Search Results for “post up”

Posted on October 15, 2010June 2, 2015 by Dave Gray — 6 Comments

Post-Up

Post-up, originally uploaded by dgray_xplane.

Object of Play
The goal of this game is to generate ideas with silent sticky note writing.

Number of Players: 1–50

Duration of Play: 10 minutes to 1 hour

How to Play
There are many ways to work with ideas using sticky notes. Generating ideas is the most basic play, and it starts with a question that your group will be brainstorming answers to. For example: “What are possible uses for Product X?” Write the question or topic on a whiteboard. Ask the group to brainstorm answers individually, silently writing their ideas on separate sticky notes. The silence lets people think without interruption, and putting items on separate notes ensures that they can later be shuffled and sorted as distinct thoughts. After a set amount of time, ask the members of the group to stick their notes to the whiteboard and quickly present them. If anyone’s items inspire others to write more, they can stick those up on the wall too, after everyone has presented.

Harry Brignall at the 90% of Everything blog makes a great suggestion:

When doing a post-up activity with sticky notes in a workshop, you may want to use the FOG method: mark each note with F (fact), O (opinion) or G (guess). It’s such a simple thing to do, but it adds a great deal of clarity to the decision-making process.

Strategy
Generating ideas is an opening activity, and a first step. From here you can create an Affinity Map or further organize and prioritize the thoughts, for example using Forced Ranking.

The Post-Up game is based on the exercises in Rapid Problem-Solving with Post-it® Notes
by David Straker.

Posted on July 18, 2017July 18, 2017 by Dave Gray

Update to the Empathy Map

We designed the Empathy Map at XPLANE many years ago, as part of a human-centered design toolkit we call Gamestorming. This particular tool helps teams develop deep, shared understanding and empathy for other people. People use it to help them improve customer experience, to navigate organizational politics, to design better work environments, and a host of other things.

Why update it?
I have seen a lot of versions of the Empathy Map since we created it so many years ago, and they vary widely. The Empathy Map was created with a pretty specific set of ideas and is designed as a framework to complement an exercise in developing empathy. While the success of the Empathy Map is exciting and makes us very happy, a lot of the thinking has gotten lost in translation over the years, and the various versions that have proliferated across the web have somewhat degraded the original concept.

More recently, I worked with Alex Osterwalder, designer of the Business Model Canvas, to develop a new tool for mapping organizational culture called the Culture Map, and in that process I learned a lot about canvas design.

So I decided to create a new version of the Empathy Mapping Canvas, applying what I learned from Alex to make the tool more usable and to deliver better experiences and outcomes.

More information, including a list of what’s new and some facilitation guidelines.

Download the PDF.

Posted on August 15, 2011August 3, 2017 by Dave Gray

Circles and Soup

Object of Play
The goal of game, introduced by Diana Larsen, is to efficiently form high-quality plans through retrospective analysis by recognizing factors that are within the team’s control. During retrospective activities, it is easy to hit a wall of unproductive blame. The moment the group reaches this barrier, “someone shoulds” and “if only you coulds” bounce around the room, knocking out any practical ideas for future advancement. Before determining what you can improve, you must first be clear on the dimensions you are able to regulate and what you need to adapt to. By identifying factors your team can control, influence, or cannot change, you can collectively discover how to respond to and overcome various situations.

Number of Players
5 – 8

Duration of play
1 hour

How to play
1. Before your meeting, collect sticky notes or 3×5 notecards. In a white space (a poster, whiteboard, etc.), draw three concentric circles, leaving enough room between each one to place the notes. Each circle represents a different element:

Inner circle: “Team Controls” – what your team can directly manage
Middle circle: “Team Influences” –persuasive actions that your team can take to move ahead
Outer circle: “The Soup” – elements that cannot be changed. This term — explained further by James Shore – refers to the environment we work in and have adapted to. Ideas from the other 2 circles can identify ways to respond to the barriers floating in our “soup.”

2. Hand out the sticky notes to your internal team members and describe the significance of each circle.

3. Allow time for each person to write their ideas on sticky notes. Once finished, ask them to post their notes into the respective circles.

4. As a group, collaborate to identify how each idea can be used to improve your project. Ask team members to expand on their ideas in order to further develop potential plans.

Strategy
In earlier stages of your retrospection, it is best to concentrate on “Team Controls.” This allows you to identify immediate actions that can be taken. As you see what works, you can alter potential plans and respond to any restraints.

A neutral facilitator is recommended to keep the activity from becoming too emotional. Evaluating negative aspects of your project is a sensitive but necessary exercise, and can leave people feeling upset or hopeless. Avoid any discussions about blaming people or wishing something would happen. This frame of mind places the control out of the team’s hands, both halting all forward motion and creating a negative environment. Keep the atmosphere fun and enjoyable so people will feel comfortable sharing their ideas.

Online Circles and Soup

You can instantly play the Circles and Soup online with as many members as you would like! Clicking on this image will start an “instant play” game at innovationgames.com.

As facilitator, email the game link to your staff to invite them to play. In the game, this picture is used as the “game board,” and you will find an icon of blue squares at the upper left corner. Each square represents an idea, which players describe and drag onto the respective circle. As with the in-person version of the game, the game board is organized into three concentric circles, representing “Team Controls,” “Team Influences,” and “The Soup.”

Players can edit the placement and description of each square, which everyone can view in real time. Use the integrated chat facility and communicate with your players throughout the game to get a better understanding of each move.

Key Points
Negative self-evaluating activities often end up emotional and unproductive. Take advantage of this game’s visual organization and extensive collaboration to avoid the blame and hopelessness that cover up ideas for future improvement. By identifying factors your team can control, influence, or cannot change, you can collectively discover how to respond to and overcome various situations. Play Circles and Soup to determine what you can do to avoid barriers and gain insight on what actions will most effectively enhance your project.

Posted on April 5, 2011June 2, 2015 by Dave Gray — 1 Comment

Post The Path

Object of Play

The object of this game is to quickly diagnose a group’s level of understanding of the steps in a process.

Often, there is a sense of confusion about who does what and when. The team is using different terms to describe their process. The group has no documented process. Things seem to be happening in an ad hoc fashion, invisibly, or by chance.

Through this exercise, the group will define an existing process at a high level and uncover areas of confusion or misunderstanding. In most cases, this can flow naturally into a discussion of what to do about those unclear areas. This exercise will not generally result in a new or better process but rather a better understanding of the current one.

Number of Players

2–10

Duration of Play

30 minutes to 1 hour

How to Play

Introduce the exercise by framing the objective: “This is a group activity, where we will create a picture of how we create [x].” X in this case is the output of the process; it maybe a document, a product, an agreement, or the like. Write or draw the output of the process on the wall.

Establish a common starting point of the process with the group. This could sound like “the beginning of the day” or “the start of a quarter” or “after we finished the last one.” This is the trigger or triggers that kick off the process. If you believe the group will have a hard time with this simple step, decide it for them in advance and present it as a best guess. Write this step on a sticky note, put it on the wall, and then proceed with the exercise.

Instruct participants to think about the process from beginning to end. Then give them the task: write down the steps in the process. They can use as many notes as they like, but each step must be a separate note.
After the participants have brainstormed their version of the steps, ask them to come up to the wall and post them to compare. The group should place their steps above and below one another’s so that they can compare their versions of steps 1, 2, and so on.
Prompt the group to find points of agreement and confusion. Look for terminology problems, where participants may be using different words to describe the same step. Points of confusion may surface where “something magical happens” or no one is really clear on a step.

Strategy

The group will draw their own conclusions about what the different versions of the process mean and what they can or should do about it.

For a larger group, you may want to avoid individual readouts and instead have people post up simultaneously.

If you sense in advance that the group will get caught up in the details, ask them to produce a limited number of steps—try 10.

The Post the Path game is credited to James Macanufo.

Posted on January 8, 2011June 2, 2015 by Dave Gray — 2 Comments

Poster Session with Credit Counselors

Inspired by the use of Poster Session. I had about 90 minutes of time with a Consumer Credit Counseling Service group I am doing some long term Managerial Leadership Coaching with.

A slightly varied process was introduced combining an activity called Bright : Blurry : Blind and Poster Session provided some amazing insight and commonalities to define metrics and areas for future work.

Additionally working with this group, I knew that they were numbers people, who still cared greatly about service. Using poster session, asking them to keep it visual the people used different brain connections that they often do not associate with work. This allowed the people to feel free and able to share, because the situation was changed.

Here are some some photos from our time;

Thank you GameStorming!

michael cardus

Posted on December 12, 2010June 2, 2015 by Dave Gray — 2 Comments

Poster Session

Object of Play
If a picture is worth a thousand words, what would 50 pictures be worth? What if 50 people could present their most passionate ideas to each other—without any long-winded explanation? A poster session accelerates the presentation format by breaking it down, forcing experts to boil up their ideas and then present back to each other via simple images.

Number of Players: 10–100

Duration of Play: 20 minutes to develop posters, an unlimited time to browse

How to Play
The goal of a poster session is to create a set of compelling images that summarize a challenge or topic for further discussion. Creating this set might be an “opening act” which then sets the stage for choosing an idea to pursue, or it might be a way to get indexed on a large topic. The act of creating a poster forces experts and otherwise passionate people to stop and think about the best way to communicate the core concepts of
their material, avoiding the popular and default “show up and throw up.”

To set up, everyone will need ample supplies for creating their poster. Flip charts and markers are sufficient, but consider bringing other school supplies to bear: stickers, magazines for cutting up, and physical objects.
Start the game play by first framing the challenge. In any given large group, you could say the following:

“There are more good ideas in everyone’s heads than there is time to understand and address them. By creating posters that explain the ideas, we’ll have a better idea of what’s out there and what we might work on.”

The participants’ task is to create a poster that explains their topic. There are two constraints:

1. It must be self-explanatory. If you gave it to a person without walking her through it, would she understand?

2. It must be visual. Words and labels are good, but text alone will not be enough to get people’s attention, or help them understand. When creating their poster, participants may be helped by thinking about three kinds of explanation:

Before and After: Describe “why” someone should care in terms of drawing the today and tomorrow of the idea.

System: Describe the “what” of an idea in terms of its parts and their relationships.

Process: Describe the “how” of an idea in terms of a sequence of events.

Give participants 20 minutes to create their posters. When they have finished, create a “gallery” of the images by posting them on the wall. Instead of elaborate presentations, ask the group to circulate and walk the gallery. Some posters will attract and capture more attention than others. From here, it may be worthwhile to have participants dot vote (see Dot Voting) or “vote with their feet” (See Open Space) to decide what ideas to pursue further.

Strategy
As a variation, the posters may be created in small groups. In this case, it’s important for the group to have decided ahead of time what their topic will be, and to give more time to come to a consensus on what they will draw and how they will draw it.

On a smaller scale, a group may do this around a conference table. A small group of experts may create posters to explain their different points of view to each other at the start of a meeting, to make their models of the world, their vocabulary, and their interests clear and explicit. Twenty minutes spent in this way may save the group from endless discussion later in their process.

The Poster Session game is based on academic poster sessions, in which authors of papers that are not ready for publication share their ideas in an informal, conversational group.

Posted on February 27, 2020July 27, 2020 by David Mastronardi

Bring Your Own Dashboard

For more information

Listen to Michael Schrage, research fellow with MIT Sloan School’s Initiative on the Digital Economy, describe the need for strategic KPIs, common pitfalls organizations encounter when grappling with new technologies and why co-creating dashboards in a workshop setting are fundamental to AI capability development.

The game

Read through your favorite Management publication today and you’re likely to find an article on Artificial Intelligence. One we particularly liked, Strategy For and With AI, clarifies the difference between using AI in your product or service (Strategy *For* AI) and harnessing AI to plan your strategy (Strategy *With* AI). The latter involves a tight coupling of KPIs, Data Governance and Decision rights that few companies can claim – the article recognizes Google, Uber, and GoDaddy. While these case studies may reveal an intimidating gap between their achievement and your organization’s progress, a discussion with article co-author Michael Schrage reveals simple steps any organization can take to move forward on this path.

*AI with strategy works best with a strong foundation of established KPIs, mature Data Governance practices and clear Decision Rights*

Object of Play

Most teams, regardless of size, can access data measuring their progress towards goals. Use this group activity to validate the strategic alignment of your KPIs, understand the relationships between them, and brainstorm tests you can perform to validate both.

Number of Players

5-15

Duration of Play

90 minutes

How to Play

OPEN

There are two options for opening this game:

Option A

If your participants have defined KPIs or OKRs which they currently measure:

Ask them to bring a sample report or dashboard to the activity
Once gathered in the room, ask each team or individual to briefly present their report, identifying:
1. Which organizational strategies the report aligns to (OKR)
2. Report KPIs (OKR)
3. Other important reporting metrics
Once all the reports have been presented, ask the teams to write down their KPIs and metrics, one per sticky note and put them up on the wall.

Option B

If your participants have less defined measurement and feedback infrastructure OR you’re looking to explore new measures and KPI’s

Inform the players the purpose of the activity is to explore our strategy by creating a dashboard
Write at the top of the whiteboard an organization-wide strategic goal
Ask the players to take five minutes for an individual brainstorm: list all the customer behaviors impacting the strategic objective of your organization. For example, a digital marketing team may be concerned with: customers signing-up for the newsletter, shoppers visiting your website, follow the brand on Twitter.
At the end of the brainstorm, ask each player to put their sticky notes on the wall, quickly presenting them to the team one-by-one.
Once all the brainstormed ideas are on the wall, ask the group to organize them into themes. Let the themes emerge organically, i.e. don’t guide or direct their behavior.
Take 5 minutes to review each theme; ask for the players to briefly explain their thinking and insights.
For each theme ask the group to identify one or two KPIs that best measure the desired consumer behavior.

EXPLORE

Let the players know you’re going to explore your KPIs by looking at their relationships to one another.
Set the board by creating a matrix of the KPIs identified in the Opening.
To play, the group determines the relationship between each set of KPIs: Direct if an increase in one would cause an increase in the other OR Indirect if an increase in one would cause a decrease in the other.
A group may choose to write down relationships individually at first and then call out their results on each item and criterion to create the tally.
Identification should be done quickly, as in a “gut” check.
A discussion after the table has been completed may uncover uncertainties about strategy and KPI maximization. For example, Marketing’s attempt to maximize website visitors may negatively impact Sales’ conversion rate.
1. Some questions to prompt:
  1. What do you notice about these relationships?
  2. What KPIs should you consider adding? Removing?
  3. Are there instances where KPIs should be optimized instead of maximized?
  4. Are the representative strategies aligned? Do the KPIs indicate any conflicts?
  5. What other organizations are implicated by these KPIs?
  6. What are we uncertain about? How might we test those uncertainties in the next week?

Based on your discussion perform a Start-Stop-Continue. Ask the group to consider the customer behaviors, KPI relationship mapping and subsequent discussion and individually brainstorm in these three categories:

Start: What are things that we need to START doing?
Stop: What are we currently doing that we can or should STOP?
Continue: What are we doing now that works and should CONTINUE?

Have the individuals share their results.

STRATEGY

In our data-rich world, your strategy is what your KPIs say it is. Teams often try to maximize KPIs in the absence of understanding their impact. This exercise clarifies ripple effects strategies have on each other and surfaces considerations for when Optimization should trump Maximization.

CREDITS

This game was inspired by David Kiron and Michael Schrage’s MIT Sloan Management Review article, Strategy For and With AI

COMPLEMENTARY GAMES

Manage What You Measure – create an aligned set of KPIs
Post Up & Affinity Map – two collaboration basics
Start, Stop, Continue – a great closing option for any meeting

Posted on November 14, 2014June 2, 2015 by Dave Gray

Building partnerships

Object of play: The partnership canvas is a tool that enables visualization of current and/or future partnerships. It can also be used for early testing of the value creating potential of a partnership between two partnership candidates. The tool’s purpose is to define your business priority for partnering, and empathize with your partner to explore whether there is potentially a match. The partnership canvas can be used as a stand-alone tool, but comes to full strategizing value when it is jointly used with the business model canvas, also available on this site.

Bart Doorneweert & Ernst Houdkamp www.valuechaingeneration.com

Number of players: This can be done by yourself, but preferably with 2 teams of max 5 people representing each side of the partnership. Alternatively, make multiple pairs if there are more people.

Duration of play: (60-90 min):

– Step 1- Define intent (15 min)

–Step 2- Design partnership (15 min/sketch)

–Step 3- Bring teams to the negotiating table (15 min)

–Step 4- Evaluate the negotiation results and define next steps (20 min)

How to play

1. Define intent
a) Describe the aim or goal of the partnership for your business
b) List what would be ideal partners to work with and why. Organize a post up. Select a top partnership candidate, or multiple candidates.
c) Create (multiples of) 2 teams; 1 representing your business, 1 for a potential partner’s business.

2. Design partnership
a) Each team identifies their desired assets in their respective partner’s business model
b) Teams sketches out a partnership canvas from their own team’s perspective using stickie notes to define each building block

3. Bring teams to the negotiating table
a) Each team presents their partnership canvas
b) Compare the two partnership canvasses by mirroring the partnership perspectives. Compare between value offers of one team, to desired value of the other team, and whether there is mutual understanding of the transfer activities. Check for a clear fit.
c) Create agreement on the created value for each partner. Adapt partnership canvas and iterate step 3 if required.

4. Evaluate the negotiation results and define next steps
a) Do the elements of created value provide clear added value to each partner’s business?
b) Define next steps to effectuate the partnership

Strategy: The partnership canvas can be used to explore the idea of engaging in a partnership. A team can use the canvas to prepare for an upcoming conversation with a potential partner. Alternatively the session can be conducted jointly with a potential partner if there is already a mutual interest to explore partnering possibilities. The tool can firstly be used to determine whether there is a technical fit between two businesses. By working in teams and negotiating certain rivalry is always invoked, and teams can also get a sense of cultural fit between two partnering businesses.

In order to obtain full strategizing value from use of the canvas, it is advised to integrally work with the business model canvas. In the end, the partnership discussion is a key step in business model innovation

Posted on December 18, 2009June 2, 2015 by Dave Gray — 7 Comments

Random Inputs

NAME OF PLAY: Random Inputs

Object of Play:

To generate random thinking and new ideas around any topic you choose.

# of Players: 5 – 10

Duration of Play: 30 minutes – 1 hour

How to Play:

Before the meeting, generate a list of 50-75 random nouns. You can do this however you see fit, but try to ensure that the nouns are NOT contextually based on the players’ work.

Write each word on an individual slip of paper and put all of them in a container you can draw from blindly.

In a white space visible to all the players, write the topic of the play (ex. a new ad campaign) and give all players access to sticky notes – enough that they can generate potentially a dozen ideas per word.

Tell the players that the goal of the game is to come up with ideas that are outside of the default thinking around the product or service. Tell them that the connections they make with the words can and should be expansive, even silly at first glance. Offer examples to clarify the kind of output you’re looking for.

Draw the first word from your container and read it outloud to the players. Then draw a picture of it in the white space (even if you don’t really know how to.)

Give everyone five minutes to quietly write on sticky notes any ideas they have related to the topic and inspired by the word.

Ask the players to post all of their ideas in the white space.

Repeat this process for the each word you pull from your container and keep going until you and the players feel like you’ve generated enough ideas to get traction on your topic.

Strategy:

This play is powerful because the inputs are random, so it’s important that the list of words you generate before the meeting adheres to the principle of randomness as best it can. If you start compiling words that people associate with the topic, you’ll get ideas that the players have had many times before, which is the antithesis of the desired outcome. So make sure your data is decently scrubbed. And if you want to include others in building the list as a way to get them excited before the game, ask each player to submit her own words. But you’ll need to request that the words be unrelated to the usual workplace vernacular. One way to avoid getting the same words (and the same ideas) is to invite players from other areas in the organization, who wouldn’t normally be involved in the brainstorm around the topic you chose. Some of the best ideas come from unexpected places, right?

As the person leading the game, when you announce each random word you may find that you have no idea how to draw representations of them. Draw them anyway. This helps to create a space in which players recognize that their contributions won’t be judged harshly. It matters not only as a basic facilitative technique but also because this game works best when people take risks and post up what can appear to be odd contributions. To encourage bravery, take some risks of your own and be aware that there are certain tendencies the players may have that can stifle the creative process.

For example, after they hear a word, players may attempt to go through a series of steps to relate the word to the product or service: “An airplane reminds me of wind which reminds me of blue which reminds me of the trademark blue of our product.” But there’s no creativity in that – the player’s just retreading an established path. Other tendencies players may have are to rearrange the letters of the word to create another word they associate with the topic or to create an acronym that describes the topic. This is a creative copout. You want people to forge creative, not methodical, paths from the random word to the topic. Sometimes it can be a direct leap; other times it can meander. But encourage them to create anew. Assure them that there are no “left-field” comments and that this play is most effective when people take creative leaps of faith.

If you end up with the opposite challenge – you have a group that jumps right in and starts having crazy fun – let them be energetic but also help them maintain focus on the topic. Give the players enough time to generate lots of ideas but not so much time that they’re no longer connecting the word back to the product/service. With a game this juicy, it can happen.

This game is an adaptation of Edward do Bono’s exercise called ‘Random Input’ from Creativity Workout: 62 Exercises to Unlock Your Most Creative Ideas.

NAME OF PLAY: Random Inputs

Object of Play: To generate random thinking and new ideas around any topic you choose.

# of Players: 5 – 10

Duration of Play: 30 minutes – 1 hour

How to Play:

Before the meeting, generate a list of 50-75 random nouns. You can do this however you see fit, but try to ensure that the nouns are NOT contextually based on the players’ work.
Write each word on an individual slip of paper and put all of them in a container you can draw from blindly.
In a white space visible to all the players, write the topic of the play (ex. a new ad campaign) and give all players access to sticky notes – enough that they can generate potentially a dozen ideas per word.
Tell the players that the goal of the game is to come up with ideas that are outside of the default thinking around the product or service. Tell them that the connections they make with the words can and should be expansive, even silly at first glance. Offer examples to clarify the kind of output you’re looking for.
Draw the first word from your container and read it outloud to the players. Then draw a picture of it in the white space (even if you don’t really know how to.)
Give everyone five minutes to quietly write on sticky notes any ideas they have related to the topic and inspired by the word.
Ask the players to post all of their ideas in the white space.
Repeat this process for the each word you pull from your container and keep going until you and the players feel like you’ve generated enough ideas to get traction on your topic.

Strategy: This play is powerful because the inputs are random, so it’s important that the list of words you generate before the meeting adheres to the principle of randomness as best it can. If you start compiling words that people associate with the topic, you’ll get ideas that the players have had many times before, which is the antithesis of the desired outcome. So make sure your data is decently scrubbed. And if you want to include others in building the list as a way to get them excited before the game, ask each player to submit her own words. But request that the words be unrelated to the usual workplace vernacular. One way to avoid getting the same words (and the same ideas) is to invite players from other areas in the organization, who wouldn’t normally be involved in the brainstorm around the topic you chose. Some of the best ideas come from unexpected places, right?

Note: This game is an adaptation of Edward do Bono’s exercise called ‘Random Input’ from Creativity Workout: 62 Exercises to Unlock Your Most Creative Ideas.

Posted on June 11, 2022June 14, 2022 by David Mastronardi

Even Flow

Polarities live as interdependent pairs that need each other to exist, for example inhaling & exhaling. One pole is not valued as better than the other. Polarities have an enduring quality, they are unavoidable and unsolvable. Polarities live everywhere from our internal dialogue to external patterns of relating in society and within organizations. Overfocus on any one pole leads to the breakdown of the system as a whole.

Object of play
Simplify complex problems by identifying underlying patterns of tension in the system called polarities. Striking a dynamic balance between seemingly competitive forces – accomplished by observing and analyzing the paradox with a BOTH/AND lens – unlocks benefits otherwise concealed by the system.

Number of players
1-20

Invite players who are part of the system you would like to study. This game can be played as an individual examining one’s internal landscape or external environment, or invite players from across your project team or larger organization.

Even Flow facilitated online during a Gamestorming community meeting. Click the image to explore the live Miro board.

Duration of play
1 – 4 hours

Material required
To run a good session, you will need:

A copy of the template
- An A4 (8.5”x11”) copy of the template for each player, or
- an A0 size copy of the template for the room, or
- a digital copy of the template, or
- each player may hand draw their own
Pens and markers
Post-it notes
Camera to capture the results

An example of Even Flow facilitated virtually. Zoom in to see the flow.

How to Play

Step 1: Become aware

Tell the players that we’re going to explore states-of-being or actions that appear to be opposites of one another.
Ask the players to take a few minutes and silently brainstorm perceived states-of-being or actions, and their opposites. For example: inhaling and exhaling, chaotic office environment and one that’s more structured, an organization that prides itself on innovation but also needs optimization, winter and summer, individual needs vs. those of the community. These opposites might come from personal reflection, or professional experience.
1. For additional examples to share, visit https://assessmypolarities.com/
Ask the players to make a copy of the template for their personal use – draw it or copy/paste it, depending where you are.
Ask the players to select one pair of opposites to continue with and and place one polarity on each of the sign posts in our framework. Consider using a Dot Vote.

Step 2: Map the system

Ask the players to take a few minutes to identify the benefits and desired results that might be available through focusing on a particular pole. They can write these on the diagram or use post-it notes (one per thought). Have each player present their post-its to the group.
1. Repeat for the other pole
Ask the players to take a few minutes to identify the negative consequences that result in overfocusing on a particular pole to the neglect of the opposite pole. They can write these on the diagram or use post-it notes (one per thought). Have each player present their post-its to the group.
1. Repeat for the other pole

Step 3: Tune in

Assess the current state of the system. Tune into the flow of energy between the poles.

Ask the players to label their template by answering the following question and using one thought per post-it note:
1. What are you experiencing right now in relationship to either of these poles?
2. Determine your location on the spatial continuum between the poles.
3. What benefits are you seeing?
4. Are there any indications that negative consequences are emerging?
Ask the players to present their thoughts to the group.
Remind the group that overfocusing on a particular pole will lead to negative outcomes – avoid the rocks near the shore. Focus on a pole to realize the benefits – catch some lovely fish! But remember that overfishing has consequences.
As the players to identify which benefits and hazards are alive in the system by highlighting them. Use both qualitative and quantitative data to guide your responses.

Step 4: Honor the energy

Let the results of the assessment guide behavior and decision-making. Reduce focus if early signs of negative outcomes emerge. Move in the other direction.

Ask the players to take a few minutes to individually brainstorm what action steps might optimize benefits and reduce risks. What they might Start, Stop or Continue doing? One thought per post-it note.
Have each player present their thoughts to the group.

Step 5: Map the future

Use the framework to guide you through future situations that arise within the tension of the polarity.

Set up a monitoring cadence to revisit and reassess the direction of the system.

Strategy
It’s common to view polarities through an EITHER / OR lens, but this methodology works through a BOTH / AND lens (i.e. you need both INHALE and EXHALE). Critical pieces of the strategy include accurately defining the polarities and ensuring that poles are value-neutral. A breakdown in the system occurs when one pole is devalued and our energy rushes toward the preferred pole.

In organizations and teams, course corrections may take time to manifest. Make changes proportionate to the signals received. Don’t oversteer by making dramatic or violent changes toward the opposite pole when negative outcomes are observed.

Ideally, keep the map visible in the environment. Communication that includes these visual mapping references will help reinforce the strategy and thinking.

Complementary Games
Friend or Foe – organizational design analysis

Who do – identify what you need from each of your stakeholders

Empathy Map – get inside their heads to understand their pains and gains

Source

Game inspired by Barry Johnson, Polarity Partnerships: https://www.polaritypartnerships.com/

Visual Metaphor by Troy Schubert