HI, i'm hoping for some hints, tips and generally any ideas! I'm looking at putting togther a course about managing peoples resources, i'd like to get poeple to think about what their resources actually are to start with and then move on to how we can improve efficeiency and productivity. This forms part of a program that includes things like motivation, coaching etc. I'd love some good exercises, activities and ideas to help get my point across.
One Response
Resources – activity idea
Hi Russ,
I had the below activity suggested on this forum when I put a shout out for ideas for absence management training, and I found it worked really well. I've copied and pasted it as it was given to me but you could easily adapt it to fit a general 'resources' debate.
Hope it helps.
Chris
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Materials:
Plain A4 paper
Sellotape, cut into 1 inch strips
Some blu-tack, rolled into marble-sized balls
Small prize for the winner
Pens
Method:
Introduce as a fun exercise to get the group going. Split the group into several smaller groups and give each 10 sheets of A4, 5 strips of sellotape, 3 pieces of blu-tack and a pen.
Explain that the objective is to use these materials (and ONLY these materials) to build the tallest free standing tower (must stand for at least 1 minute unsupported).
Explain they are NOT allowed to start building until you give the word – they now have 10 minutes to plan how they will build the tower (they may sketch, talk, discuss etc, but NO building yet!).
At the end of the 10 minutes, stop them and explain that they are about to get into the building stage. BUT before they can start, go round the tables and remove, at random, selected materials from each group (e.g group !loses 3 bits of sellotape, 2 pieces of A4 and a ball of blu-tack, group 2 loses 4 pieces of A4 and 1 piece of sellotape, group 3 loses all its blu-tack and so on). Get ready for cries of derision and 'not fair' – you will be the most despised person in the room at this point!
They now have 5 minutes to build their tower at which point you will stop the clock and see which tower stands the longest. Prize for the winner of course.
Debrief points:
Key message – how disruptive was it to have some of your resources taken away – impact on plans/performance/morale/stress? Frantic, reactive behaviour, frustration etc etc
Unplanned absence is like this – how often do your plans for the day go awry because somebody on your team has called in sick, or even worse, gone AWOL?
How might you have used the 10 mins ‘planning’ differently if you knew that some of your resources would be taken away? How many finished planning early, confident they had it ‘nailed’ with their design, only to have this confidence stripped away from them?
What if – we could anticipate potential absence and contingency plan around this?
What if – we could have found back-up resources to stand-in?
-What if – we had a robust process to minimise this disruption, and deal with repeated issues?