Ball Mania

What it is

This event is incredibly fun and gets every person involved as links in a chain. If you need to get your group up and moving around, laughing and having a good time, this is a GREAT exercise.

The bonus is that it is also incredibly useful to uncover the process of how the group accomplishes tasks and makes decisions.

What happens

After breaking the group into three separate teams, you place a small rope between the each of the teams. You then tell the group they must get several balls through all groups while not dropping them. Each person must touch them, but only one person can touch it at a time.

The fun begins when you tell the group they must all come to a consensus about how many balls they can move through the system in a certain amount of time. Amazingly enough, NO ONE will cross that small rope barrier you put up. They assume they cannot cross it.

9.5 times out of 10 the group chooses a goal that is unattainable in the amount of time available. This can lead to some very interesting discussion about quality vs. quantity during the debrief.

Who it's for

If you need a fun game for lots of people - the more the merrier - that also has potential discovery for the group regarding assumptions, hidden barriers, goal setting and and/or a discussion of processes, this is a your game.

More Information? Read On.

The purpose of this exercise is for a team to look at it's current system of operating procedures and examine questions like quality vs. quantity , the rewards or pitfalls of goal-setting and the perceived and actual barriers existing between subparts of one team.

Inevitably, as in many of the exercises, participants begin to make up their own rules that were never stated. This important discovery has lead many teams to reorganize their thinking about the unwritten 'rules' of their communication and overall organization. It is incredible how many 'rules' the group creates to increase the barriers between them. As in all of our exercises, the true value will be seen when the group begins discussing their own barriers.

This can be a very powerful "nuts and bolts" self-examination for any team wishing to improve. Due to this, be prepared to allow for some extra time for the group to examine itself and then prepare some new groundrules to use in future exercises and at work.

Although the photo shows them outside, this event can just as easily be run inside.

What to watch for

• See if they walk across the lines/webbing you set up to strategize and plan with the other groups?
• Do they yell across the lines?
• You never told them they could not cross the lines!.
• Who emerges as the leader how does he or she include or exclude group members?.
• Does the group try different strategies if the first plan is not working?
• If you were to give the balls value, what would they represent to the group?

Variations

• Silence some or all of the group members.
• Blindfolds are always fun to mix it up.
• Use masking tape and assign a value to each ball to make it similar to your organization.
• Give each group a list of ways in which they can 6 handle the balls.
• For example, in each group one person must only use their left hand, one person must stand on one foot, one person may not touch the ball at all (use their shirt is common), etc.
• This increases the creativity and fun for the group.