Give and take new years eve resolutions

Few days ago I held the last retrospective with my team. That’s because I got transferred inside company to a new team. Over the time one of the central point of retrospective facilitated by me becomes the “handshakes game”. This game is an evolution based on original Management 3.0 Practices exercise called Merit Money. Feel free to have a look at the original exercise.

Now, what I end up calling “handshakes game” has the following rules:

# in retrospective meeting each member give three handshakes to their teammates.

# everyone is encouraged to physically handshake and also to say a few words of why the teammate deserves the handshake. Both physically handshake and the extra words (beside nomination) are optional but most of the team members do them both.

# there are no special criteria to be taken in consideration when nominations are made. Anyone uses only free will and best intentions when made nominees. You can give even multiple handshakes to the same person if you like or consider so (but up to three, of course).

That’s it. This simple game creates extraordinary moments in retrospective and great dynamics for the team. With my team, we reward the biggest handshake collector (for an itteration) with a Twix. I opt for Twix because it’s quite usual to have a draw, and a Twix is easier to be split. There are also leaderboards (where names are coded in three chars and score is represented in bits and Bytes — don’t ask me why but coders find this style quite appealing).

The new years eve variant

Participating last retrospective with my team put me into a very creative mood.

I ask team to try a different handshakes game:

# everyone received three post it notes and instead of handshakes I asked them to write three new years eve resolutions that they think their colleagues deserve to accomplish in the next year

# when done writings all post it where spread across the table and people where invited to pick what resolutions thinks where written for them

That moment was an extraordinary one. Everyone silently examine the post its, trying to figure out if their peers really think of her/him and what wishes are addressed to.

In the end no post its remain on table. Everyone knew if their news year eve resolution where picked by the intended person but no one knew if they really picked the addressed ones. What a wonderful imperfection.

Just for the record I picked:

for him to “Y:X” help his new team

WORK LESS

Shave more often

I’m pretty sure that the last one was for me! ;)

Thank you for reading this, spread the word if you find it valuable and try this with your team. I’m waiting for your feedback.