Washing Machines

What it is

Your crack executive team has just been handed a seemingly impossible task: turn the whole company around by moving a load of 10,000 old washing machines. Sell them and the company survives; fail and everyone is out of a job. Split into small teams, each group has fifteen minutes to build a marketing plan and deliver a 30-second commercial to the room. Then the pitches fly — and they are almost always funnier, stranger and more inventive than anyone expected walking in.

Washing Machines is a low-energy, high-imagination exercise about creativity under pressure. It needs no equipment and works almost anywhere, which makes it a great opener: run it early in a workshop, before a brainstorm or a planning session, whenever you want a group to loosen up and discover how much more they invent together than any of them would alone.

How it works

The group divides into small teams of three to six. Each team is told it owns 10,000 used washing machines and must market them — producing a 30-second sales pitch for the rest of the room. Teams get roughly fifteen minutes to think, argue and rehearse, then perform their commercials one after another; an optional round of voting crowns the most creative, unique or sellable idea. The pitches take only a few minutes, but the conversation afterward is the real payload. (Full step-by-step setup and debrief questions are in the downloadable guide below.)

What it reveals: critical thinking and hidden assumptions

The brief sounds impossible only because of the assumptions people bring to it. Most teams instantly decide the machines must be sold as washing machines, to consumers, exactly as-is — and then wonder why the task feels hopeless. The groups that break out are the ones who question those constraints: Do they have to work? Do they have to wash clothes? Do we have to sell them whole? Scrap metal, planters, art installations, retro furniture, parts — the moment a team notices the box it drew for itself, the problem opens up. It is a compact, memorable lesson in how often the real limits on a problem are the ones we invented, not the ones we were given.

What it reveals: creative problem solving under pressure

A tight clock does interesting things to a group. With only fifteen minutes, teams cannot afford long debate, so you see how they generate ideas, how quickly they commit, and whether they can build on a half-formed thought instead of killing it. This is where the activity earns its keep: it demonstrates, in a way people feel rather than are told, that a group riffing together produces more — and wilder — ideas than the same people would sitting alone. Playful stakes lower the fear of looking foolish, and that psychological safety is precisely what unlocks the creativity most planning meetings suffocate.

What it reveals: communication and building on ideas

Fifteen minutes and one shared pitch force a team to converge fast. Watch how they do it. Does everyone’s idea get heard, or does one loud voice steer the whole plan? Do people say ‘yes, and’ to a teammate’s suggestion, or quietly discard it? The 30-second limit adds a second layer: the group has to distill a sprawling brainstorm into one sharp, coherent message — the same editing challenge behind every good presentation, pitch and status update. How a team communicates under this small pressure mirrors how it communicates under the real kind.

Interesting things to watch for

• One person quietly taking control of a group and steering it toward a single outcome.
• Individuals pushing only for their own idea rather than helping the team build a better one together.
• Teams that never break the obvious frame — still trying to sell working washing machines to households when the room next door is selling scrap, art and spare parts.
• How groups handle the clock: who keeps time, who panics, who thrives when the deadline is tight.
• The gap between a team’s funniest idea and the idea it actually pitches — and why the safer one so often wins.
• How much sharper and stranger the collective output is than the ideas any single member floated first.

Variations

• Give people 4–5 minutes to brainstorm individually before joining their team — then compare how much richer the group’s ideas become.
• Let each team decide for itself whether the machines actually work; the choice quietly reframes the whole problem.
• For highly competitive groups, rule that participants may not vote for their own team.
• Swap the 30-second commercial for a full-page magazine ad or a website mocked up on flipchart paper.
• Change the product entirely — old monitors, forgotten televisions, 1994 Manhattan phone books — almost any unsellable object works.

Who it’s for

Washing Machines suits groups of 8 to 35, indoors or out, and needs nothing but a room and a timer. It is low-energy and quick, which makes it ideal early in a workshop or offsite — a fast, funny warm-up that primes a team for the brainstorming, planning or problem-solving to come. It is a natural fit for any team that wants to think more creatively, challenge its own assumptions, or simply see what it can do together.

Questions to spark the debrief

The activity is the vehicle; the debrief is where the lesson lands. Questions we ask:

• How did your team arrive at its marketing plan?
• What assumptions did you make about the washing machines — that they must be about laundry, that you had to sell to consumers, that you could not alter them at all?
• How did those assumptions shape the result you ended up with?
• Were the group’s ideas better or bolder than the ones you had on your own? Why?
• What implications does all of this have for you back on the job?

Frequently asked questions

How many people is Washing Machines for?
Washing Machines is built for 8–35 people. We can scale the setup up or down to fit your group.

How long does Washing Machines take?
Allow about 45–60 min (incl. debrief). Most of the real value comes from the debrief that follows.

Can Washing Machines be run indoors or outdoors?
Indoors or outdoors.

What does Washing Machines teach a team?
It focuses on communication, problem solving and critical thinking, and the debrief connects what happens in the activity directly to how your team works day to day.

Is there a free guide for Washing Machines?
Yes. You can download a free step-by-step facilitation guide (PDF) for Washing Machines from this page and run it yourself.

Want a facilitator to run Washing Machines for your team? Explore our team building experiences and ongoing programs.