Serious Data, Playful Thinking

Picture two assessment meetings. In the first, someone presents survey results. Participants nod politely, ask a few clarifying questions, and leave with a slide deck that could have been an email. The data is interesting, possibly even actionable, but the conversation ends almost as soon as it begins. The presentation reinforces a dangerous conclusion: assessment is inherently boring.

Now picture a different room. The same data, but the facilitator has set up small groups. They discuss, debate patterns, question assumptions, compare interpretations. Someone notices a connection no one else considered, and another group challenges an early conclusion, resulting in even richer discussion. By the end of the meeting, they’ve helped make sense of the data together. 

Here’s the thing: When we deliver assessment results and data passively, even when we think the data is insightful and actionable, we’re not inspiring investment in the assessment process or its outcomes.

In a recent blog post, we highlighted that serious work and play are not opposites. Instead, play is a meaningful way of engaging with work. In fact, research suggests that play supports creativity, learning, and cognitive flexibility (Proyer & Sendatzki, 2025). Play creates opportunities for people to explore ideas, test possibilities, and make connections they might have otherwise overlooked through authentic engagement with the material. Aren’t exploring ideas, testing possibilities, and making connections exactly what leaders hope their colleagues are doing with assessment results and new data? 

Practitioners often wrap these possibilities into passive presentations or simple discussions that leave little room to dig deeper. Functional stupidity describes the tendency of organizations to discourage critical reflection, questioning, and deeper analysis in favor of routine, efficiency, and smooth coordination (Alvesson & Spicer, 2012; Dee & Collinsworth 2023). Rather than lacking intelligence, people engage in functional stupidity when they stop asking whether existing assumptions, processes, or conclusions are the right ones, even when they have the expertise to do so. Passive assessment meetings can unintentionally reinforce this dynamic by positioning participants as recipients of information rather than active interpreters, whereas designing opportunities for collaborative sensemaking encourages curiosity, reflection, and critical inquiry that help organizations learn rather than simply comply. 

 As facilitators of new results and insights, we have a responsibility to ask ourselves - not “how do I make this less boring for my participants?,” but “how do I create conditions where people engage with assessment more playfully?” 

More Playful Assessment

Assessment as a cyclical, investigative practice already asks people to solve puzzles, identify patterns, and imagine the next phase of possibilities. More playful facilitation simply creates more space for these behaviors to emerge, but it also goes beyond that. More playful facilitation helps innovation thrive by encouraging people to look at problems and solutions differently and by giving permission to experiment with ideas before they are fully formed. When we deploy play as part of our assessment cycles, we’re lowering the pressure to immediately arrive at the “right” answer. Play can make it easier to test assumptions, take intellectual risks, and discover possibilities that a more conventional process might overlook.

One way to begin is by intentionally designing meetings that invite exploration rather than passive consumption. Playful assessment discussions might use metaphors that resonate with campus culture and get participants thinking outside of the box. Perhaps the campus environment becomes a garden or a coral reef. Perhaps a strategic plan becomes a subway system. For example, imagining a strategic plan as a subway system can open up new ways of thinking about how the plan functions. Delays in one area can ripple across the entire system, transfers and connections matter, and rush hour reveals pressure points. Every line has a purpose, but optimizing one line can affect the others because the system is interconnected. Subway maps intentionally distort distance to prioritize readability and usability, reminding us that a representation of a system is not the system itself. A detailed timetable does not prevent delays. Multiple paths can lead to the same destination. Some stops may be avoided. Even decisions about where lines go, which stops receiving investment, and who has access are political. What begins as a playful metaphor can quickly become a rich conversation about connections, tradeoffs, access, data, priorities, and how staff actually experience working towards a common destination. 

Here are a few more ideas to enhance play in assessment:

• Facilitators might include gallery walks that get people moving, leaving out sticky notes, emoji stickers, and string for folks to make connections across items or annotate their reactions and emotions. 

• Instead of preparing a presentation, a facilitator might prepare a trivia game where participant teams are asked questions and work together to determine their best guess, enabling staff to test their hypotheses before learning about results.

• Facilitators might use visual sorting activities, online using a tool like Miro or on a table using poker chips or LEGO bricks that help participants find new patterns. 

• Staff might collaboratively construct tactile vision boards that help cement next steps. Vision boards could take many shapes, from a detective bulletin board to a garden or coral reef. Vision boards could be done virtually or using paper, but they can be displayed on meeting agendas or shared office space as a physical reminder of the next steps. 

• A facilitator might bring a deck of photos or open a music app and ask participants to select a photo or a song that reflects what they’re seeing in the data. This would easily translate into a virtual environment by asking staff to post a meme or GIF in the chat that reflects how they’re feeling about the results or next steps

• During a final synthesis discussion, a facilitator might pass a ball of yarn around a circle, and ask that as staff reflect their final takeaways, they toss the yarn back and forth, watching a web of ideas emerge across the circle.

For longer discussions, like retreats, you can deploy themes strategically so folks have a shared language for discussing difficult topics and can return to the theme to stay grounded throughout the day.

Play helps to lower the stakes just enough for more authentic and creative conversation to begin. 

Moving from Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side

While this metaphor originally applied to supporting students as learning partners (King, 1993), it also applies when we think of colleagues as interpretation and learning partners. When staff sit through a lengthy slide deck or one-way explanations, we’re positioning our staff to absorb information rather than interpret and act on it. 

A simple rule might be to consider how much time you (the facilitator) are speaking compared to your meeting participants. Aim for roughly 70 percent of your meeting to be dedicated to staff participating in activities, discussing with one another, and sharing back insights with the facilitator. As the facilitator and presenter of the information, focus only 30 percent of your time on framing and synthesis. 

Another simple shift could be how the facilitator frames questions. Instead of presenting survey results through a forty-slide deck, create a gallery walk with prompts like What stands out?, What surprises you?, and What questions do you have? Instead of reading findings out loud, ask small groups to sort and rank them by importance before discussing the results together. Instead of ending with "Any questions?" ask, What seems most important here? Or what should we do next?

Assessment does not need to compete with escape rooms or improv comedy. It does not need to entertain, and that is an unfair expectation to place on professionals. It does, however, need to invite curiosity. When we advocate for making assessment conversations more fun, the goal is not fun for fun's sake. The goal is better thinking as a result of creating a playful environment because then assessment experiences encourage people to explore, question, interpret, and build understanding together, play stops feeling like a distraction.

References

Alvesson, M., & Spicer, A. (2012). A stupidity‐based theory of organizations. Journal of Management Studies, 49(7), 1194-1220.

Dee, J. R., & Collinsworth, A. E. (2023). Challenging the pervasiveness of organizational stupidity in higher education. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 55(3), 4-11.

King, A. (1993). From Sage on the Stage to Guide on the Side. College Teaching, 41(1), 30–35.

Proyer, R. T., & Sendatzki, R. (2026). Examining Play and Playfulness at Work: Current Knowledge, Practical Applications, and Future Research Directions. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 13.