What can a game teach you about power? Turns out, quite a lot
Our collective responsibility and the possibilities to shift the power balance
by Thea Snow and Nour Sidawi
It started where many good things do — with a tweet.
This tweet led us to a place where something beautiful emerged that we didn’t expect. Before we knew it, we were hosting a global One Team Gov event, with more than 200 people registered to attend. (Thea Snow says it was definitely the biggest event she’s ever organised almost entirely by accident…!)
But first, let’s go back a few steps…
Why did we want to play the Powerplay game?
Power is an extraordinary topic to take on. We (Thea Snow and Nour Sidawi) were curious about how to facilitate and expose conversations about power, given that it remains something we don’t comfortably, openly, or regularly reflect on with colleagues and peers. As people working in and around government, we have the opportunity and imperative to encourage this conversation, support others to participate, and demonstrate personal action.
We both feel a responsibility to better understand and explore power — to build our power literacy — and Lauren Weinstein’s game felt like an interesting and thought provoking way to do this. We were aiming to enable people to have a conversation to explore what power means, and how it plays out in our lives and our work. We offered to host this session from a place of curiosity, rather than because we have deep expertise or experience in the field of power in co-design.
Who joined us on the day?
We had people join us from all over the world: Australia, Canada, England, Germany, Iceland, India, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Scotland, Sweden, United States, Wales, and more.
It was a truly global event, and this diversity led to some really interesting conversations about how power can play out differently in different places. But more on that later.
How did we play the game?
Well, firstly we had to convert the game, which was designed to be played offline in person, to one that could be played online. This involved adapting the rules and instructions slightly. Here’s what we ended up with…
We began by inviting people to break into groups of four to define power. We used George Aye’s series of questions on power as a provocation to help people start their journey to understanding power.
We asked, “What does power mean to you?” Here’s how people defined power…
To briefly summarise how it works, each person gets a set of 10 power cards (which acts as assets in their “power inventory”) that are prominent in Western societies. These include things like:
We also invited people to add their own “wildcard” — a power asset not identified in the deck, but which people felt could be valuable in the game as either a power asset, or an asset that could be used to disrupt power or neutralise things. Some of the wildcards people created included: citizenship, time, inner self-belief, and understanding coded language.
We then played three rounds. In each round, everyone was given a scenario which they needed to navigate using the power cards in their deck. For example:
We split people into groups of four to play. For each scenario, every participant played the power cards which they felt would be their strongest asset in that situation, and discussed — as a small group — why they chose those particular cards. They could only choose different power cards to the other people in their group.
We then returned from the breakout group and the “matching” power cards were revealed — in other words, those which Lauren had identified as being most effective in the given scenario.
According to our (slightly adapted rules), if people had 2 matching cards, they could keep the cards they had played in that round, and add 4 more power cards of their choosing to their pile. If people matched only one, or no cards, they had to set aside whatever cards they had played to one side, and could not use those cards again.
You can see what happens here. With each round, people either accumulate more power cards, or see their assets diminishing. This highlights how power begets power (i.e. the more cards you have to play, the more power you have, which makes you more likely to continue winning); and vice versa (i.e. the fewer cards you have, the harder it is to win, which means it’s likely that your power will continue to diminish). Some people accumulate a big inventory, while others find themselves with a small inventory. The size and variety of your power inventory impacts on how many decisions you can make about your life.
In addition to the active playing rounds, we also had small and big group reflections where we explored questions like:
- What are you learning from your reactions to the situations? What are you noticing?
- What was confronting/uncomfortable?
- What mechanisms might there be for equalising power?
- What does this mean for the power you may have or the power others may give you because of who you are?
For the purposes of this write-up, we feel this is enough detail to give you a sense of the game. But if you want more detail, or are keen to play this yourselves, we’ve provided the links to our facilitation notes and slides, which we’d invite you to use and adapt for your own context. We hope they provide some value, spark reflection, and provoke constructive discussion.
What did we learn?
The game worked brilliantly — both as a result of the bits that ran seamlessly, and those that didn’t. We had fascinating conversations in the group reflection. It struck us how much time a group might need to engage in deeper reflection about power and how valuable it would be to take that time, how much attention and care to the people and process a facilitator would need to devote, and how important it is to safely bring people in and out of the conversation.
As the game was played, a messy, entangled set of insights were exposed:
Power played out in the context of the session and beyond the confines of the game in real time
The more cards you have to play, the more power you have, which makes you more likely to continue accumulating power. Therefore, as one person noted, “Power doesn’t reside just in which cards you have; how you choose to play the game matters, too.”
The game design centres on the individual, with people stockpiling cards as the game progressed. It would be interesting to play around with this — to see whether power assets could either accrue or diminish for groups, rather than just individuals.
Implicit power was present in the virtual room i.e. the way power played out in the room beyond the confines of the game. It emerged that while some people played as themselves, others played more strategically. One person noted, “I am really curious to know which cards people would play given their positionality. I never played the majority group card and I wonder if that is due to my own lived experience.”
There was also a somewhat meta-reflection offered on how power was playing out in the context of this session, with one participant sharing the following reflection:
“Just a reflection on this reflection — there are 4 men out of 43 participants in this meeting, yet we have heard from men relatively often. Not saying these weren’t valuable contributions or anything, but I wonder if this relates to the power of ‘perceived permission’ to contribute to conversation in this space, or power of self confidence or similar…”
Power is interpreted and applied differently across cultures and geographic boundaries
The cultural and geographic diversity of the group meant that different interpretations of power assets and the game happened in real-time. This generated deep insights and made the space both a challenging and enabling one.
In the group, we reflected on what had been selected as the “matching” power cards. For example, “being part of the majority group” was not identified as a match for the “getting out of a tough spot” scenario described above. But one person felt very strongly that, at least in a United States context, this power asset would be one of the most vital to securing bail.
People also highlighted that cultural differences play out in significant ways — both in how cards are interpreted, and how they are played. For example, norms and expectations in Sweden around the justice systems differ significantly to those in the US. The group agreed that these differences supported even more interesting conversations around how power is culturally constructed and therefore eminently open to challenge and scrutiny.
The conditions of the game determined how most people played it
The rules and instructions set the conditions for the game. Notably, those rules did not openly or explicitly offer people an opportunity to share power with others in the group — but, that did not mean they could not choose to apply their power in that way.
We were *slightly* surprised by how many rule-followers we had in the virtual room! Less people than we thought took it upon themselves to bend (or generously interpret) the rules and instructions we provided throughout the game. We did, however, have one group who shared the following:
“We agreed at the first round to be a collective, which we kept throughout. We went rogue and it was beautiful! We were the change we wanted to see.”
Where to from here?
Those that attended the session reflected how the game enabled them to move much more quickly into substantial conversations about power than they otherwise could have. Several people have reached out to let us know they’re keen to try this themselves — with friends, with their team, with their leadership groups. One person noted, “it was refreshing to have the space and permission to talk about power in our group — we never actually talk about it, nor have the permission to talk about it anywhere else.”
With this in mind, we’ve created a number of resources (links below) to support those wanting to play this online to do so more easily. We’d love to hear of the hacks, tweaks, and adaptations you make, and how they work out for you!
The process of learning about, and addressing power imbalances requires a beginning, but cannot have an end. We hope that this game will be the beginning of a new process for some, and a useful addition — or extension — for others. We also hope, as Lauren Weinstein says, that our small contribution to this conversation “foster[s] dialogue and purposeful action around a topic that’s too important to sidestep but often is.”
The uncomfortable conversations need to happen — there is work to do. It’s better to have uncomfortable conversations on important topics, than to allow the silence to turn into indifference.
Resources
You can download the materials mentioned in our blog post below:
Our slightly adapted version of the Powerplay game is a prototype — we’re still learning too! We’re keen to hear what you think and how you’ve used it. You can get in touch with us at contact@oneteamgov.uk .
