Remember as Much as You Can

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(Refer our High Quality Management Encyclopedia “Management Universe” at: http://management-universe.blogspot.com/)

Remember as Much as You Can

As an effective workshop/seminar leader you need an effective management exercise or game as an opener. "Remember as Much as You Can" fills up this need pretty well. You can use this individual and group exercise in your sessions or modules on personal/professional effectiveness enhancement, observation skills, team work, team building, strategy formulation, communication, synergy, time management etc.

Tell the participants of your workshop/seminar that each of them should give you one item that they have with them. It could be anything. They will receive that item back in their possession after the exercise is over. Preferably it should be an inexpensive item. Go to each one of them personally and collect the item. Make sure that you pick up from each one of them a unique item such that no item is duplicated. Advice the participants that they better remember the item they are handing over to you in order to retrieve their item after the exercise is finished.

This way you would have collected the number of unique items that will equal the number of participants. If the number of participants are less, add a few items from your side to make the total number of items equal to around 25 to 30 or so.

Place all of these items haphazardly on a table in the seminar room. Make sure to keep the items separated from each other so that these can be seen clearly.

Ask the participants to come near the table and observe the items paced on the table. They should observe and remember as many items as they can. Give them one minute to observe. Then they should revert to their seating place. Let them write down the names of the items they observed and remembered in their writing pads. Let them also make a count of it. They should turn over the page on which they wrote and open a fresh page in their note pad. They will not refer the earlier page until told to do so.

Now divide the participants randomly into a few groups; each group consisting of around 5 participants. Members of each group will sit together in a circle. Ask them they they will have to carry out the same exercise as a group. Each group should try to maximize its total number of observations. Before starting the exercise in groups, members in each group can have an internal meeting and discussion on how they wish to maximize their observations as a group.

Allow members of each group to go near the table group by group and make the observations for one minute and then return to their seating place. After coming back to their seats each member can write down the items seen and remembered by him on a fresh sheet of paper in his note pad. Later on they can pool up their individual item lists and make one common long list of all the combined observations in each group. Each group will count the total number of items they observed and put down that number on the paper.

Now ask each person the count of observations they made when they had carried out this exercise individually. Also ask each group to tell you the number of total observations they made during group working.

Invariably it will be seen that when participants worked as groups they performed much better together as compared to when they did the exercise individually.

Initiate a discussion and allow the participants to talk. The discussion will help clarify the issues and concepts related to observation skills, memory power, strategy formulation, team work, team building and synergy. Part of the discussion may also touch some aspects of time management.

Close the session with your observations, comments and any additional theoretical inputs you wish to give.

Get Hold of the Related Books

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1. Classic Management Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers
2. Classic Management Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers (Volume 2)
3. Classic Team Building Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers
4. 101 Classic Management Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers

Building Blocks

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"Building Blocks" is an effective group and participative game. It can be used in the sessions on observation skills, memory effectiveness, leadership, followership, communication, giving effective instructions, motivation, time management, team work and team building. The game is also a good energizer and icebreaker.

You are the program leader or the workshop facilitator and you need to do some preparation before administering this game. To start with, you have to have one master set of many square, rectangular, triangular and such shapes of blocks made of wood or plastic or any other such solid material. The blocks should be of various colors. From these blocks you should be in a position to make stable structure of blocks. Next step is to make such 3 to 4 more sets depending upon the number of participants in your program or workshop and how many groups you wish to form. Each set will have identical combinations of blocks of various shapes and colors.

Before the session in which you plan to play this game, build up a stable structure using the various shaped and colored blocks of your mater set of blocks in a room adjacent to the conference or seminar hall in which you are conducting your session. In case a separate room is not available, cover this structure of blocks in such a manner in the same seminar room so that the participants can not see it.

By now you are pretty familiar with the method of random formation of the groups. To refresh on the methodology, you can refer the previous management games and exercises. Using this method divide the entire participants in the groups of around 6 to 7 persons in each group randomly.

The members of each group will sit together. Give one set of blocks that you had already prepared to each group. Ask each group to appoint a group coordinator.

Now the game starts. The coordinators of each group are asked to go to the structure and observe it carefully. At one time the coordinator of each group can not stay near the structure for more than one minute. The coordinator will report back to his group about what he saw. He will describe the structure to them. He will give instructions to his group members on how to construct the replica of the master or model structure that he saw. The other members of the group can have a dialogue with the coordinator. However, the coordinator is not allowed to touch the blocks or physically demonstrate how the construction should be done. He can just about describe how the master structure looked like.

The group can send the coordinator to have a second look at the structure. In fact there is no restriction on the number of times a coordinator can visit the structure to observe it. But he can not spend more than one minute near the structure observing it during each of his visits. Groups are also free to change their coordinators during the game as many number of times as they want.

When all the groups declare the completion of their structures using their building blocks, their structures will be compared to the original or master structure.

Get the participants to start discussing their experiential learning from this game. How they would like to play the game if asked to do it again?

Give your observations and analysis on what went right and what went wrong and why. Provide additional inputs if necessary or planned and wrap up the session.

Get Hold of the Related Books

You can order the following books on "management games and icebreakers" as printed books and eBooks from Amazon online:

1. Classic Management Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers
2. Classic Management Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers (Volume 2)
3. Classic Team Building Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers
4. 101 Classic Management Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers

Related Reading: (Repository of a large number of articles in management and leadership): http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com and http://management-universe.blogspot.com

Observations

How well one observes is the starting point of any improvements. If one observes more and also more keenly, he can gauge the existing status and then, the scope and potential of improvements in anything, any person or "self" much better than the person who is not so good in observing.

The management exercise presented here brings out the level of current observation skills of the individuals in a group and and also the average of the observation capabilities of the group as a whole. It establishes the need for improvement in observation and introspection skills of the participants for bringing out improvements in personal and professional effectiveness and therefore, the need for your seminar.

It is appropriate to carry out this exercise at the beginning (after the initial introductions etc) in every personal and professional effectiveness improvement program.

Instruct the participants to pull out their writing pad and pens or pencils. Ask them to write down each and every observation they made from the time they woke up in the morning till the time they entered the seminar hall. Tell them that they should put down their pens or pencils on the table after they have written down all of their observations signalling completion of their tasks. Ask them to give serial numbers to their observations.

After the whole group has finished doing this, request the first participant to tell you and the rest of the group as to how many observations he made. He will tell the number of observations he made. Repeat this with every participant of the program.

Now, make you comments by telling the range of numbers of observations made by the participants of the group i.e. the count of maximum observations and the count of minimum observations made in the group. Give them the group average also. Generally you may find that not many people in the group could make many observations. Few participants might not have written even one or two observations. Allow the participants to give you the feedback on what they experienced while doing this exercise. They might tell you that it was a pretty difficult exercise for them.

Emphasize that the first step for bringing out any improvement in anything, in personal and professional life is to improve the observation skills.

You may extend this exercise by requesting the participants to identify the observations made by each one of them on human beings and inanimate objects. Show them the percentages of two types of observations- the human beings related observations and inanimate objects related observations.

You may even go further and request them to identify the observations made on "self" out of the the observations made on human beings by them. Work out and show these percentages too. The observations made on "self" might be much less, perhaps.

In most of the groups a pattern will emerge that observations made on human beings are less than the observations made on inanimate objects. And within the observations made on human beings the observations made on "self" are less than the ones made on other people.

Conclude by saying that if the participants wish to bring about the improvements within themselves, it will be necessary for them to start introspecting more and more i.e. observations within "self". And deliver your punch line by saying that your program will include these aspects.

Get Hold of the Related Books

You can order the following books on "management games and icebreakers" as printed books and eBooks from Amazon online:

1. Classic Management Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers
2. Classic Management Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers (Volume 2)
3. Classic Team Building Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers
4. 101 Classic Management Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers

Related Reading: (Repository of a large number of articles in management and leadership): http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com and http://management-universe.blogspot.com