From How to Who: The Human Sprint

Within this rapidly changing world, there is a lot of innovation talk and do. There are quite some tools, tips, tricks, processes, do’s and don’ts that tell you how you wshould go about change and innovation. Rarely, however, these things pay attention to what really matters: the humans doing it.

As an alternative, we developed our own framework: the Human Sprint 🏃

A happy + healthy person makes happy + healthy work ☺️💪

To be able to make amazing things — whatever area you are working in — you will need human power to actually execute your ideas. And if this human power is broken, you probably won’t get very far. So before taking care of your company, you need to take care of your own body and mind first.

So how exactly do we do this?

We love to play. We believe playfulness leads to a healthier, happier lifestyle

Think about the last time you were in a playful mood, or played a game. A playground is a testing ground, where you try things out — and with games or sports, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. If you do lose, you try again next time.

Play is often also related to a challenge or to problem solving. It calls for curiosity and exploration — and imaginative, free thinking. And, importantly, it also creates trust.

The ball pit of the Happy Startup Treehouse, our play, work and sprint headquarters

Sprinting as humans

With these things in mind, we examined the tested design-sprint by Google and played around with it (HA!). As people have different needs and tastes, we developed 3 different flavours to choose from. There are, however, some universal ingredients:

• power to the people! ✊
  Instead of developing the next new product or service, we also focus on you and your team. Who are you, as a person and as a co-worker? How do you like to work and why? How do you create a healthy and happy work environment for yourself and others?
• keep it sustainable🌱
  By focusing on who you are and how you (want to) work, we enable you to integrate innovation and creativity in your entire culture. This creates a process that is sustainable, and not one-off.
  Also, taking care of humans means taking care of the world as well. That’s why we make sure all resources involved (🍊🍐+📝📒) are environmentally friendly.

The outside-in view of the Happy Startup Treehouse, where we will immerse you into our daily work and play life.

• learning by playing: take a deep dive! (but..literally) 🐠
  To help you get into a playful mindset, we immerse you in our day-to-day work (and play) environment. The Happy Startup Treehouse is a coworking sanctuary in the heart of Amsterdam that encourages you to work at your own pace — and yes, it has a ball pit you can dive into. You’ll be sure to enter in an out-of-the-ordinary-environment to create extra-ordinary ideas!

This is, however, only one way of making work work. We would love to hear your ideas about how to create a happy and healthy workplace. Any crazy rituals you want to share, or expert tips that we should learn? What is a playful environment to you and does it help you in your (professional) life?

We would love to know — leave a comment below, or simply send a GIF to love@weunfold.it 👋

And of course, if you are ready to sprint: ready, set.. GO!