The last day at AYE was a full-day workshop on knowing your options when attacking problems. This session was particularly interesting as all the hosts, sans Jerry, facilitated. The goal of the session was to give participants the ability to figure out what approach to problem solving might work best in their situations.
In this workshop there were 4 main approaches: Solve, Manage, Cope, Exit. We were asked to envision a work-related problem and then choose which particular approach we felt we were using by spreading out across the room from Solve to Exit. Everyone ranked their problems from 1 – 10 with 10 being “holy-ka-smoly I need to fix this now”
Our Finished Product
The first half of the session was a simulation where we broke into groups and the hosts gave us a ‘problem’. Well, actually it wasn’t a problem, it was a goal where we needed to work as a team and deliver ‘the most value’ to our customers who were Star Wars collectors. Ah, the good ‘ol Lego game. Steve Smith handed out the boxes of Lego and my first instinct was to do nothing and instead give our collectors an autographed box from the original Star Wars cast. That seemed like it was have the most value to collectors. Something neat happened then. The team LOVED the idea and we had instant buy-in through a unanimous fist-of-five which more or less contributed to our LACK of problems since we dissolved it through solid buy-in.
Other groups that built the model ran into skill problems (some people aren’t good at building Lego), workflow problems (hard to co-ordinate that many people on 1 model) and other issues that collaborating teams typically face.
We did a bit of planning to figure out how to make the display case, get the autographs and print out a certificate at the hotel desk and during our execution everyone volunteered for a task and did it. As people were coming and going from our main work area, we talked about how the goal was extremely clear and there was never a moment where we questioned each other. Perhaps it was dumb luck. Perhaps not. Read More
