dear CEO, tear down this wall!

1. February 2015

vinylbaustein Agile Mindset, Facilitation , , , , , , Leave a comment

On the 12.th of June 1987, the then US President Ronald Reagan held a speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin near the Berlin-wall. The wall separated to different kinds of ideology, the east and the west, state-directed economy and free market economy, the communism and the capitalism, state control and liberty.

The Berlin Wall, as part of the iron Curtain, was an impressive emblem of the cold war from 1945 to 1990. The Berlin Wall was an emblem, a landmark for separating, for ‘protection’ and for being intransparent.

Today, the Berlin Wall is part of the global history and notwithstanding we have to face the idea of the iron Curtain nearly every day. Almost without recognizing it.

We call it ‘the black Wall’

I’m talking about meetings, particularly business meetings. We all have to attend business meetings almost every day. The appearance of a modern bussiness meeting looks like this, a meeting room with one or more tables, chairs and lots of notebooks and mobiles.

the Black Wall

I experienced such kind of meetings for the half of my life. Being in a meeting and having the feeling that we are all hiding ourselves behind a little computer. Looking in a lot of eyes without being able to see a complete face, most people are busy with themselves, people are typing something in their notebook. Having a notebook or mobile in front of us is a kind of protection, helps us to do something different – if the current speaker is boring or I’m not interested in the topic etc. …

We protect ourselves from being in a real and deep contact and connection with all others. A basic requirement for fruitful conversations and dynamic dialogue.

You might want to say, ‘but I need my notebook – all information I need is available on it’. Ok, if this is the case why do you need a face to face meeting and what is the purpose of your meetings? Why do you attend? Is there a better way to achieve results?

What’s the purpose and what do you want to achieve?

Way too often we attend meetings without being aware of the real purpose of that meeting and if it is really needed. Could we have the same outcome with a different technique, maybe by sending an email, post infos on the intranet or having a Skype-call?

The purpose of a business meeting is about talking and exchanging ideas and opinions to come to a decision. The purpose could be also to strengthen the connection between the participants so that they can work as a team or to solve conflicts. There are thousands of serious purposes for having a meeting. So why do so many people complain about their company culture and how they handle meetings?

Way too often we have the feeling of wasting our time in a meeting. If you experience exactly that please allow me to ask you, who is responsible that the time in a meeting is used effective and efficient? The meeting organizer, your boss or even the whole company? I’m sorry, it is you and everybody else who is in the meeting!

If you are going to a business meeting and have the feeling it’s a waste of time, you need to talk to all others and to the meeting organizer how you can handle your meetings more effective and more efficient. Have you ever done that? If not, please start with it!

What can I do to improve my own meetings?

  • Tear down the wall first – get rid of notebooks and mobiles during a meeting – get rid of everything that can consume attention so tht people are fully present and can focus on what they want to achieve.
  • Agree on some meeting rules like everybody is responsible for the outcome of the meeting, listen carefully and talk with intention etc. (ask your attendees what they think is reasonable.)
  • Retrospect about your meetings. Reserve 10 minutes at the end of your next meeting and talk about how to improve it. Inspect and adapt.
  • Invite a Facilitator to create a setting for your meetings and to moderate it.
  • Try it ‘the Circle Way’ – have a circle of chairs – without tables
  • Get rid of presentations like PowerPoint-slides – visualize important information on a FlipChart or MetaWall.
  • Try serious games (yes, SERIOUS GAMES!) It can be so much fun to discuss or work on topics in a playful way

the Circle Way

I’d like to challenge you to tear down the wall, the black wall. It is the first step to transform the way you work with others. Tear down the wall and find a new way of dialogue. Tear down the wall and experience a new connection with your colleagues. Tear down the wall to find a deeper relationship with your peers. Tear down the wall as a first step for improving your meeting culture. Tear down the wall for success!

Further reading

death by meeting by Patrick M. Lencioni

the Semco System by Ricardo Semler (sorry, no link available)

the Conflict Dojo

17. May 2014

vinylbaustein Agile Mindset, Allgemein, Coaching, Facilitation , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

About half a year ago I announced the Conflict Dojo on my blog and asked volunteers to try out the format. Before publishing the instructions for everybody I thought I could need some help for improving this new format.

Conflict Dojo

I’d like to thank Andrea Chiou, Ruud Rietveld,  Nils Bernert, Silke Rothgänger and Stefano Klinke for giving me feedback and helping me to make the format more simple, more safe and now it can be fun as well! =;-)

The Conflict Dojo is still easy to scale

You can arrange settings from 4 up to xxx people without having a facilitator for each table. Now one Facilitator can easily handle settings up to 20 people. If you have more, count one facilitator per 20 people.

As I’ve created the format as part of a 2-day conflict handling training for Agile Teams, you’ll need at least 90 minutes to run the basic version of the Conflict Dojo. The more time you have, the better it is as you’ll be able to play several rounds. On the other side of the coin, even one round can be very exhausting due to intense discussions and can take up to 1 hour.

Preperation

Create settings with tables for 4 people, 3 can be ok as well if needed. I recommend and prefer 4 people per table. For each table you’ll need to prepare the following:

  • tabletoys
  • 1 dice
  • a pile of plane A5 index cards – red – called challenge cards
  • a pile of plane A6/A7 index cards – yellow/white – called strategy cards
  • marker
  • 4 prepared plane A6/A/ index cards in yellow or white (strategy cards) with
    • fight back
    • ignore & avoid that there is a conflict
    • solution focused questioning
    • NVC (Non-Violent-Communication)

prep cards

Connection

Let everybody take some red and some yellow index cards and a marker. Build pairs. Let the pairs talk about the question ‘remember some old or current conflicts’, write down each conflict on a red Index Card – one card per conflict. Now think about how you’ve handled these conflicts, did you had a solution, have you made the conflict worse? What was your strategy? Write down each strategy / handling-type on one yellow index card. Elaborate what you have written down with your partner.

Concept

Introduce the ice-berg-model and explain how conflicts emerge. As a little help, here is the description of Paul Watzlawick’s model of communication:

A conflict exists, when the Iceberg’s collide on the level of relationship. Pure contentions on a factual level are almost handled as solvable or not solvable problems and challenges or seen as a conflict of opinion or dispute.

Tension and differences are becoming conflicts when involved parties are not able to handle them constructively anymore.

IceBerg Model

Reconnection

Find a table, 2 pairs at each table. You have 5 minutes to introduce your conflicts and strategies. Try to explain why in each situation the IceBergs’s did collide.

Concrete Practice

Arrange all red challenge cards on the table so that you can read all the conflicts. Build on pile of cards with all strategy cards, now integrate the prepared cards as well. Shuffle the pile of strategy cards. At the end place them on the table, face down.

Give a short explanation of the prepared strategies:

fight back
you feel offended and do what ever is needed to protect yourself and fight back with words
ignore & avoid that there is a conflict
try to ignore all direct addresses and speeches, talk about something else
solution focused questioning
try to find a solution, ask questions, be empathic
NVC (Non-Violent-Communication
explain the 4 part process of NVC

All 4 players role the dice ones. The player with the lowest points will start the first round of the Conflict Dojo. The first player can now choose a conflict he would like to practice. Normally this will be a conflict the player currently has.

All three others at the table take one strategy card without showing it to somebody else. They will also role the dice again to find the second player – count clockwise if you want. When the second player is found, the 2 others put back their strategy card at the bottom of the pile and they become observers.

Before starting the role play, give all 2 players about a minute to prepare and sink into their roles. The first player will have to address the conflict with the second player. As the second player will have to act as the strategy card tells him, his reaction might be not his normal reaction.

tabletoys

The player who addresses his conflict can change his strategy during the role play, the second player should stay at his ‘card-given’ strategy. The observers make notes during the conflict on an index card.

The current round is over as soon as the conflict is solved or one player shows his stop sign. A stop sign can be a raising hand, a prepared card or whatever you agree on upfront.

Conclusion

After a round is finished, make a debriefing – this might take a few minutes as all 4 players will discuss what happened and how their behavior was influenced.

When the debriefing is finished, the player to the left of the previous first player will become the new first player. All others will take a strategy card and role the dice again until the new second player is found. A new round of the Conflict Dojo is about to start.

final conclusion

After the last round is played, let participants pair up, if possible with somebody they haven’t talked to so far. Give a timebox of 5 minutes for everybody to have a walkabout and discuss the question, ‘what do I take with me out of this session and how will I integrate it in my daily life?’.

the 4 rooms of change – basics of Agile Evolution

23. April 2013

vinylbaustein Agile Mindset , , , , , 7 Comments

4 rooms of change

Science has shown that each individual, teams and companies as well, pass 4 different emotional stages when going through a change process.

At the end of the 1960’s Claes Janssen, a swedish psychologist, found out that to adapt something really new – what is somehow a kind of a personal evolution, we typically pass 4 different emotional stages before we are able to make something new our own so that we are able to grow and flourish. Yes, I’m talking about change!

It means that we learn something really new what changes our personal life, behaviour or even culture – in tiny bits or sometimes in the whole.

As a Coach and Facilitator I’m a companion of different kind of change processes. Doesn’t matter if it’s the experience with private players which I accompany as a Co-Active coach, business people, teams and whole companies which I accompany as executive coach and facilitator. These 4 different emotional stages can be seen in almost every single peace of my work – and even it’s effects and it’s my daily work to accompany my customers through all these stages, that’s my passion.

I know that a lot of people are tired to hear and talk about change and I don’t want to challenge the word ‘change’ or something like that. What is important in my opinion is that change is our nature. we’re born to change permanently, every single cell of our body changes and renews several times during our life. We life the evolutionary process in every single day, even if we are not aware of it… so also our life is based on change, what makes a difference is how we handle it.

Becoming aware of these 4 different emotional stages, which Janssen calls ‘the 4 rooms of change’, makes change and adaption a bit easier for almost everybody involved in a change process. Change is never a simple challenge. It’ means we have to leave our comfort zone, got to learn new things and behaviours or even need to relearn something.

room of comfort

the room of comfort

In this stage we’re completely in our comfort zone. We celebrate our status quo with ourselfs and just want to keep it. We do the best of our situation, feel safe and usually no kind of pressure around us. We’re in control of what’s happening around us. We usually try to keep this status and emotional stage as long as possible. That’s why normally just a few situations are able to force us to leave this space of safety – our comfort zone.

There might be an unknown or a complete new experience, a changing environment or circumstances or a changing context. These situations force us to leave the room of comfort and we enter:

room of denial

the room of denial

What happens when something from the outside challenges our comfort zone? There is somehow something around us that puzzles us, something that challenges our foundations, our knowledge, behaviour or even culture. We don’t want to admit what’s going around and we avoid to face the situation. We still want to hold onto our status quo. We don’t want to see that there is something that threatens our status quo.

That’s when we usually enter the room of denial. Here we’re able to do so like everything is still ok, we still think we are under control of the situation. Nevertheless, deep inside of ourself we feel unease, anxiety and frustration. Sometimes even fear. To the outside we start to show defiance and resistance.

There’s a fight starting within us. A fight against ourself. It becomes harder and harder to deny the signals of what’s going on around us. The situation starts to disaffect us and makes us impatient.

When the level of suffering becomes too high, we confess that we have a problem, that there’s a real challenge and that we don’t know what to do!

room of chaos and confusion

the room of confusion

Entering the room of confusion we are concerned and feel huge fear. It becomes clear that our old believes and truths are not valid anymore and that there is no way back to our former comfort zone. Nothing is safe anymore, the old is gone and the new is not in view. This is when our emotions take over control. We feel uncertainty, awkwardness and a sense of disempowerment.

Being at this emotional stage, individuals will just go forward when they are sure that the past ‘values’ really don’t work anymore and that there is at least a sense or hunch of something new, at least a potential vision of the future. As stronger and clearer this vision is, it becomes more easy to overcome the room of confusion and all the emotional suffering which comes with it.

Reaching the rock-bottom of suffering, we start to be poised for the new. At least at this point we become open to get into something new. This is where the most learning happens, even if we pay a huge price for it.

When we start facing the new, little by little, the fog will be lifted and we are about to enter the room of renewal.

room of renewal

the room of renewal

Here is where the revivalism starts. We experience new ways, try new things out and start to learn from failure. We regain orientation, certainty and our capacity to act. We regain self-confidence and become able to open the door to the room of comfort. This is where the circle of change closes until we’re ‘threatened’ to start a new round on this circular course.

conclusion

Some people might think, hm, why not go directly from the room of comfort to the room of renewal? Unfortunately this is not possible as all the 4 emotional stages need to be walked through to adapt a change. Once in a room, you can’t go back – you just can go forward! In addition, this emotional model scales. Individuals can run through all 4 stages within a day for ‘smaller’ insights. Beyond that, it also scales to teams, companies and even whole societies. As the culture of a team or a company is shaped by the sum of all individuals, an organisation is from a cultural view the sum of all individual behaviours. So even a company, team or complete society has to go through all emotional stages for an evolutionary change process!

House

If you are involved in a change process, it can be very helpful to create awareness for the 4 rooms of change and it will make your life easier to pass all the emotional stages to reach the new and become something new.

There’re also some other models available which describe phases and stages of change processes. But as they are all much more complicated, I like this model most as it is simple, easy to understand and explain, evident and it makes mapping to our own change-experiences easy and obvious.

Agile Coaches go nuts

21. December 2012

vinylbaustein Empirical Experience , , , , , , , 4 Comments

At the end of April 2012, I attended the first Agile Coach Camp in the Netherlands. Thanks by the way to the organizers for a great ACC in a very cozy hotel with a warm and nice atmosphere. I really enjoyed the time I’ve had with you, my dutch friends!

background

I was driving from cologne to the netherlands by car which was fully packed with LEGO® and I was totally excited to meet good friends and lots of new people. Frankly, I’ve expected a great conference as I know some of the organizers and know about their passion for agile and our community.

Beside having a really fantastic and great time with the awesome dutch agile community, I’ve made some very great experiences during that conference. In this first post I’ll write about some interesting experiences we’ve gained during one of my LEGO® sessions. In a second post about the Agile Coach Camp Nethlerands I’ll write about co-creation of the Ewan McGregor game – but this will follow a bit later…

my offer

During the Open Space marketplace I offered a StrategicPlay® session based on LEGO® SeriousPlay™ as well as the Scrum LEGO® airport. The Scrum simulation I offered for saturday evening, as an offtrack session starting at 09:00 pm – drinks are allowed.

accnl - marketplace

I’ve created the Scrum LEGO® airport about two years ago and ran it already on several conferences all over the world, at different companies and within trainings. So nothing special. Just one fact was differrent this time. All the times I’ve ran this Scrum simulation before, lots of the participants were newbies to agile with little to average experience with Scrum. Sure, there were also agile-grey-hairs which also gained lots of new insigths, and not all but most of the attendees I’d call newbies. This was the first time that I’d run it just with experienced Coaches, Agile Coaches and ScrumMasters. So I’v expected something different this time, not sure about what in special, just something different.

the set up

The first surprise happened when people entered the room for my session. As we were about 50 people at that conference, all attendees were already experienced agile practioners and I proposed the session for saturday evening, I’ve expected about 10 people max to come.

When we started, we were 27 participants, splitted up in 4 teams.

accnl - Scrum LEGO airport setup

We did 3 full sprints within a complete Scrum framework with 4 teams, 27 people and 22 requirements for a complete airport, 4 ScrumMasters, 4 ProductOwners and 19 developers. What do you think have they delivered after 3 sprints?

You’d expect a complete airport? Yes, I’ve expected the same!

delivery

What they delivered was an ambulance car. One single ‘lousy’ ambulance car made of LEGO! Ok, a Scrum simulation with LEGO might be a little bit different to your daily work of SoftwareDevelopment. There is just one but – all Agile values, principles, the Scrum framework and the whole agile mindset is not just focused on SoftwareDevelopment – you can apply it in nearly every – let’s say manufacturing and production process as well as to build an airport with LEGO!

Ok, it’s normal in the simulation that teams fail in the first sprint. This is a regular learning phase. But normally they learn with every single sprint as we do retrospectives and the customer is available for questions. So I’m used to see teams improving already after the first sprint as they start to communicate and to deliver.

what happened?

So, what happened with my dutch colleagues? They’ve made every single mistake you can make and most important, they didn’t communicated with the customer, they even didn’t talked between teams. So they were’nt able to find out the right priorities for the airport, did not adjust cross-team development and every team built what they liked most and thought is most valuable (in their opinion!).

accnl - Scrum LEGO airport swarming

And, no surprise, during the Scrum Reviews the teams tried to sell the customer (me) every single requirement they’ve built. Starting from a Helicopter which doesn’t fit on the Heli-pad they’ve built, an Airport Tower without any space for workers and which is as tall as an airplane and so on. And every single product they’ve built had a special value – unfortunately not for me as the customer, so I had to refuse all built requirements, sorry guys! =;-)

inspect & adapt

During the third (!) sprint the first team started to ask and talk to me as the customer. Hooray, they found out that security has the highest priority for me – so before any landing-field, building or whatever is build, security like ambulances, fire-trucks and police must be available on demand.

accnl - Scrum LEGO airport - review preparation

et voilà – after the third sprint, exactly this team was able to deliver an ambulance car and fulfilled all acceptance criteria. Surprise, surprise, it was accepted! By the way, this team was the only team that delivered something!

Agile Coaches go nuts

After 2 hours of playing with LEGO the discussions between participants reached a level I haven’t expected. For the rest of the evening, this session was the top topic at the bar and people talked about what happened and why the hell nobody of all the experienced Coaches did not practiced what they pray and coach on a daily basis?

Whatever the outcome of all these discussions was, I think everybody had their unique point of view and outcome. For me it was totally great to provide participants a great time, 2 hours of serious play with LEGO, lots of fun, learning and new insights which made them think. Wow, what an awesome conference, thanks everybody I’ve met there!!!

And, if you were one of the participants, please leave a comment and some of your insights…

Open Space Technology – my experience

3. April 2011

vinylbaustein Open Space , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Introduction

In this article I want to introduce Open Space Technology. As it is the most efficient and effective kind of problem solving meeting I get to know so far I want to share my experience with you.

Open Space Technology - User Guide by Harrison OwenOpen Space Technology is effective in situations where a diverse group of people need to deal with complex and potentially conflicting material in innovative and productive ways. It is particular powerful when nobody knows the answer and the ongoing participation of a number of people is required to deal with the question. In the Open Space environment people tend to be creative, synergistic and self motivated.

Open Space Technology was created by Harrison Owen in 1985 and combines a complex problem solving meeting with the spirit of a coffee break.

Discovering Open Space Technology

The first time I heard about Open Space was in late summer in 2009. I was participating the Scrum Gathering in Munich with some of my colleagues. It was an excellent conference with lots of interesting sessions, field reports and practical exercises. It was the first time that I attended such an agile conference at all and I was impressed by meeting so many like minded people. As I started learning Scrum mid of 2008 by private study and gained first experience by implementing Scrum in my R&D Team, I had not so much exchange of experience so far. Thus it was amazing for me to listen and talk with people who are doing Scrum on a longer term and practice the Framework Methodology.

Beside all the Sessions at the Scrum Gathering there was an Open Space organized in the lounge of the Hilton, where the conference took place.

To be honest, at that time I did not understand how OpenSpace really works and I missed the facilitated opening as it was a Guerilla Open Space. Thus for me it seemed that it was not facilitated. There were just some comments from the Organizers of the Conference that there is an OpenSpace for talks. To participate you just should place your topic at one of the corners for a special time and then wait who comes and also wants to talk with you about this topic. Ok, I understood what was explained but as this took place beside all the organized Sessions it seemd a little bit strange for me.

Seeing Open Space from the Inside

Half a year later Deborah Hartmann Preuss, an excellent agile Coach, organized an OpenSpace  at my employer within an agile training. And that was the point when I started realizing what OpenSpace really is, how it works and how it needs to be organized and facilitated. For outsiders OpenSpace looks easy – when it is well prepared and well facilitated, and this is exactly the crucial skill you need to have to run an Open Space event – in my opinion

Here are the simple rules and principles for Open Space:

The Law of two feet:

If at any time you find yourself in any situation where you are neither learning nor contributing: use your two feet and go someplace else. You are encouraged to quietly withdraw and become either a Butterfly or a Bumblebee. A Bumblebee joins another group, perhaps fertilizing it while a Butterfly flies round or joins other Butterflies for informal discussion.

The four principles:

  • Whoever comes is the right people
  • Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
  • Whenever it starts is the right time
  • When it’s over, it’s over

drawing of a meetingYou need to organize space for sessions. These spaces must be equipped with flip charts and whiteboards or panels. In addition you need different Markers, StickyNotes, IndexCards, ball pens and/or felt pens, chairs in a circle and perhaps tables. Depending on the overall topic you need eventually more stuff to organize.

Additionally you need enough print outs to document the participants, outcomes and follow-ups for every session…

In the space for the open planning there must be the marketplace organized with a large panel where you can visualize the session rooms and the initial time slots in a matrix. There must be space to hang up IndexCards.

Then you also need enough IndexCards and felt-pens. Off the mark you need to place posters with the rules and principles of OpenSpace. There are just a few rules but they are very important and existential to explain to have it work and make the unconference valuable.

How It Feels to Run an Open Space Event

Before the beginning of the OpenSpace event at my employer, which was organized by Deborah, I was a little bit afraid if it could work in our company, as I just had my experience from the Scrum Gathering in Munich which was rather disappointing for me.

Given that I was supporting Deborah by organizing the OpenSpace made me feel curious as it was something completely different to what I saw half a year ago in Munich. And when we started our unconference I was more and more surprised and encouraged that this Open Space had absolutely no chance to fail, everything made complete sense to me and as Deborah is such a phenomenal facilitator she started introducing Open Space to the participants which was totally energizing. And it worked. We had a great marketplace with lots of sessions and it took us about 20-30 minutes to fill the whole matrix of spaces and time-slots.

action plan - example for follow upsAt the end of the day we had an amazing outcome. We posted all flipcharts and documentation of the sessions on the walls of our large conference. We had lots of follow-ups and action items planned. This was the beginning for a lot of creative collaboration and the starting point for much better communication between fellow workers. And I’m delighted to say that this event was a milestone for our company in our agile transition.

Applying Open Space to Technical Topics

Some month after this event we had an additional OpenSpace event in one of our R&D sites where the overall topic was a little bit more technical. You need something like a core relational theme that is still open but should put boundaries a little bit the topics so that people know why they are coming. For example, when you have an overall theme like cooking, you could have topics like, desserts, breakfast, dinner, ingridents, how to set up a kitchen etc.

The OpenSpace in our R&D Site was on the second day of a two day workshop, The first day was more strategic, about gaining insights for a technical framework. So the first day was a perfect preparation, so that participants came up with related topics and ideas so we could talk about how to address hurdles which were found in the strategic outcome one day before.

At the end of the day there were lots of valuable outcomes, follow-ups and action items, again. It developed understanding for complex topics, for example: insights about crossfunctional teams for technical problems and challenges which need to be addressed. Communication between teams increased. And once again this Open Space event was a milestone for our agile development in the company.

Trying it On My Own

In December 2010 we organized a two day agile workshop for ProductOwners. The second day was reserved for an OpenSpace. About two weeks before the workshop started, the main facilitator for theses two days got an urgent invitation from senor management with the result that he was not available for facilitating the Open Space event. I was helping to organize this event and I had already collected different experiences with OpenSpace, in addition I’m an experienced Facilitator, and so I started to think about if I could facilitate the Open Space by my self. It was not easy to decide, as Open Space needs a proper preparation and good facilitation to be successful.

After some mindmapping for myself I dared to prepare and at the end, to facilitate this OpenSpace event. I had some support from Deborah in preparing all the stuff and she helped me in mentally reviewing the upcoming Open Space. You’ll find some interesting links at the end of this article which helped me preparing.

the Market Place

As the event starts I was a little bit nervous. But after facilitating the first minutes and explaining the audience what Open Space is, I calmed down and just came into a good flow of facilitation.

The participants came up with a lot of great and expectant topics. Thus it was no surprise that the marketplace was filled up in just a short time.

And once again, Open Space worked. There was so much valuable outcome, community building and again follow-ups to concentrate on later. The only special thing this time – I facilitated it for myself, made a great experience and guided the people for whom Open Space was new through a great unconference.

My Conclusion about Open Space

Open Space events are powerful, efficient, effective and highly recommended kind of meetings, where all participants deal with complex and potentially conflicting topics in an innovative and productive way.

Further reading:

(Special Thanks to Deborah Hartmann Preus for proofreading this article)

Agile Meteorites

25. March 2011

vinylbaustein Empirical Experience , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Time: 15 – 25 minutes (10 – 30 people)

Requirements: a stopwatch, different balls or toys for pets

Objective: Icebreaker, simulation of flow and TeamWork – Varaiation of that is the BallPoint Game

(out of Erich Ziegler’s ‘das australische Schwebholz)

Get to know each other

The whole group is standing in a circle – including the facilitator, he is the starting and end point. The facilitator starts to throw a ball to a person – establish eye contact before you throw the ball – this is important for all participants!

The person who catches the ball call out loud her full name. It is important that the person who has thrown the ball memorizes the full name of the person who catched the ball, needed for the next round. Now the person who catched the ball throws it to the next person with the same purpose – the person who catches the ball call out loud her name and the person who has thrown it memorizes the full name. At the end of the first round the ball took a zigzag round through the circle, so that everybody gets the ball exactly once and the ball is back where it started – at the facilitator.

Meteorites - Flow

Note: everybody need to take care that the ball does not fall to the ground!

Get into the flow

Starting the second round.

The facilitator establishes eye contact to the person he has thrown the ball in the first round, calls her name out loud and throws the ball to that person again. The person who catches the ball continue, establishes eye contact to the next person of the first round, calls her name out loud and throws the ball to that person again and so on.

A second time the ball zigzags through the circle in same order as before. This order is maintained throughout the whole game.

Let the ball flow through the circle for two rounds. When starting a third round, more and more balls (or toys) are brought into the game by the facilitator.

Target is to get into the flow, take care that people are concentrated and that the group takes care of each other.

After some rounds, the facilitator removes every ball (or toy) which arrives at him until the whole flow stops as there are no more items in the game anymore.

Ask the group what they observed and how has it felt.

Starting the Teamwork Challenge

The facilitator steps out of the circle and picks up the Stopwatch.

The person who catched the ball from the facilitator in the rounds before is now the start and end point. The objective now is to reach the best time the ball, just one in this level, need to flow once through the whole circle in the maintained order. The time starts when the first person throws the ball and is stopped when it reaches her again.

You will reach about 1:30 min in the first round, playing this game with approximately 20 people.

Challenge them to do better – let them find their own shape – they don’t need to stand in a circle anymore but the maintained order is still a precondition and that the person who starts throwing the ball is also still the end point. It is also required that every person touches the ball exactly once.

Perhaps they will find a shape which looks like the following picture. Be aware that this shape requires that the person who starts throwing the ball runs to the end point after starting the game so that she is able to catch the ball at the end.

Meteorites - Flow - Solution 1

Maybe they will reach a time about 45 seconds now.

Challenge them that they can do better – best result for a group of this size is 13 seconds!

After 2 or 3 rounds they will probably shape into one big cluster, forming their hands recreating a tube top down. The first person drops the ball in the tube at the top, get down to the floor and catches the ball when it arrives at the ground.
Maybe they find a complete other solution.
What is important, they now will work as a team, trying to reach the best time.

Now you don’t have a group anymore, you have created a working team. They might reach a time about 10-15 seconds.

Ask them what they observed, how it felt to be challenged and how they feel right now.

Make a debriefing and close the game!