Re: [AgileGames] Leadership game meetings

[Morgan Ahlström]

Hi Omar,

I have a game that I've been using for a while now that probably would work in your setting. I haven't documented it before, partly because I've just been using it myself and partly because it's more of a simulation than a game and it depends so much on context adapted facilitation. 

Basically it's about me having the participants sorting a bag of playing cards. I have a load of different decks, ordinary playing cards, magic cards, star wars cards etc all mixed together in a bag. I divide the participant into (at least) two teams with the excuse that there are so many of them (usually 10-15 persons). If there were more people, I'd try adding more teams. I have a handout describing the way I want the cards sorted. I've left out some requirements from the handout version and I've put in some ambiguous requirements on purpose, e.g. "sort the cards in descending order, hearts on top, then spades, clubs and diamonds. Depending on how they interpret the requirements I will have a different interpretation (if they give me king of hearts, queen of hearts, jack of hearts etc I'll tell them that it should be king of hearts, king of spades, king of clubs, king of diamonds, queen of hearts ...). They don't have a chance to get it right on the first try. The handout also has a list with different number of points assigned to different kinds of decks.

I ask them if we can start off with 15 minutes to see how it goes and then I hand about a quarter of the cards to each team and ask them to sort the cards.

What usually happens is that they start sorting the cards into decks. Every once in awhile someone asks if the teams are allowed to cooperate but more often they just start sorting without any communication. If they ask I tell them they can do it however they please. So far, no teams have ever started at structured cooperation.

When the first team is about to get the main sorting done, I ask them if they need some more cards and without waiting for an answer I pour another batch of cards on top of the sorted ones messing it all up. Then I go to the second team handing them the bag with the rest of the cards, telling them that they can pick cards from the bag if they need any more.

Then I pick my favorite team and sit down with them telling them that what I really really want right now is just one plain old deck sorted correctly so I can play some solitaire while they work. I encourage the team to focus on the one deck and might even give them some tips. Usually one person starts this work while everyone else keep sorting other decks. When they hand me the sorted deck (this is usually about 15-20 minutes into the exercise) I correct them two or three times before I let them get it "correct". As soon as I have an approved deck, I stop the exercise. I ask the other team if they have any decks they want to show me. Usually they have a bunch of decks, all of them will be rejected by me since they don't fulfill my criteria.

After this I do a debriefing about what happened. There're always a lot of behaviors to discuss.

* Why didn't the teams cooperate?

* Why did people try to bargain with decks between the teams instead of just giving them to each other?

* How did the first team react to getting more cards (push-style)?

* How did the second team react to getting more cards (pull-style)?

* Why didn't anyone ask the PO (me) any questions during the exercise?

* How come the team I sat down with was the only team getting a deck approved?

* How come 15 people couldn't produce more than one approved deck in 25 minutes?

* How come they sorted 15 decks the wrong way without showing any of them to me?

* How come no-one communicated misunderstandings to the rest of the people as I clarified the requirements during re-work?

* Why did almost everyone think there was a competition between the two teams?

* With both teams in the same room, the only one speaking to me as PO is the one I'm sitting with. How can communication die with a distance of 3 meters?

* What is of most value to the company, the one approved deck or the 20 "almost" approved decks?

* If they got the chance to do it all over again, what would they do differently?

* ...

I have found that this exercise brings out so many poor behaviors in people that we can discuss it for quite some time. A funny thing is that I usually have another exercise before this one where the participants list and discuss success factors and failure factors from their experiences. So in the first exercise they tell me and each other what they've found out to be important (communication, teamwork, handling changing requirements etc) and in the second exercise they act completely contrary to this. I'm considering integrating a discussion about Argyris' Model I and Model II into the debriefing but haven't had the time for this yet.

It's probably hard do copy this exercise but perhaps it can give you some inspiration. It's important to create a story and design an environment where people act without thinking and then you need to observe and listen to what's going on so you can ask people about it afterwards. Anything can happen during the simulation but whatever happens, good or bad, is a good candidate for further discussions.

Using card sorting was inspired by a session at AYE run by Don Gray a couple of years ago. I found that it provided a good level of complexity and it can be used to show so many different principles (in my case agile ones).

Good luck!

/Morgan

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On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 12:49 PM, Omar Bermudez <ocber...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello all,

In the last 2 years I really enjoyed to play a lot in almost every retrospective I did. I used LEGOs, images, and more. Tastycupcakes.org was one of my best friends. Now, I want to go one step up, I want to start to do "Games worshops" with leadership people (Directors, VP, maybe POs). My question is, do you have any experience doing that? 

I have in mind few games to do from Tastycupcakes, but I would like to know if you are using the same games for this level of participants and if you have tips/experience to share about it.

Here is my first "draft" list to address:

Multitasking

Team focus

Team goals

Team motivation

(if you have more themes to address to this level of participants, please shoot...)

If you have suggestion of games to address those themes, I will appreciate you list them. So far, In my mind, I have something like "lunch and game" workshop at the company leadership level (around 15/25 participants), so, I would like to keep the game part between 30min and 60min. If the theme and the game take more time, I will extended it for sure. 

I have also in mind to run one game workshop every month, so I would like to address one theme at the time.

Any help, feedback, recommendation or suggestion is very welcome.

Thanks,

Omar

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