Hollow Square

This game can be used to help teams understand the impact of communication between those who develop plans and those who have to implement them. It also highlights helpful and not so helpful behaviours when planning, assigning or completing tasks. Teams that regularly work on problem solving will find the game useful for alerting them to factors that encourage or restrict effectiveness.

It can be played at several levels of complexity.

The Game

You divide your group into a Planning Team and an Operations Team. The Planning Team have 20mins to prepare a briefing that will enable the Operations Team to carry out a specific task – the building of a hollow square.

The Operations Team then have to carry out the task working from the briefing they have received without any further input from Planning.

At the end of a time limit both teams review the performance against the task, quality of briefings, assignments and instructions plus the wider implications for their work situation.

In the more complex version teams can be chosen to reflect their real work roles or their level of attention to detail! A longer version can be played with Planning allowed to intervene halfway through the process.

Typically, the game promotes an active discussion about behaviours, assumptions made by both teams, quality of delegation and actions to improve communication.