Will this group exercise work?

July 8, 2008 1:42 PM

Help me design a creative, mind-opening exercise for my company's team meeting involving getting off a desert island with limited resources (and Superheroes!).

We want to begin a 1/2 day company meeting with an exercise that drives our employees to work together in teams and be creative. Here's what we came up with so far.

-4 teams of 5 people

-The goal of each team is to get everyone off the desert island alive

-each team has five different characters that people will pick randomly out of a hat

-each team will have a different set of characters

So far here are the groups of characters we've come up with:

- Superheroes (Batman, Wonder Woman, the Hulk, Spiderman, ???)

- Farm animals (Cow, Horse, Pig, Chicken, ???)

- Trades (Plumber, Carpenter, Electrician, Welder, ???)

Each member of the team will first present to each other what they think they can offer toward the goal of getting everyone off the island (e.g. "I'm Batman and I have a utility belt with a rope we can use to climb palm trees and get fronds for building a sail"). Then the team comes up with a story to present to the other teams about how they are going to use all their abilities to get everyone off the island.

1) Will this work as a creative, mind-opening and sharing exercise?

2) Can you help me fill in the holes?

Thanks!

posted by slo to human relations (11 comments total)

1) Will this work as a creative, mind-opening and sharing exercise?

Is your company an elementary school?
posted by Khalad at 2:15 PM on July 8 [1 favorite]

1. It might, depending on how cooperative your audience is.
2. Some suggestions:
- Lose the superhero category, that would make it all too easy, the trick is to get people to be creative.
- Whatever your categories are (farm animals, trades, etc.) have one in each group (for fairness). For example, bag 1 has the farm animal names and each group gets to pick one, bag 2 has the trades in it, each group picks one, and so on. So each group will end up with one animal, one tradesperson, etc.
-Maybe make it like Clue a little and have another bag with items in it (string, pipe, candlesticks :-) )

Another variation of this which is a little easier and more silly is to give each group a different bag with 10-15 random items in it (toy cars, blocks, pencil, a screw, ANYTHING) and give them 15 minutes to come up with a skit to perform for the group and all items must be used and all members must participate. I've not only done this when I was in 5th grade camp, but as an adult last summer at a graduate course. It can be a lot of fun - again, depending on how cooperative your group is.

Good luck and HAVE FUN!
posted by NoraCharles at 2:20 PM on July 8

It seems to me that it's important that at least one of the 'roles' has to do with your company: do you have 4 different roles in your company? (The downside is that I'm pretty sure that some people, like, say, the accountant, would be downright useless when it comes to getting off the island, which probably isn't the message you want to get across.)

I'm with NoraCharles that superheroes are cheating. ("We had Superman, so he just picked us up and flew us off the island.")

If you really wanted to have some fun, you should have a category of "Undesirables" who can somehow be useful to really creative people: a pathological liar who fools everyone into thinking he rescued people from an island before so everyone follows him, or a cannibal who eats your captors. The moral of the story being that even people who seem to bring the group down can be helpful. (Though I can also see this going badly... "So what about the cannibal in your group?" "Oh, we killed him.")

More than anything, I think it's important that you make this a funny, entertaining exercise. If you treat it like a serious educational activity, it's going to start their day off thinking, "I can't believe I'm wasting my time with this."
posted by fogster at 3:12 PM on July 8

Thanks these are good tweaks! Just to clarify a little -- we have a few dynamics or processes we want to happen during the game:

1) we want each member of the team to have a chance to participate (otherwise one or two people can dominate)

2) we want to get people thinking outside of their traditional roles in the company (e.g. we don't want the accountants to only use accounting skills) and their traditional company personality

I agree completely with avoiding the educational aspect. There's no real point we are trying to make about the characters or their abilities and no moral of the story. We want to encourage wild, crazy tales that are fun for the participants to develop and help them forget about all their other responsibilities for a short time.
posted by slo at 3:30 PM on July 8

I actually have a couple of versions of a similarly themed activity with premade characters--already planned and aimed at such a goal. But they're in my office. Where I might not be until Thursday. Is that going to be soon enough? I'll also see if I can find them online. Especially important is a short conversation after the fact about what worked, etc. This is a very fun, tried and true type of exercise!!
posted by Stewriffic at 4:00 PM on July 8

Warning: LONG!!

Here's a website that gives an overview of this type of exercise, and has a bunch of scenarios at the right hand side of the page.

Here's another one, cut and pasted, since it's kind of hard to find on the page. It has a different focus than the one you're creating, but I always say it's good to look at what's already out there.

stranded - the team building survival game (Scroll down)

You can use this type of exercise with various scenarios for teams/groups of between 3 and 15 people: desert island, jungle, etc. It's also great to use in group selections for recruiting staff, when the interviewing panel observe the efforts, abilities and attitudes of the participants.

Here's a mountain survival scenario exercise. It's a very flexible theme provided you avoid the requirement to establish a definitive correct list of items - there's no definitive 'right answer'; there are other reasons for this too. It's best not to have a definitive list of items as recommended by experts - what's important is for the group to see the benefit of group discussion and collective expertise, experience and input, which produces a generally accepted better list of items than anyone's individual list.

The risk in referring to a supposed definitive 'right answer' list is that:

* it focuses too much attention on the outcome rather than the process,
* it causes participants to guess what they think the facilitator thinks, as if it's a trick question, and
* it can undermine the credibility of the exercise and the facilitator when inevitably someone in the group, or worse still, the entire group disagrees with the 'right answer', as is likely with any hypothetical scenario.

Position the exercise like this:

After your small light aircraft crashes, your group, wearing business/leisure clothing, is stranded on a forested mountain in appalling winter weather (snow covered, sub-freezing conditions), anything between 50 and 200 miles from civilisation (you are not sure of your whereabouts, and radio contact was lost one hour before you crashed, so the search operation has no precise idea of your location either). The plane is about to burst into flames and you have a few moments to gather some items. Aside from the clothes you are wearing which does not include coats, you have no other items. It is possible that you may be within mobile phone signal range, but unlikely.

(Other than these facts, he session facilitator may clarify particular questions from the group(s) as to details of the circumstances and the environment, and these details remain constant for the duration of the exercise. Other details may simply not be known - it's at the facilitator's discretion.)

Your (the group's) aim is to survive as a group until rescued. From the following list choose just ten items that you would take from the plane, after which it and everything inside is destroyed by fire. First you have five-ten minutes (flexible, this is up to the facilitator) by yourself to consider and draw up your own individual list of what the team should have, without consulting with other members of the group. Retain this list after presenting it briefly to the group. Then you have 30-45 minutes (up to the facilitator) as a group to discuss and agree a list on behalf of the group. Nominate a spokesperson and present this new list.

With the facilitator's help, the group(s) afterwards then reviews the benefits of discussion, teamwork, collective expertise, group communication skills, etc., in the team approach to compiling the list, compared to each individual working alone to establish a list, and obviously why the team list is likely to be better than each of the individual lists.

Choose ten from the following - splitting or only taking part of items is not permitted (again the list and number of permitted items is flexible to suit the facilitators and situation requirements. This is a long list and will provoke an enormous amount of debate. To run a quicker exercise definitely reduce the list or delegates will feel rushed.)

* Pack of 6 boxes x 50 matches.
* Roll of polythene sheeting 3m x 2m
* 1 crate of beer (12 litres in total)
* 1 bottle of brandy
* 1 crate of bottled spring water (twelve litres in total)
* Small toolbox containing hammer, screwdriver set, adjustable wrench, hacksaw and large pen-knife.
* Box of distress signal flares.
* Small basic first-aid kit containing plasters, bandages, antiseptic ointment, small pair of scissors and pain-killer tablets.
* Tri-band mobile phone with infrared port and battery half-charged.
* Clockwork transistor radio.
* Gallon container full of fresh water.
* Box of 36 x 50gm chocolate bars.
* Shovel.
* Short hand-held axe.
* Hand-gun with magazine of 20 rounds.
* 20m of 200kg nylon rope.
* Box of 24 x 20gm bags of peanuts.
* Bag of 10 mixed daily newspapers.
* Box of tissues.
* Bag of 20 fresh apples.
* Electronic calculator.
* Laptop computer with infrared port, modem, unknown software and data, and unknown battery life.
* Inflatable 4-person life-raft.
* Compass.
* Large full Aerosol can of insect killer spray.
* Small half-full aerosol can of air freshener spray.
* Notebook and pencil.
* Box of size 8 women's promotional pink 'Barbie' branded fleece-lined track-suits (quantity is half of each team/group size).
* Gift hamper containing half-bottle champagne, large tin of luxury biscuits, box of 6 mince pies, 50gm tin of caviar without a ring-pull, a 300gm tin of ham without a ring-pull, and a 500gm christmas pudding.
* Travelling games compendium containing chess, backgammon and draughts.
* Sewing kit.
* Whistle.
* Torch with a set of spare batteries.
* Box of 50 night-light 6hr candles.
* Bag of 6 large blankets.

posted by Stewriffic at 4:07 PM on July 8

Rid yourself of the illusion that one or two people will not dominate. This usually happens. Additionally, a good portion of your employees will be hoping that their superpower will be the ability to avoid team-building exercises, or that their equipment list will involve a resume and job prospects at a company that doesn't do this stuff.

I do not mention this to merely snark, but to illustrate that a segment of the population absolutely loathes the whole "What Color is Your Parachute?" stuff and the transparent manipulation it represents. Find an outlet for that segment, or the gains in morale for some of the population will be offset by the losses in others.
posted by adipocere at 7:37 PM on July 8

If one or two people dominate, a competent facilitator will address that in the debriefing/discussion. Usually I ask a very open-ended question to start out like "Ok, so what was that like?" and then go from there.

With a team building exercise like this, you'll need to pull out of them the benefits of someone stepping up to lead as well as the importance of the leader not leading blindly. What I've seen happen in this type of exercise is that there will be one or two people dominating, often to the detriment of the team. Not listening to people, or discounting ideas that other have, that sort of thing.

In this environment, nobody's job on the line. People can be themselves, for better and for worse. It's a hypothetical stranding on a desert island. It brings up issues like the importance of having leaders listen to other people's ideas. And of the non-leaders needing be OK with asserting themselves when things are important. Like making sure the beer makes it onto the island. And really, when you look at the process of an activity like this (and the process is what matters), you'll observe how both the leaders and the supporters play valuable roles. Then make a link to how that's important in the organization.

You also as a group can see who the people are that do self-appoint as leaders and followers. It's all good info to have. Just make sure not to judge. All of the positions are important.
posted by Stewriffic at 8:25 PM on July 8

I second adipocere. A lot of us REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY HATE THAT STUFF. Stupid Corporate Games make me feel like I'm in grade school again. This is not to say that your idea stinks (so far it's better than about half the stupid corporate games I've had to do), but a good chunk of your audience is not going to be happy to join in and play Go Team!.

Okay, you're not going to listen to me, but I felt it had to be said why at least some people will not be excited.

And yes, there's ALWAYS one person who does all/most of the work/leading. If someone doesn't step up and do that, then nothing gets done. Unless you have some kind of relay system in place (i.e. person #3 can't get anything done unless #1 does their part and #2 does theirs), you're not going to avoid that problem.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:06 PM on July 8

We want to encourage wild, crazy tales that are fun for the participants to develop and help them forget about all their other responsibilities for a short time.

Many of the participants will probably be spending this time remembering that there´s work they have to get done at the office before they can go home, relax, and forget about all their office responsibilities for a short time.

If you want people to forget about their responsibilities, the activity you are looking for is called a vacation. Employees are usually happy to have a chance to participate in this activity.
posted by yohko at 6:40 AM on July 9

Thanks everyone!

Just a final remark on all the observations about how awful these are.

99% of the games I found online or in books are painful. Our company does this type of thing a few times a year, in a few different contexts (employees only and with customers in larger groups), and we almost always make up our own or drastically tweak existing versions. (Hence the reason I need help - we've gone through tons of games already).

I was a total skeptic when I started - and before each exercise or game, I'm always nervous that it won't work.

Shockingly - they almost always do. You'd be amazed at how many people like these. There are always people who complain in our larger groups, and in many cases we allow them to opt out. But fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, we've pretty much weeded out all those people on our own staff.

I guess part of what helps is we never refer to these externally as "team building exercises" - I'm sure that brings up horrible memories for many.

We're doing the exercise today and I'll circle back to tell you what we did and how it went.
posted by slo at 6:56 AM on July 9