Using the Meddlers game to make an inventory of your organization
The Meddlers game is one of the Management 3.0 practices that I was able to try during the animation of a company seminar.
Case study (comments in italics)
The goal of the workshop was to discover agility and SAFe, as well as to project these practices onto their organization.
Before leaving on this projection, we asked them to take stock of the current state of their organization using the Meddlers game: what are the teams, who does what on a global scale, who is working or needs to work with whom?
First part: inventory
The Meddlers game helped a lot with the mapping process thanks to the abstract nature of the cards. The participants assigned a role type to each “hat”, they were able to appreciate the originality of the characters, and finally, they composed the teams via the larger cards (gift, light bulb, clock, and balloon).
As we had split the participants into two groups, after 20 minutes of deliberation, they realized there were differences in representation and understanding of the organization between the two groups. Alignment with the global representation of their organization was the first challenge.
— The abstract nature of the icons and characters was confusing for the participants at first. By emphasizing that “it’s up to you to assign meaning to each one”, they managed to get into the game.
We accompanied them in this visual flattening of their organization (a facilitator per sub-group was necessary) by challenging them with questions such as: “and for this hat what is the level of responsibilities?”, “Which teams have dependencies between them?” or “how does it work between these teams?”…
Once launched, the group began using the materials in the room: post-it notes to name the teams, and glasses to simulate existing boundaries or hierarchy in a team (the leader was posted on top of the glass).
Beyond the visual representation of their organization, they also shared their feelings and their subjective vision.
Second part: projection
Then, in front of the quick presentation we gave them about agile practices and SAFe, they used the representation made earlier to think about “how to implement agile practices at home” and especially “what adaptations should we plan for in our organization?”.
The simple visual representation provided by the Meddlers game made the participants aware of the systemic aspect of their organization. For example, if they make a change in one team, it will impact other teams around them.
— Using a common visual representation of the current state of their organization and operations, participants realized that there was still a long way to go to bring agility to all teams.
With my co-facilitator, we let them brainstorm for 15min and then asked them to think about the first steps: what are the first small concrete actions to move forward little by little toward the imagined changes?
Thinking only about the “first steps” allowed them to deflate the balloon (we felt a bit of stress at the idea of the high step to climb) and it brought a real movement since 2 months later, this company called us back to be accompanied and to train all their collaborators to agility (one of the actions decided at the end of the seminar).
Learnings
Now, I add a little time in my workshop flow to give participants time to “let go” of the traditional and classical view of their company’s organization chart. This was my first time using the Meddlers Game tool and I found it an excellent tool for visualizing and creating collective awareness on the subjects of organization and the global inner workings of the company, through the visual and kinesthetic side.
If you want to learn more about Meddlers game : https://management30.com/practice/meddlers/
