We need to have some fun in what we do and we need to feel rewarded for the efforts we put in. Part of this is, necessarily, material. We need to earn enough to make a life for us and those whom we love. Yet we also need intrinsic rewards to keep us happy and fulfilled in our work. We need to grow and we need some fun.

Individuals and teams grow through challenge. Challenge enables people to test themselves in new situations, to discover what they know and do not know, to determine how much they need to improve to achieve their goals. It is important that the challenges that are set are realistic. Build confidence and competence in stages by setting short-term targets that build towards a long-term goal. Make use of the strengths of those around you to help each other, and ensure that these strengths are stretched even further. There is no call here for selfish achievement of one’s own ends at the expense of others. Instead, there is a call to join in a community which shares in a culture of excellence and high standards. All of us have our part to play in helping each other become excellent in all that we attempt. Our strength as an individual is enhanced by those in our team, and we are diminished if someone else does poorly. We may not see it, but we are bound up together in our humanity.

A life of excellence is a lifetime of learning, reflection and curiosity. We need to search out people and environments where rigour and job satisfaction are equally valued and promoted. They’re is not always found in the most obvious places. We need to look hard and seek it in all of the corners of our present lives and beyond. Experiment, adventure, play and challenge serve to encourage curiosity and wonder from our youngest to our most senior. In many ways, it is the concept of “play” that nurtures our imagination and creativity, and playing around that enables us to put together ideas that haven’t been put together before. Exploring, messing around in the world, getting our hands dirty; all of these enabls us to make connections and see relationships that we would otherwise not have encountered. It gives us space to see things from different angles, freeing them from the tunnel vision of logical processing and thus freeing them for different ways of knowing. Embracing both challenge and play always involves managing risk, which can be problematic. When we are confronted by risk, we often shy away from creative and innovative thinking, which can lead to seemingly safe but out-dated and poor decisions. “Risk aversion” can also be encouraged by organisations that are conservative. On the other hand, some of us when confronted by risk blindly continue to escalate their commitment, holding fast to a poor choice until they end up “reinforcing defeat”. The key is for us all is to be consistent and realistic in the way we manage risk. A good decision is best, but even a bold but unsuccessful decision is better in many circumstances than no decision at all.