Neue Narrative: Main Topic Focus
The time has come to spill the beans. The theme of the December issue of Neue Narrative is “Focus.” This issue is particularly exciting for us, as we are participating as an issue partner this time (*happy*). In our preparations, we asked ourselves: “Focus – what else do we want to pass on to you?” We rummaged around in our heads and BOOM, we pulled out an idea! Our game “The Focus Awakens” – and that’s exactly what we’d like to introduce to you now.
Have fun with it!
P.S.: Click here to go directly to the issues of Neue Narrative (it’s in German though)
A game for self-use and your organization
We live in a time full of distractions. We encounter this on a corporate level as well as on a personal level. A call here, a project there and another project and another – all of which are considered urgent. At the same time, we are flying back and forth, trying to fulfill our roles.
The laudation goes to those who manage to keep as many balls in the air as possible at the same time. Perhaps you still remember the assessment center exercises from previous years and in particular the post basket exercise. You are sitting at your desk and have a post basket. Tasks trickle in slowly and then faster and faster: Do the laundry, take the child to nursery, prepare the boss’s speech, cook lunch, call Mr. Smith and send Mrs. Meyers the figures. The aim was to find out how many balls can be juggled under stress and how well and effectively the tasks can be organized.
From a lean perspective, this honestly makes little sense, as it produces considerable task switching costs. It is better to concentrate on a few things and work through them one after the other.
To underline this, we would like to introduce you to our game “The Focus Awakens. “Our” should be put in brackets. A few years ago, we had the opportunity to get to know and experience this ourselves as part of a workshop and have carried it with us ever since.
You can play the game on your own, but it also works great in your team and in your organization. Herewith we pass it on like a good book.
Preparation
There are two rounds to the game. You need one sheet of paper and use the front and back, or you can use two different sheets. It is important that you cannot peek at the sheet from round one in round two. In addition to a pen, have a stopwatch or your cell phone ready.
Please draw the following table twice on your paper (it doesn’t have to be pretty).
Round 1
With the stopwatch in your hand, you start round one and start timing.
Please go through column by column and fill them in as quickly as you can. In column one, write the letters A to J from top to bottom in alphabetical order. At the bottom, go to the next column and write the numbers from 1 to 10. At the bottom, go to the next column and write down the letters in reverse order from J to A. Do the same in the next column from 10-1. In the last column, write down the letters “Republico!” one after the other.
At the very end, stop the time and write it down on the sheet. Please remember: “Built in Quality”. We want to make our customers happy. Of course, fast is great, but error-free is even better.
Schematically, the whole thing should look something like this:
Round 2
First, turn your sheet over or remove it from your line of sight. In the second round, we don’t go through column by column, but row by row. Your first line will be A-1-J-10-R and you will jump to the next one on your own. Basically like a typewriter. You do the whole thing again with the stopwatch and stop the time when you reach the bottom right.
And by the way: “Built in Quality” also applies here! Quickly, but not at the expense of quality. Schematically, it looks like this:
Evaluation
Now is the moment when we hope that the light bulb moment has occurred. However, we have already played the game many times in our courses and are in good spirits. Take a moment and think about the result. Why did it go so quickly in round one and not round two? Why was quality perhaps more of a challenge in round two? Can you transfer this to your work environment? Your working day?
Here’s a little benchmarking for your peace of mind. In round one, many take around 30-35 seconds. The record in one course was 17 seconds. In lap two, the time is usually around 1:35 minutes. The gap is naturally bigger here and typically ranges from 1:15-1:50 minutes.
This is due in particular to the aforementioned key-switching costs. It costs us an incredible amount of energy to go back and forth between tasks. The same applies to companies. There is often a lack of focus and it feels as if we have to and want to do everything at the same time. In the Kanban system, there is the wonderful phrase: “Start finishing, stop starting”. Methodically, for example, you would create limits in an organization for the amount of work that can be done in parallel.
Another interesting observation: we deliver the same product in both rounds. Both times, a customer receives a slip of paper from us with the numbers and letters filled in. However, we are considerably faster in round one. Not because we get bonus payments or someone cracks the whip. We are faster simply because we keep our focus and do the work differently.
True to the motto: “Work smarter, not harder!”
If you fancy more games of this kind, we recommend our Agile Warm-Up course. In this entertaining one-day course, we playfully demonstrate what agility is all about and why it can be so much fun: