Objectives:
- To understand team dynamics and how teams come together to achieve a goal
- To explore and establish methods of production for a simple products
- To understand the power and necessity for review and reflection of a task or situation
- Understanding processes and procedures
- Replicating methods
Overview
This task focuses a group of people to organise themselves to set up a production line to exactly replicate an existing product as many times as possible in set amount of time. They are giveqaan the opportunity to reflect on and improve their approach twice to increase efficiency, quality and productivity. This gives participants and others the opportunity to see how their own and other behaviour, ideas, approach affects the development and outcome of the task and how by working together and reflecting and analysing a situation it can be adapted and improved going forward.
Activity:
This activity could take from 30 minutes to a couple of hours depending on how much review, reflection and analysis takes place at the end of the session.
Group gathers around a table with all the resources on it. There is a sample product : a booklet with 13 squares of paper 10cm x 10cm, secured with 2 staples in a x shape in the top left hand corner of the booklet.
The group is asked to put together a production line replicating this booklet. They will have 2 minutes to discuss how they think they could best do thisand to allocate roles. Then 3 minutes to put this into practice and produce as many booklets as possible. When the time is up the facilitator then countsand inspects the finished products, looking for quality and accuracy ie:
- Correct number of sheets
- Correct size
- Cut lines are straight
- There are 2 staples
- Staples are in the right place
- Staples are crossed correctly
The group then gets 2 minutes to discuss and review their methods, systems and procedures and come up with improvements or a different approach. They then get another 3 minutes on the production line to best their last score.
The above process is then repeated for a third time.
This could be done with any size group as long as there are sufficient facilitators to split into smaller groups. The optimum numbers in each group wouldbe between 6 and 10, however multiple groups could be working at the same time. They would have to work at the same time so as not to hear the discussion of other groups.
Skill Development:
- Imagination and creativity
- Communication and Strategy
- Problem solving
- Teamwork and organisation
- Leadership/Persuasion
- Decision making
- Logistics/Systems
- Efficiency/Productivity
- Quality Control
- Speed/Precision/Efficiency
- Reflection/Review/Analysis
- Feedback
As has been described this task involves many different skills and objectives on all different levels and can be assessed and analysed either briefly or in great depth across some or all of the objectives. For example, if this is an exercise for managers or recruiters to assess staff skills and abilities it can be finished there at the end of the last count. However it can be extended further, so each team then breaks off with a facilitator to analyse what happened at each stage and why.
- How the initial discussions went, did someone take the lead, was it a bit of a shouting match, was it chaos, was there a lack of ideas/too many ideas
- Whose ideas were listened to the most and why
- Who was ignored and why
- Whose ideas were taken on board and why, was a consensus achieved
- Who allocated roles
- Who put themselves forward for roles
- How did the actual production go, smooth, chaotic, who took the lead, who organised, how did it progress, how was the mood of the team?
- Was everyone involved? Did everyone need to be involved?
- How did the review and analysis go, who took the lead, someone different? How were news ideas taken on board.
- What changed the next time, was there an improvement, if so why
- How did the dynamics between the members of the group change as they went through the different stages
- Were more people involved, less people involved How did people participants feel at each stage, did confidence grow or recede
- What skills were employed by the task
- How are these important to a task/team
For example : the focus could just be on the outcomes, ie the quality and quantity of the finished products. Often the first time, people are rushing and slapdash and may do quite a few but get a lot rejected, so need to slow down. Or get them all passed but do a small number, so need to speed up. So it's finding that balance between speed and quality/accuracy.
Or the focus can be on the review and reflection, how the method was changed or improved each time to give better results.
Or the focus can be on the team dynamics how they evolved through each stage, or on the leadership and management of the task and how that changed and fluctuated at each stage, how the balance of power shifted as the task went along.
Or it could very much focus on the individual, the role they played, how this evolved, how they felt, how they were affected by the different characters,how they affected other members in the group, positively or negatively what they would do differently next time.
Depending on whether the focus is on 1 or 2 of the objectives and skills or all of them, all of these and more angles can be identified and explored after the task.
Resources:
Large sheets of paper (A3 or larger, could use old newspapers) minimum of 60 sheets per team, pens, pencils, markers, rulers, scissors, staplers.