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9
Collab—Work Well with Others

Collaboration is the process of two or more people or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most collaboration requires leadership, although the form of leadership can be social within a decentralized and egalitarian group. Teams that work collaboratively often access greater resources, recognition, and rewards when facing competition for finite resources.¹

Team building is a misnomer. In the presence of two or more teams, teams will naturally work together. In my 20-plus years of professional team building, collaboration (or collab, as the cool kids like to say) is the great opportunity of increasing results. Over my 20 years of working in this field, I have discovered the law of 80, 19, and 1. When groups are given the goal to score more points than other groups and to work with each other to achieve a larger goal, 80% of the groups go completely competitive, not collaborating with anyone; 19% collaborate with at least one team to achieve slightly higher results; only 1% collaborate with other groups at the highest level to score a maximum amount of points. If you can get your meeting to collaborate, you will immediately move into the top 20% of all meetings.

The activities in this chapter are designed to show your attendees how to collab. They are the most tried and true from 35 years of research and experience.

Simultaneous Editing—Creating a Case Study

Goals: Have attendees create a case study by editing a document at the same time.

Does it take forever for your meeting to create a document? Do you wish you could snap your fingers and get it done? Do you want to tap all the knowledge in your meeting quickly?

The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type any given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.²

Your meeting is certainly smarter than a monkey. Collaboration tools have progressed rapidly. Google Docs can currently support 100 simultaneous editors.³ Microsoft Word can currently support 99 simultaneous editors.⁴ Use this power to get more work done.

Give your attendees the task of creating a case study in a limited amount of time and they will learn how to collaborate with each other and produce more work in the same amount of time.

Time: 10 minutes–2 hours
Participants: 2–99 per team; unlimited teams
Technology: Share Screen, Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or other applications that allow simultaneous editing
Category: Collaboration

Setup: Case studies are a great way to tap and apply the knowledge of a large group while engaging them in something that has a real work product at the end. This activity can be used for large events with multiple teams as a way to show new collaboration.

Prepare the case study template and upload to a shared location such as Google Docs or Microsoft OneDrive. Click “share” and get a link to the document. If you have more than one group, upload one document for every group. Use breakouts to separate attendees into groups and have a breakout leader chat the link that allows the group to edit their document.

Instructions to the Audience: Today we are going to work collaboratively to create a case study. You will have a limited amount of time to divide up the work, discuss options, make decisions, and write the report. The link to your case study is in the chat. At the end of this case study, we'll have each team present a summary of their case study.

Tips: Record and save the video and chat from each group to use for future debriefing and learning.

Have one person represent the client of the case study and allow participants to ask the client clarifying questions.

The client can also add new information at key times during the case study to either help progress or add additional challenges.

Be prepared to facilitate success and failure.

Debrief: Allow the group to find their own way. Only interject if you think the group really needs help in working together or needs a suggestion to get through a block. Asking questions as opposed to directing the group is the preferred method for attempting to help the attendees:

What were you thinking in the first planning minutes?
How were conflicts resolved? Did a leader emerge?
When did your group work at its best?
What is a highlight of the results that you'll use back at work?

Case Study: Adrian Segar, author of Conferences That Work, blogged about Choate Rosemary School's Joel Backon, who used this unique initiative at edACCESS 2010, a conference for the association of information technology at small independent schools. Joel did the prework in defining and uploading the case study materials where the goal was to reduce educational costs. Then, he set the stage for 40 people, who were meeting live, to work virtually for 90 minutes. While many people felt like they could never finish in the first 20 minutes, the group selected a spreadsheet to focus their work on in Google Docs and the majority of people worked on this spreadsheet. The spreadsheet had multiple tabs and was clearly able to document a 60% educational cost savings for their case study. With 30 minutes to go, a Google Doc of the summary was created and the team of 40 was able to complete their assignment in just 90 minutes. This was an incredible example of teamwork with 40 participants under a tight deadline. The case study shows the power of online collaboration when harnessed correctly. Think about what applications could be used for your virtual meetings as a way to increase engagement.

Go to bit.ly/evmconf to read more about this case study.

Towers of Hanoi—Build a Tower, Build a Team

Goals: Improve your attendees' collaboration and problem solving.

Is your team having problems working together to solve problems? Towers of Hanoi is an exercise where a team of attendees must work together to transfer a tower of items from one location to another. This simple team building brings out communication and trust issues quickly and is a fast way to determine where your team is in terms of team dynamics.

Time: 20–60 minutes
Participants: 2–8 per team; use breakouts for additional teams
Technology: Share Screen, breakouts
Category: Problem solving, collaboration

Setup: Chat bit.ly/evmtower and ask one attendee per team to click on the link. Have the attendee share their screen. If you have more than one team, assign a team leader to each team, share the link, and put them into their own breakout room after you give instructions.

Instructions to the Audience: Your team goal is to move the tower of this stack of disks from one location to another in the least number of moves.

Assign at least one disk to each of your attendees.

You can assign more than one disk to an attendee after every attendee has a disk.

Only move that disk when the attendee asks to move it.

You can only move one disc at a time and you can only put a smaller disk on top of a larger disk in one of the three provided spaces.

Tips: You can use more or less disks to increase or decrease the complexity. 4 disks = 15 moves, 5 disks = 31 moves, 6 disks = 63 moves. Key themes from this team building game are problem solving, communication, sharing of ideas, leadership, and analytical thinking. You can place other metaphors on this event such as moving inventory or staging an office move or a complex project such as building a product or a house.

Debrief: Did your attendees plan before they started moving?
What did you do when you got stuck? How would you describe the attendee process?
How do you think you could speed up the process? How could you make the process more harmonious?
What can we learn from this activity to perform better at work?

Case Study: Towers of Hanoi was used with a team before they had to conduct a large office move. They did the game twice with five disks. The first time it took them over 45 moves to complete it. With proper planning, clearly communicating to each team member, and assigning key roles, they were able to achieve the minimum of 31 moves. Each team member committed to a key role for the office move in the debrief such as looking for dependencies, preplanning the next four moves, and preventing violation of rules (safety). They created five categories of moving responsibilities. They chose the bottom layer to represent infrastructure that had to be moved first and the top layer consisting of items that could only be moved/installed after everything else. By creating categories, they were able to multitask better, move over critical items first, and complete the move in less than 50% of the previously estimated time! The side benefit is that they used a shared document to collaboratively create, update, and monitor status so that every teammate could see what was happening in real time. Team morale was extraordinarily high in how the move was conducted and was rewarded with an outing paid for by the CEO!

Grid Unlock—How to Work Together to Solve Problems

Goals: Get attendees to find their own way to work together and solve problems.

Grid Unlock is a classic “Magic Squares” challenge updated for a virtual meeting. In a shared spreadsheet, attendees enter nine numbers until you can get every row, column, and diagonal to sum to 15. This is a great initiative for analytical thinking, problem solving, communication, and cooperation that has the bonus of teaching a team how to collaborate on a single document.

Time: 15–30 minutes
Participants: 3–9 per team; use breakout rooms if there are more
Technology: Share Screen and Microsoft Excel on a Shared OneDrive, Google Sheets or other applications that allow simultaneous editing
Category: Improving performance, problem solving

Setup: Create a copy of bit.ly/evmgridexcel or bit.ly/evmgridsheets. Click “share” and get a link to the spreadsheet saved on your server. Chat the link to all attendees. If you use breakout rooms, have a different link for every breakout room.

Instructions to the Audience: Your team needs to get the correct code to unlock these contents. The correct code has every row, every column, and both diagonals that add up to 15.

Every attendee is assigned at least one number from 1 to 9. If you have fewer than nine people, you can assign two or more numbers to an attendee.

Once assigned, you are responsible for entering your number into the grid.

You have limited time to complete this challenge. (Suggested: 10 minutes)

Tips: Watch for how the attendees work together or don't work together during this process. Roles such as leader and data entry usually emerge.

Debrief: What happened? How did your meeting tackle this challenge?
So what? So what did you learn about solving problems as a group?
Now what? Now what will you do differently in your next meeting based on this activity?

Variations: You can repeat this initiative up to two more times and time each iteration. You can give two to five minutes of planning time before you start the stopwatch. Write down the times for each completion and calculate the % increase or decrease in time.

You can also involve more people and make this exercise more complex by creating a 4×4 grid that totals 34 or a 5×5 grid that totals to 65, but know that adding more people will slow down the problem solving and increase the difficulty.

Case Study: This is a great team-building game where a team really learned key lessons in planning, accepting failure, and using all their resources to create the best result in the end. This team approached Grid Unlock like most other teams—by trial and error—and took over 12 minutes to complete the entire task. During the debrief, the group agreed that they wanted to do better and one teammate asked what the fastest time anybody had finished the challenge was. The facilitator said about two seconds. While there were only five minutes of planning time for the second stage, the team realized they had three attempts and they all agreed to spend all the planning and execution time for the second attempt in figuring out the two-second solution, thus having a worse time in the second attempt. When they had figured out all the roles for each of the team members and they were all clear on the plan, when the clock started, every team member filled in their one or two boxes and called time. In just 1.87 seconds, the team had completed the Magic Square with a reduction of 99.7% of the execution time! What the team got in the debrief was how to ask game-changing questions, having the courage to fail during a trial to win the event goal, and approaching future projects with the mindset to radically succeed!

Meeting Mine Field—Collaborating to Complete a Goal

Goals: Work together and take turns navigating a hidden route through a 10×10 grid.

Meeting Mine Field is based on a classic team-building event, Gridlock, created by Rocky Kimball, in which a team takes turns trying to discover a hidden route through a 10×10 grid. This initiative is good for paying attention, group problem solving, allowing mistakes, and being efficient.

Time: 20–60 minutes
Participants: 5–10 per team; use breakouts for more than one team
Technology: Share Screen and Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets
Category: Problem solving, collaboration

Setup: Open Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Leaving one row on the left and one row on the right, highlight a 10×10 grid and click “Borders” on the toolbar to create a grid on the playing area. Send the spreadsheet or a link to one of the meeting participants.

Create a path on your own 10×10 spreadsheet. Make sure you can see it and that it's not shared to others.

Instructions to the Audience:
Okay, one attendee, please open the document “Meeting Mine Field.”
Your goal is to get from one side of the matrix to the other in the least amount of time and fewest acceptable incorrect steps.
You'll take turns and have one person calling the moves on the grid at a time.
If you move and are on the path, there will be no noise.
If you move and are off the path, you will get buzzed and you'll go to the back of the line.
The first time you make a mistake is a valuable learning opportunity and you will incur no penalties.
If you make a mistake more than once, you incur a one-minute penalty.
You can only move up, down, left, or right.
I'll give you two minutes to establish an order and plan and then the timer will begin.

Tips: As the facilitator, have the solution in front of you so you can buzz the team when they make a mistake.

On your own solution, mark when a team goes off the path, then add one minute to the penalty if they hit that square again. Mark the time when they exit.

You can reduce or increase the size of the grid to decrease or increase complexity and time to complete.

You can require the group to not talk (at all or only while they are on the grid) to increase difficulty.

You cannot allow the group to modify the grid to increase difficulty.

You can add Dead Ends (paths that do not lead to the end) to increase difficulty.

You can allow diagonal moves to increase difficulty. I often make time marks such as “3:45 team goes too slow to avoid mistakes” on my solution sheet to give me talking points for the debrief.

Debrief: What was your initial strategy?
Who took what roles to support the entire team?
What was fluid and what was frustrating?
Did some people move too slow or too fast?
How did your team feel about mistakes?
How many repeated mistakes did you make?
What were the team dynamics like?
What can we do in our meetings to get to our goal faster?

Case Study: I first used Meeting Mine Field with a team that was struggling and I wanted to use a collection of four initiatives to help them. Meeting Mine Field was sequenced to be first for the explicit purpose of diagnosing the team. I predicted that the team would have challenges in completing the task. This was useful, as the team thought they were a high-functioning team but the manager did not, so this initiative would let them know who was right. In this case, the team was hesitant to make any mistakes so they moved very slowly. Many of the teammates were not paying attention to what was going on so they racked up penalties by stepping on the wrong square more than once. At the end, the team was pretty depressed and one teammate remarked that this is exactly what happens at work. What was useful as a designer and facilitator is that I put three initiatives behind this one in a particular order. The first one worked on planning and was relatively easy. The second initiative focused on clear communication with medium difficulty. The third initiative focused on execution with higher difficulty. With this momentum, the team was able to learn key meeting skills, which they used to create success on the initiatives. They used that momentum to complete each subsequent challenge in record times. The meeting ended on a high note and all team members made strong commitments to each other to change how they work together. They found out that they would rather have the feelings of team success than working hard individually and having team failure.

Poll Survivor—Setting Meeting Priorities and Making Hard Decisions

Goals: Improve prioritization and group decision making.

Do you have meeting attendees who prioritize everything or nothing as important? Do you have a meeting whose attendees are having difficulties making hard decisions? Use this activity to help your attendees have a discussion and make new decisions about how to make hard decisions. Poll Survivor is a tested simulation used for survival training. This activity will put your attendees into a survival situation and have them prioritize what items they will take to maximize their chances of survival.

Time: 20–60 minutes
Participants: 2–16 per team; use breakouts for more teams
Technology: Polling
Category: Problem solving, decision making, collaboration

Setup: Set up a poll with the following 10 items:

Ball of steel wool
Small ax
Loaded .45-caliber pistol
Can of Crisco shortening
Newspapers (one per person)
Cigarette lighter (without fluid)
Extra shirt and pants for each survivor
20×20-foot piece of heavy-duty canvas
Quart of 100-proof whiskey
Family-size chocolate bars (one per person)

Set the poll to Multiple selection so every attendee can vote for multiple items.

Instructions to the Audience: You and your teammates have just survived the crash of small airplane. Take time to read the scenario; then, by checking and unchecking the boxes in the poll, decide on the order of the items that your team will take. Items with the most votes will be picked first. We will rank your choices at the end. We will begin a timer (default 10 minutes).

Tips: It can be helpful to give reminders at the five-minute, three-minute, and one-minute mark to let attendees know how much time is left.

Recording the meeting and saving the chat log are extremely useful to highlight specific points of meeting inflection. Usually, you need to stop and start the meeting again to gain access to the video. You can use the video to debrief at a follow-up meeting.

The correct order is:

Cigarette lighter (without fluid)
Ball of steel wool
Extra shirt and pants for each survivor
Can of Crisco shortening
20×20-foot piece of heavy-duty canvas
Small ax
Family-size chocolate bars (one per person)
Newspapers (one per person)
Loaded .45-caliber pistol
Quart of 100-proof whiskey

An easy way to score is to add up the numbers next to the top five items. The lowest score wins; the lowest possible score is 15.

Close the poll and share the results.

Debrief: What happened? How did you choose your items?
What did you learn from the process?
Was the decision unanimous or not?
Who was the leader? Who had a decision-changing idea?
How did you persuade each other to agree with your point of view?
What can you take forward in your team meetings to make better decisions?

Case Study: Chat Survivor was run at the American Society for Training and Development's 2011 International Conference. While they were face-to-face during the 10 minutes, participants could only communicate to each other over Twitter on specific hashtags, and then submitted their final answers to a shared hashtag. What was fascinating was the different feedback we got from the 20-plus teams. Some teams said it was very challenging to keep track and create consensus using only text. Other teams said it was very engaging and that they came to consensus very quickly as they were all in agreement over the major items. In the results, scores ranged from the 40s all the way to a team that had 16 (1 away from the best score possible). Most of all, these training professionals experienced the same team dynamics they have with face-to-face team building. They learned how their team makes decisions and how well they did with the best results possible. This activity gave insight on how they can make better decisions in the future.

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Table of Contents for 9 Collab—Work Well with Others

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Table of Contents for
9 Collab—Work Well with Others