Easy workshop game method for demonstrating old and modern ways of working in Office 365

Please note: this workshop method is NOT MY IDEA. I stole it from Isabel De Clercq's LinkedIn post with an interview with Thomas Huyghe (and the post by the way said steal like an artist so I did ?????♀?).

I had an amazing change agent workshop yesterday with my colleague Petteri Koski. We had originally planned the workshop as usual, a normal change agent network kick off meeting. Just a few days before the workshop it turned out that the customer's Teams technical environment was not ready yet so we couldn't start experimenting with Teams with the change agents. From my experience I know it's useless to give technical Teams training to people who don't have Teams yet in use, so we abandoned the original plan.

Then I remembered seeing a LinkedIn post about this simple workshop method about demonstrating old ways of working and new ways of working. In the video they describe the overall technique, but several questions are left unanswered. So we did some thinking and created a version of our own. Please see the original video first: it's easier to understand this exercise after you've watched it.

This blog post is about explaining in detail what we did. This exercise truly is fun and very eye opening to the employees - after the initial "oh no not again some stupid post it note group work" shock ??

Prerequisites

• A company that is beginning to implement Office 365, Teams or other tools that allow modern ways of working
• 60 minutes (10 minutes for the preparations, 22 minutes for the exercise, 20-30 minutes for wrap up)

Two rooms:

• Room 1: a place where every team member can be seated in a way that they don't see each other
• Room 2: a place where every team member can gather around one big table

People needed

• 2 facilitators (one for each team)
• Two teams with 5-10 members each
• 1-2 observers for each team (facilitator can be an extra observer, but not the only one)

People don't need to know each other beforehand.

Materials for each team:

• Post it notes and a pen for each team member
• A stack of A4 or A3 papers, 3-5 marker pens, 1-2 magazines, 1-2 pairs of scissors, 1-2 tape rolls

Instructions:

Facilitators tell that we are going to do a group exercise and we need two groups and a couple of observers. The group exercise takes about 30 minutes and afterwards we gather back to the common room to show your group work. For the best results do not tell that this exercise is about old and new ways of working.

Facilitators divide people into two teams and name observers for each team. Facilitators take teams into their rooms.

Room 1 and Room 2 instructional differences are marked with italics.

Room 1:

Facilitator makes sure people are seated in a way they won't see each other. Facilitator gives materials to people. Everyone gets post it notes and one pen. The rest of the materials are given randomly. Not everyone gets the same materials.

Facilitator tells the observer(s) to observe the communication, collaboration and dynamics in the group.

Facilitator tells instructions to the whole team:

You as a team have to create together a 10 minutes long presentation about how to introduce your company to teenagers who are searching for summer jobs.

Your presentation has to include these parts: 1) Information about your organisation 2) Why should young people be interested in your company 2) A pitch of your most popular product.

Each of you have roles you have to fulfill. Give out random roles, one for each person. Roles can be for example: Project manager (responsible for the overall product), Graphic designer (responsible for the design), HR manager (responsible for the organisational introduction), Youth representative (responsible for the youth image) etc..

You are allowed to talk as a group in a meeting for one (1) minute in the beginning. Then you will work silently for 10 minutes (the facilitator gives a 5 minute and 9 minute warning). After that, you will have another meeting where you are allowed to talk again for one (1) minute. After the second meeting you will continue working silently for 10 minutes (the facilitator gives a 5 minute, 8 minute and 9 minute warning). After that time has passed, your presentation has to be ready.

Talking is NOT allowed in the exercise other than in the group meetings. However, you can send e-mails to each other. Write your e-mail to a post it note and facilitator will take it to the receiver.

Room 2:

Facilitator gathers all the team members around one big table. All of the materials are in the centre of the table. Facilitator tells the observer(s) to observe the communication, collaboration and dynamics in the group.

Facilitator tells instructions to the whole team:

You as a team have to create together a 10 minute long presentation about how to introduce your company to teenagers who are searching for summer jobs.

Your presentation can include for example these parts: information about your organisation, why should young people be interested in your company and a pitch of your most popular product.

You are free to share the workload however you feel. You can for example have roles like these: project manager (responsible for the overall product), graphic designer (responsible for the design)...

You are allowed to talk as a group in a meeting for one (1) minute in the beginning. Then you will work silently for 10 minutes (the facilitator gives a 5 minute and 9 minute warning). After that, you will have another meeting where you are allowed to talk again for one (1) minute. After the second meeting you will continue working silently for 10 minutes (the facilitator gives a 5 minute, 8 minute and 9 minute warning). After that time has passed, your presentation has to be ready.

Talking is NOT allowed in the exercise other than in the group meetings. However, you can chat with each other. Write your chat to a post it note and give it to your colleague.

Are we ready? Let's play!

The exercise ends and the facilitator takes the group back to the common room. If it's possible, hang the presentations on a wall to show appreciation to them.

The wrap up

Thank the people for the exercise and participation. Reveal them that we are NOT going to go through their presentations. Tell them that this exercise was about demonstrating old ways of working and modern ways of working.

Instead ask the group facilitators to tell what kind of things they noted while observing the group communication and collaboration. Let the team members add in.

After both teams have shared their views, the facilitator can add their own notes if needed.

These are some typical observations for each group:

The next step would be combining the observations with Teams interface and modern ways of working. For example file co-authoring, emojis and reactions, the meaning of efficient meetings etc…

I hope this detailed guidance helped you!

How have YOU utilised this workshop method in your organisation?

The actual materials we used in the workshop (minus the magazines since they were customer specific)