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by James Robertson.
Original Post: More on forests and trees
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After a break, we had a new game presented to us - this one was designed to demonstrate the kinds of communication issues that can crop up. Here's what we got:
We had one person on each red space, one person on each blue space. The goal was to get the people switched from side to side, given a set of rules:
You can move forward one space
You can "jump over" (like checkers) a person so long as they are facing you (started on other side)
Each person was given one bit of the rules, and they could only be described verbally (we couldn't throw them on a table and all read them)
The space we used was all in the hall (i.e., narrow). It was hard for people on one end to hear those on the other)
When trying to do the move, we could not talk at all
This meant we had to practice. We did that using cards, and came up with hand signals for use during the actual run. We found that doing the practice run face to face with cards was invaluable - we then executed the actual run flawlessly. A few things we saw:
Not everyone was playing - those observing affected the system - a "Heisenberg effect"
During our planning, no one got frustrated - one guy immediately figured it out. Thus, no one grabbed a deck and went off by themselves.
We knew it was possible (some had played before)
This was something of a metaphor for communication problems - the hall was like coordinating by phone instead of having a direct meeting. This led to a discussion on offshoring, and how communication would be an extra problem.
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