Easy Target Estates

I was waiting for my car insurance this morning and found a brilliant idea from the Vancouver Police Department.

It is a brochure, a three part folded, multi-coloured brochure that looks like an ad for one of those lovely new housing developments. On the front is a big 3500 square foot home with the name above it - Easy Target Estates.

Open the brochure and you see a close up of the house. The page says
"welcome to Easy Target Estates". Then you look at little close up bubbles pointing to various areas of the home and read the descriptions. They say things like:

"lightweight plywood door for quick and easy access.
Beautiful easyclimb oak tree.
Ladder left in the yard for those hard to reach places.
Walk right in. No messy alarm systems.
No deadbolt, no problem, any credit card will do."

This is a very tongue in cheek brochure about how we can make it easy for thief to break into your home. The back page has a lovely script that uses marketing words to sell this home. Words like:
accessible
tempting
inviting
open
enticing
vacant and so on.

I love this brochure. It is clever and we learn the key messages we need from it.

How I Would Use This

Let's face it, we love playing with the negative side of life. You could have your groups create brochures like this for:

The Bureau of Bottleneckery
House of Clutter
Dispute Depot
Junk Is Us

and have them draw in all the problem areas. They could compete for the best brochure.

So I give you another seed of an idea. You flesh it out.

Here is the link to get you started.
http://www.kwantlen.ca/vpd/intro.html

Booh Ha Ha

Saw a good game tonight that I think I can use. It comes from the world of improv theatre. You get everyone to stand in a circle. Person #1 turns to #2 and makes a strange sound accompanied by a gesture. Person #2 mirrors the gesture back to #1 and then turns to Person #3 and shows them their own new gesture with weird sound.

Around the circle it goes until it comes all the way back.

Try this game; I mean, just try it. Here is what I found. It is so easy to forget to mirror back the first gesture and sound that is offered to you.

How I Would Use This
Communication. We are very good and jumping in with our words and ideas and often neglect to even listen to the person who is talking to us. In this activity, we HAVE to acknowledge their sound and gesture before continuing on to our own. Kinda like group input.

Bottom of the Cup

Now here is a great little challenge.

Tape two paper cups together with two ping-pong balls inside.
The way you tape them together is open end to open end.
Now challenge someone to get the balls each into a separate end of the cups.
It can be quite challenging.

What you do is spin the cups and the balls will fly apart into separate corners.

How I Would Use This

Well, first off I think it shows creative solutions. But I sense there are more ideas that I haven't thought of yet.

Here is how I go about figuring out how to use these ideas. I make a note of the main ideas I am dealing with. They are:

-separation
-togetherness (clinginess)
-shaking things up (spinning them around)
-counter-intuitive results

So, have at it. Can you think of anything that would connect to this simple and cool demo?

Would You Rather

Here is a warm-up/icebreaker I want to try later this week.

Get all the participants up on their feet.
Indicate that there are two sides to the room; one for each answer.
Ask them a question like: would you rather live in the country of the city?
Indicate which side they go to for city, and which side they go to for country?
When they get to their side, have each person find a partner and tell them why they chose that answer.

Now my topic for this week is Sustainable Living so I would work out a few questions lie:

Would You Rather

be a vegetarian or a meat/everything eater?
ride a bike or take the bus?
work on a farm or in a factory?

Each question would allow the participants to move to the right answer.
A great twist would be to ask them why they think the others went to the different answer.

Use this for any topic.

Communication:
Would you rather
Be yelled at or talked about behind your back?
Tell a white lie or hurt someone's feelings?

Teamwork
Would you rather
Work with people like you or different?
Be a star or be on a team?

Change
Would you rather
Make changes slowly and gradually or very fast and get it done?
Change someone else or change yourself?

Answering Machine

I have an idea kicking around in my head but it isn't fully formed. But that doesn't mean it isn't worth capturing; so here it is.

What if an activity consisted of using an answering machine (or really a tape of some kind)?

Here are two ways of thinking about it.

1. What if a small group had a chance to play back the tape on an answering maching and listened to 5 or 6 messages. When they had heard them all they had to guess something about the recorded messages. Perhaps they guess whose machine it is. Perhaps they guess what the situation is and they are listening for verbal clues. Hmmm.

2. You set up an answering machine that a small group can record on. The group gets a task, such as create the last six messages that a "leader" might have on their machine. The group works out the messages and then has fun recording them. Each group plays their messages to the whole group and discuss aspects of leadership.

How I Would Use This
Don't know, but it is percolating around in my head. Communication, miscommunication, analysis of a problem, looking for clues, aspects of leadership, control, teamwork, etc.

Got any thoughts or ideas. Shoot em on in here.

Sum It Up

Today's activity comes from www.thiagi.com
This gentleman is amazing at figuring out how to get people learning and enjoying it. Please go to his website and look at Play for Performance, his free newsletter. If you love it as much as I do you can even help support his work.

Best Summaries
Asking listeners to summarize your presentation from time to time is a good technique for encouraging people to listen carefully, take notes, and to review the content. Best Summaries uses this basic concept.

Purpose
To encourage active and collaborative review of the presentation.
To focus listeners' attention on important points in the presentation.

Participants
Any number. Participants are divided into teams from time to time during this activity.

Time
Depends on the amount of information and the number of summary interludes. Suggested time: 60 minutes (consisting of three 10-minute presentations, each followed by 10 minute team review sessions).

Supplies
Index cards
Timer
Whistle

Use This Strategy When—
the instructional content involves concepts, principles, and procedures
participants are capable of taking notes, summarizing the content, and evaluating other people's summaries
you have a logical outline for your presentation

Sample Topics
Organizational values
Basic principles of customer service
Doing business in Texas
The coaching procedure
Life cycle of a high-tech product
Maintaining a database

Preparation
Prepare an outline. Chunk the content of your presentation into logical 10-minute units. Also prepare appropriate flip chart pages or slides.

Flow
Brief participants. Explain that you will be making a series of 10-minute presentations. At the end of each unit, you will pause for each participant to summarize what you presented in that unit. These summaries will be evaluated by other participants and the best summaries will receive special recognition. Encourage participants to take good notes during your presentation so they can produce effective summaries.
Present the first unit. Keep your eye on the clock and try to stick to your schedule.

Pause for summaries. Distribute blank index cards to each participant. Ask participants to summarize your presentation on one side of the card. Suggest a suitable time limit. At the end of this time, ask participants to stop writing. Ask them to write a four-digit identification number on the other side of the card. Participants should remember this number so they can identify their card later.

Form teams. Organize participants to teams of four to seven members each. Seat each team around a table. Ask someone at each team to collect the summaries from team members and shuffle the packet of cards.
Exchange and evaluate. Give the packet of summary cards from the first team to second one, from the second team to the third one, and so on, giving the cards from the last team to the first one. Ask members of each team to collaboratively review the summaries and select the best one, using whatever criteria they want. Announce a suitable time limit.
Conclude the evaluation activity. At the end of the allotted time, ask each team to read the summary that was rated as the best. After all teams read the best summaries, ask each team to read the identification number on the back of the card. Ask this person to stand up, and lead a round of applause for this person. Briefly comment on the summaries, identifying the key points and correcting any misconceptions.
Repeat the process. Continue with your next unit of presentation. Follow up with individual summary writing and team evaluation to identify the next set of best summaries.

Conclude the session. After the last round of presentation and evaluation, thank all participants for their contribution. Invite participants to retrieve their summary cards from the next table.
Adjustments

Not enough time? Reduce the summary to a single sentence to be written within a minute. Also make the entire presentation and conduct a single round of summarizing and evaluating.

Too many people? Instead of asking all teams to read their best summaries, select one or two teams at random and ask them to read the summaries.

Auditorium setup prevents teamwork? Individualize the evaluation process: After writing the summaries, ask participants to exchange summary cards several times. Now ask each participant to read the summary on the card she ended up with. Invite participants with a good summary on their card to come to the front of the room and read it. Identify and congratulate the authors of these summaries.
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Common Ground

Here is a super icebreaker that takes it's background from musical chairs.
Get an odd number of people sitting in chairs in a circle. You, the facilitator, stand in the middle. The person in the middle has to find some "common ground" with others in the circle. The person in the middle makes a true statement about themselves: e.g. I was born in England. or "I am wearing my hair in a ponytail today".

Anyone else in the circle who has the same truth about themselves has to get up and find a new seat. The person in the middle is also looking for a seat. One person will be unable to find a seat, so they end up in the middle making a true statement about themselves.

Simple Analoby

A few days ago I heard a very passionate speaker trying to get the point acorss that the industry she was involved in worked behind the scenes and only got noticed when something went wrong.

She made a delightful comparison. She said (words my own) It is like housework. It goes on every day and when it is done properly nobody notices. But let it go undone for even a day and suddenly everyone notices and things fall apart pretty quickly.

Now that worked for me. The first point she made I understood, but when she moved it to the realm of housework, I got it clearly and it stuck in my mind.

How I Would Use This

I would just keep in mind that for the most important points I want to make I would look for more than one way to describe them. Comparisons to ideas with which we are familiar make it easy to remember points.

How about these? Give it a try, what would you use for a comparison?

Orientation of new people at work.

Stress from taking on too much at once.

Appreciation for others every now and then.

Give someone the right computer hardware and software for his work.

Try to find simple ideas that illustrate these points. Please post any ideas you get.