to do that. Because I love the concept of building our workplaces so that people don't have to do that. And there's this sort of exodus right now, particularly of women who are leaving workplaces because I think we're finally realizing, like, this is not set up for me to succeed in a lot of ways. And if I stay here, nothing is gonna get better. So I have to go. And you kind of hit this rock bottom point that you were talking about. And it's so good that you're doing work that can help teach other people at organizations now to heal culture so that other people don't leave. But I feel like there's this tipping point that we're on right now, especially with women and women of color, like it's sort of an emergency. Like we have to fix the culture at work, or else more and more of this will happen. We're seeing all the numbers of retention and, you know, engagement at work and dissatisfaction and burnout. If someone's listening to this now and they're in an organization and they're feeling that sort of similar feeling that you and I felt of like, I this is not helping me. I like I have to choose myself. What would what would your advice be for that person? How do you do that within the construct of this system that's make causing you the pain?
Jyoti Jani (31:35)
I was very fortunate that I was able to leave. First I went on a leave of absence, health related leave of absence, unpaid. And the third unpaid leave I'd been on, because I had two other unpaid leaves when I had each of my kids.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (31:52)
They were unpaid? That's not okay.
Jyoti Jani (31:56)
Yeah, and so when we see the numbers about the gender pay gap, right, like this is one of the reasons why is because we miss out on these sorts of things. And when we push back on them, we're told that we can't change them. Well, you know, one of the core concepts in the book is power. And I want to talk about power because the name of the book is Creating Culture Empowered Leadership for Systems Change. I'm an engineer, right? And so we're like, what is this concept of power? Like, do we even understand what we mean when we're talking about power? So in engineering, in the world of engineering and math, power is energy per unit time. So it is how quickly we are moving energy. And so it is how we're applying our energy towards something. And so I would say my advice for somebody who is going through something,
Like this is about power, okay? And so when we are pushed out of organizations, we are choosing ourselves and we're choosing to empower ourselves. But in some ways we're also reinforcing a broken system that disempowers us when we say, don't belong here or I can't belong here because it's not taken from me. And so if we are really going to take the reins and shift these power structures, we have to become power literate and we can like, you know, wax poetic all day long about self healing and individual healing and individual growth. But that is just one tiny piece of the puzzle. We have to apply that power that we're now building as individuals in relationships and inside institutions. And so that happens through, through engaging in healthier relationships and coalition building and organizing. There is a war on organizing happening in the corporate spaces against the labor movement. And the labor movement is actually a really powerful teacher for how we can collectively organize and shift our structures. And if you look at all these moments throughout history where humans have risen up and shaped change, it's because we've organized and accumulated our power in groups, in large groups, and then use that collective power to push back and to topple regimes or to get a CEO ousted, to fire the board. People do that all the time. And so we have to think about, what do we really want here? What's broken? What's not working? And now let's build coalitions with other people that we know and let's figure out how we're going to actually push back on this executive team or on this person, this toxic leader or this broken process and let's change it. Like it's hard work. And so maybe you just choose one thing at a time because not all of us can fix every single problem and this is where we have to lean into our strengths and where we are in the system. But we can push back.
And for me, like I'm seven years beyond that point where I left corporate, but I still work with executive leaders and I don't, I'm not ruling out the possibility of me re-entering a corporate environment. And, you know, one day maybe I will be a CEO and maybe I will be able to, use all of this knowledge that I've gained in service of shaping change with real power and authority, because let's be real, like in this system that we're navigating, there's only so much power that you can accumulate when you're an independent. The more resources that you are in control of, the more decisions that you can make that, yeah, decide how resources flow through this system, then that is real power, right? Because power is about...directing energy and deciding how resources are flowing through a system. So we need to be strategically positioning ourselves into places where we are deciding how less resources I'm going to say is money, it's energy, people's effort. But those are the real conversations. Like we need to take a look at and money is flowing through our system and change it and get as much power individually, collectively and systemically as we can and organize.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (36:43)
That's amazing. I love that definition of power of moving how quickly we're moving our energy. I mean, that's so that's so perfect. And, you know, I I was reflecting as you were talking about that. I often think of power as individual, like you have power as an individual, but the collective power is is so much stronger. And and definitely what we've heard on this podcast a lot. Like I'm thinking back to my episode with Sarah Jaffe and, you know, she talked about collective action as well. Okay, so I want to play a little bit. Okay. I'm gonna let you lead that because you are the play expert.
Jyoti Jani (37:21)
All right, well, there's lots of different ways we can play. And so, you know, because we're on a podcast, I don't have you in a room with me here to do art or Lego, but what we can do is like some improv games. And so improv games are a really tried and tested way to help people access creative flow state together. And so let's play a couple of things. So one is, pick up an object on your desk, any object.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (37:55)
Okay. All right.
Jyoti Jani (37:58)
Okay, and show it to me and tell me what it is.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (38:03)
I've picked up the remote control for my monitor. It's
Jyoti Jani (38:06)
Okay, I love it.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (38:07)
a white rectangle.
Jyoti Jani (38:09)
I've picked up a little tube of hand lotion. So now we have these objects that you've got a remote control. I've got a tube of hand lotion and what does your object do? What is it for?
Ellen Whitlock Baker (38:24)
well, when it works, which is not all the time, it turns on my monitor so that I can see my computer screen, which is plugged into my monitor.
Jyoti Jani (38:31)
So every time you look at that remote control, you're like, this is for one thing. It's to turn my monitor and my screen on. And in life, that happens all the time is we see something and we're like, that's for this one thing. And that's like an established neural pathway. It's like a tried and tested neural pathway. You're like, this is my remote control. It's to turn the screen on. Now I want to help you create new neural pathways. I want to help you expand your creative thinking. So I'm going to ask you, okay, pick up this remote control.
And play with me. Give me other things that it could be, aside from a remote control. Imagine like this object is capable of doing other things. And talk to me about what some of those things might be.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (39:19)
it would be amazing. Okay, let's say it can turn off the rain outside.
Jyoti Jani (39:25)
It's...
Ellen Whitlock Baker (39:26)
Right? Yeah. So that when I'm watching my kids' ultimate game, I don't have to get soaking wet. I can
Jyoti Jani (39:31)
So now to walk me through that, me you controlling the rainbow remote control.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (39:37)
Yeah, well I see the the up and down buttons. Yeah. So I can just like turn up the sun and turn down the sun or turn up the rain and turn down the rain. I love this.
Jyoti Jani (39:48)
I love it too. So now
Ellen Whitlock Baker (39:49)
What I would do. Yeah.
Jyoti Jani (39:51)
I'll take a turn. So I've got a little tube of hand cream here and it's a tiny tube with a heart on it and blue and little dots and stuff. So normally I would use this for getting my hands soft. Now let's see, I'm gonna think on the fly here. This is now not a tube of hand cream. It is a special device that's...helps me control other people's thoughts. So when I take the lid off, I can actually squirt somebody with my intention. I get them to think something else and get them to laugh. So I'm to use it on you right now. All right, now let's do one more round. So tell me something else you can use your remote control for.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (40:45)
Hmm, let me think.
Jyoti Jani (40:47)
And doesn't have to be a control. It could just be an object.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (40:51)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jyoti Jani (40:51)
Angular object.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (40:55)
I could use it in meetings if I was trying to get somebody to stop talking who was talking too much. I could just like put this over their mouth and then they would stop talking.
Jyoti Jani (41:20)
Love it. Like a remote control mouse. Yeah.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (41:24)
Yeah. So they couldn't talk anymore.
Jyoti Jani (41:27)
I love it. I love it. That would be really useful. I'm thinking about multiple scenarios where I'd like to use that.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (41:36)
Maybe sometimes with my husband or child. I don't know.
Jyoti Jani (41:40)
That's not what I was thinking at all. no way. Okay, so like, I'm just going to debrief with you for a second. So we just played a game called alternate uses. And this game is used to help promote divergent thinking. It's a great, you know, I talk about using play in the workplace in multiple ways. Like we can use it at the beginning, like during the middle is in process or at the end. And I want to encourage people like you don't have to all of a sudden do everything playful all the time. But imagine like you're just about to go into a meeting and you want your team to be thinking creatively, or you're just about to coach a client and you want them to think more creatively. You could play this game for a few minutes and all of a sudden your brain is starting to open up. starting to think about, like you felt the pressure, right? Like how did that feel for you? How did you, how did that?
Ellen Whitlock Baker (42:35)
gonna say it was kind of stressful. Like it's funny because I did improv in college like I was in theater sports and like I love it but it it felt a little awkward because I was like I can I think outside like how creative can I be here there is this sort of barrier of like I can't be super fun at work you know that I think you have to get over right
Jyoti Jani (43:01)
Totally. Yeah. And like even for me and I'm see, I'm a seasoned facilitator. It's like that pressure that we feel to perform really inhibits our ability to perform, which is such a, like a mind trip, but there's no wrong answer for this, right? Like I could hold up this, this tube of lotion and say, it's a hat. It's deodorant. It's
Ellen Whitlock Baker (43:22)
Yeah.
Jyoti Jani (43:25)
my shoe. Like it could literally be, there's no wrong answer, but the amount of pressure we put to come up with something cool and funny and unique and creative. And that in itself is a barrier. So all we're doing when we play is we're lowering the stakes to experimentation. And that's why children play is because it lowers the risk that you need to take to try something new.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (43:54)
Mm.
Jyoti Jani (43:54)
And right now the risks of trying something new are too high. Everybody's afraid of sounding stupid or looking silly. But if you just get people to play for a few minutes, it opens up our brains, it lowers the risk to take trying new things. And now all of sudden we're primed for an actual brainstorming exercise or something truly creative, because we're starting to open up our mind and become less afraid. just like priming a wall before you paint it, like we want to prime ourselves before we go into a situation. one tiny example of how we can use.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (44:30)
I love that. Right. It's so easy to play. Like if you're fully virtual, what that was so easy for you. And I have tons of things on my desk that I could pull, you know. And I think the more you play in your workspace, the easier that's gonna get. So like the first time I can imagine is a little bit like, what do you want me to do? But then I I could see like the next time I went, it was easier and a little bit more fun. The second time I did it. So I I can totally see teams really you know, getting into this once they're used to doing it a little bit.
Jyoti Jani (45:06)
to your earlier point about how do you talk to executives or leaders about the importance of play. It's always good to have the neuroscience in your back pocket. ready to talk.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (45:16)
Neural pathways.
Jyoti Jani (45:18)
Know the neuroscience, know how this is going to actually help you with your work. Because if somebody does push back, then you want to say, actually, no, like there's, there's science behind why we're doing this. We're not wasting time. So sit down. Let's do this. Exert your power.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (45:36)
Calm down, Brian.
Jyoti Jani (45:41)
We are gonna play Chad sit down.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (45:45)
Sorry, Chad and Brian out there, whoever you are. I could talk to you forever, as I say to most of my guests, but truly. Where can folks find you if they want to learn more? And we'll put obviously everything in the show notes, but where are you most active? Probably
Jyoti Jani (46:00)
Well, they can go to my website if they want to learn more about my work. It's jyotijani.co. So J-Y-O-T-I-J-A-N-I.CO. But I am on the socials, pretty much all of them. I'm on the gram and LinkedIn, Instagram and LinkedIn at JyotiBfly is my handle. I love that. Yeah, that's my, that's my radio moniker and DJ moniker. But yeah, they can reach me.through my website or LinkedIn or Instagram.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (46:32)
Yeah. And if you're a KEXP listener, which people all over the world are, even though it's, you know, headquartered here in Seattle, you have a show on KEXP, don't you?
Jyoti Jani (46:41)
I do, yeah. And there's one other reason I'm so tired today, because I had my show last night. But yeah, every other Tuesday, I host a world music show called Wopop on the renowned listener powered radio station, KEXP. It's a lot of fun.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (46:57)
I love your show. I've listened to it for years. It's amazing. Well, Jyoti, thank you so much for being here. I so appreciate it. And thanks everyone so much for listening. And we will see you on the next episode of Hard at Work.
How fun was that? I have to admit, when Joyti asked me to pick up that monitor remote on my desk and turn it into something, and I turned it into a device that turns off rain.
My perfectionist brain definitely felt a little bit like, am I doing this right? But as Jyoti pointed out, the exact feeling, that exact feeling is the barrier. And more play lowers the stakes for us to just feel more creative and willing to experiment. and we open up the capacity for genuine creativity and trust building at work. So I really, really loved her definition of culture as our shared nervous system. If we're filling our teams with burned out, stressed-out individuals, our collective nervous system suffers. Resourcing ourselves from the inside out isn't just self-care. It's how we reclaim our power and reshape the system. It's so powerful. And because I was inspired by Jyoti, I've actually become certified in Lego serious play myself since this interview.
And I've been able to use it in a number of facilitations that I've done. And it is truly magical. It's fun, yes, which is amazing in itself, but it also allows the participants to share at a more honest level because they have this power of the metaphor of whatever they've constructed with their Lego to help them talk about things that might be challenging or hard to bring up without something like that metaphor in front of them.
It really breaks down walls and opens communications like I have never seen before. So if you want more info on how I do that, send me an email at Ellen at ewbworks.com. I highly recommend that you pick up Jyothi's book, which is Creating Culture, Empowered Leadership for Systems Change. It is an awesome book, a great read. I recommend it immensely. just in a way to like think about how to create culture. It's it's about play, yes, but it's also about all of the ways that we can think about actually making changes to our workplace systems and cultures for the positive. And I think it's genius. So check it out. We'll have a link in the show notes. You can also visit her website at JyotiJani.co, which is J Y O T I, J-A-N-I dot C-O. You can follow her on Instagram and LinkedIn at JyotiBFly. Or tune into her world music show WoPop on KEXP. As always, we've linked all of her resources, social handles, and websites directly in the show notes. And if this conversation resonated with you today, do me a quick favor, share this episode with a colleague who needs a little permission to play at work today or in general, and leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you so much for spending your time with us today. Take care of yourselves, take care of your nervous systems. Maybe pull out some of those Lego bricks you might have hanging around the house and build something fun with them just for fun. And we'll see ya on the next episode of Hard at Work.
