QUALITY GAMES FOR GROUPS [This file consists of a series of messages exchanged on the TQM-L list among trainers in quality. Each offers a game or exercise useful in a training setting. To provide feedback or ask questions, see the addresses provided with each text.] PDCA Card Game This activity is designed to illustrate the benefits of the PDCA cycle. Prior to the activity you will need to presort several decks of cards. Arrange the decks so that each deck has eights aces, eight 2s, eight 3s, and so on through eight 10s. Do not use the face cards. There should be 80 cards in the deck. Eight of each number ace through 10. FIRST (The old way) Give out one deck to each team. Don't tell them anything about the cards yet, like total number of points or anything else. They may not touch the cards at all until the trainer says "GO". Tell them the object is to divide the cards as evenly as possible among the team members according to point value on the face of the cards. Ace counts 1 point, 10 counts 10 points, all others count the actual number (2 counts 2, 3 counts 3, etc.). Member totals may vary by one point. Say "GO" and stop them after 30 seconds. Did they get them all divided evenly? Probably not. Put the cards back in the middle of each table and tell them once again that they can't touch the cards until you say "GO". Go on to the plan stage. PLAN Briefly explain the concept of PDCA. Tell them they will now have a chance to "plan" how to divide the cards equally before actually doing it. Tell them anything they want to know about the cards now. Give them about 5-10 minutes. Be clear that they are not to touch the cards until you say "GO". Most teams will go to great lengths to get their hands on the cards (one team even spilled water on their cards so they could spread them over the table to dry, face-up.) After most of the teams have their plan together, tell them they have 2 minutes to execute their plans, say "GO". DO Let them execute their plans and time them (you may want to put a grid on a flipchart to record their times). They will probably take 1.5-4 minutes here. CHECK Have the teams discuss at their tables how they can improve their process. Again, they may not touch the cards until you say "GO". After 3-5 minutes, say "GO". ACT Let them execute their improved plans. Many will come very close to the original 30 second time allotment. Record the new times, almost everyone will improve. Discuss as a large group the various processes and improvements. Review the concept of PDCA. Well, that's it for today. Hope others have ideas they are willing to share. Let's all grow together in our ability to communicate the quality concepts to our students. Dave Vollmer Chippewa Valley Technical College 620 W Clairemont Avenue Eau Claire, WI 54701 715-833-6510 715-833-6470 (fax) DVollmer@mail.chippewa.tec.wi.us ------------------------------ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 09 Dec 1994 09:35:48 MST From: Jim Campbell To: learning-org@world.std.com Subject: Re: Boring firms `are killing creativity' in the workplace A thought on the Boring Firms Killing Creativity issue that in my mind belongs in the discussion, Organizational understanding, and a technique that is both illustrative and instructive. I was preparing for a presentation to 100 people on team building, the title of which was "Team Building: Tuning Up Your Response Ability". The technique consisted of a ball of wool long enough to connect 30 - 40 people, the ball is handed to one person who makes one wrap around their hand and then passes the ball to someone of their choosing, and so on until the ball is exhausted. The result is that they weave a "cat's cradle" linking the group together in a "random" way. I put the quotes around random because each new link is founded on the basis of a good idea at the time the ball is passed. I then compare this living metaphor to the evolution of organizations, any organization, YOUR organization. All of the links were built on the basis of a good idea or good need at the time with all the care and thinking of the deciding group (guided of misguided). The point is that the organization did not evolve through premeditation or with the intent to damage at the decision time. It is most often in the hind sight that the decision may look bad. NO ONE is to Blame. That final statement usually gets a little discussion going, ranging from there must be someone at fault after all look at the mess, to I never thought about the way we got here, to what's the next step. That evolutionary process is well developed and is the working model for most decision making within organizations today. The shift that has to take place at various points in the developing process is at some point some group or individual has to sort out some of the mess and make it into a more orderly process. A big challenge in a big organization. Why not just leave it boring rather than risk the slings and arrows from those who must experience the change. The final point is the need to develop full system/organizational perspective in everyone. If we are to be able to change and survive, we will need all of the collaboration, cooperation, ideas and knowledge, at every level in the organization, to reorder the cat's cradle. The dialogue base that can develop from here, in support of the reorder, may be of the think-pair-share progression I mentioned observing in my introductory note. I find this No Fault perspective a very effective discussion leader in freeing the thinking for experienced managers and board of directors workshops that I facilitate. Seeming to free up the thinking into where do we go from here. Your Thoughts.............please.. Jim Campbell Email: Campbell@HG.ULeth.CA Phone: (403) 329-2753 Fax: (403) 329-2685 Training & Development, Human Resources University of Lethbridge 4401 University Dr., Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada T1K 3M4 _______________________________ Date: Thu, 15 Dec 1994 07:25:30 CST From: robisj@uwwvax.uww.edu Subject: Re: Trainers Exchange I am reminded of another exercise (this exercise does not teach procedures) regarding operational definitions. It uses animal crackers. Either portion out a big box or get those cute little circus crate boxes. Each team (4-6 people) gets a pile of animal crackers. They are to identify each critter and count how many of each critter there are. Don't tell them anything else at this point. Just let each team complete the task. Then ask them to name the types of animals they identified and to give you the number of each type. The object is to teach a common understanding that is, an operational definition. This is a fun exercise because people find all sorts of creative ways to deal with the broken crackers; some put them together to form a new animal, some eat them! Different teams may identify the same animal as something else; for example, one team identified the ram as a bunny. It's lots of fun, it makes a point, and people love to munch on the crackers when the exercise is over. (This exercise was developed by Dr. Mary Leitnaker, a professor of statistics at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and is featured in W. Edwards Deming's book, *The New Economics*, pp. 108-09.) Joanne Robis U of WI-Whitewater 800 West Main St., L-1006 Whitewater, WI 53190 phone: (414) 472-1931 fax: (414) 472-1518 "ROBISJ@UWWVAX.UWW.EDU" ____________________________ Date: Sun, 20 Nov 1994 19:06:20 -0600 From: DVOLLMER@mail.chippewa.tec.wi.us Subject: Profound Knowledge Activity It's a little late in coming, but thanks to all who publicly or privately responded to my earlier request for an activity to use in a presentation on profound knowledge. The presentation which I did with Rick Miech from Fox Valley Technical College when well and we used a variation of an activity suggested by David Kerridge ("THANKS DAVID") I could have perhaps focused the discussion a bit by providing more initial information and some have asked so let me fill in some of the blanks. I work for one of 16 technical colleges in the Wisconsin Technical College System. Wisconsin is divided up into 16 districts, each served by a locally controlled (district board) college. We are not affiliated with the University of Wisconsin system which also has a variety of two and four year campuses around the state. We are two year post-secondary schools that grant vocational diplomas, associate degrees, and serve business and industry through customized training and technical assistance. The presentation was part of a meeting of the State Quality Group. This group meets twice a year and is made up of those who market, deliver, or administer instruction in quality at any of our 16 districts. Your right this could be anyone at the school. It tends to be those who do customized training with business and industry and instructors in quality related programs (quality assurance technician, quality improvement process technician, industrial engineering technician, etc.) and their deans/supervisors. We do get others who are interested in integrating quality into their individual programs. In addition most districts have some type of internal quality effort going, so the standard activities like red beads and funnel would have been seen already and the beer game takes more than an hour. The meeting is a nice example of inter-district sharing as these folks come together from around the state. It has been said that we don't always work and play well together, but we are getting better and these meetings have really helped. The meetings are two days and we try to include some learning (usually by someone from one of the districts), some collaboration on a state-wide initiative, and some interaction with business and industry. The first day we had presentations on Covey's Seven Habits, Profound Knowledge, and System Thinking and Archetypes in the morning. In the afternoon we did an affinity process to identify the element of a new course on "The Human Side of Quality". The second day we reviewed the output of the affinity and developed an instrument to take back to businesses in our districts to determine need for such a course (we had lots of anecdotal evidence but wanted something more formal) and validate the content was appropriate. We finished the day with a panel from businesses who have worked with the colleges through what we call Centers for Industrial Competitiveness. This is always helpful to have the opportunity to visit with our customers and they are pretty honest about what we are doing right and where we need to do some work. In terms of the actual presentation, we used the following references: "The New Economics" by Deming "The Deming Dimension" by Henry Neave "Deming's Road to Continual Improvement" by William Sherkenbach "Deming's Profound Changes" by Delavigne and Robertson "Profound Knowledge" Booklet 6 by British Deming Assoc. (BDA) "A System of Profound Knowledge" Booklet 9 by BDA To break up the discussion we did little mini activities and finished with the activity from David. We split into small groups and had them look at the issue of TQM in the Classroom from the perspective of each of the elements of Profound Knowledge. To the discussion on where to find the standard activities, I would add that the Beer Game is commercially available from Innovation Associates in the Boston/Cambridge area. The Red-Blue Game is mentioned in Sherkenbach's book starting on page 171 and he refers you to Neave's book chapter 15. We did a simplified version as one of the mini-activities. Split group up into "teams" of two. Have each "team" play 10 games of tic-tac-toe between themselves with the goal to see which "team" records the most wins. If competing with their teammate they play to 10 draws and the "team" scores zero. If cooperating with their teammate they will sacrifice the individual win and the team will score 10 wins. I think this makes the same point in much less time. Again we only had an hour of time. Hope this answers the questions that came up and again thanks for the help. All the discussion regarding the activities caused me to think of an offer to the list, but that will be another post. Dave Vollmer Chippewa Valley Technical College DVollmer@mail.chippewa.tec.wi.us ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 20 Nov 1994 21:03:56 -0600 From: DVOLLMER@mail.chippewa.tec.wi.us Subject: Learning Activities All the discussion that developed around how and where the activities for profound knowledge worked and were available cause me to think about something we started doing locally. It's called a "Trainers Exchange". We get together a couple of times a year and the price of admission is that you bring along some type of activity, demonstration, mini-lecture, etc. to share with the group. At the end of the day we all go home with a dozen or so new activities to use in our own training. This has been very useful for us here. As we get busy delivering training, we tend to have less time available to develop new activities. This sharing has built a network of people who we can call for ideas and support and the get-together serve as a real energy booster. I know I come away charged up. My thought was that we might want to do something similar on the list. Many people were very helpful in providing ideas for me to use in the profound knowledge presentation. I know not everyone is out doing training, and there is probably varying opinion on the use of activities in the classroom, but what do you think. Listed below are a couple of activities that I have found useful. You are welcome to use them if they seem to fit what you are doing. Call it my way of giving something back to the list for the help I have received. Continuous Improvement Activity Participant Notes: Arrange the class into a loose circle. Using a koosh ball or bean bag, define a work process. Have each participant raise one hand. Give the ball to one of the participants to start. They may throw the ball to any other person with their hand up. The person who gets the ball throws it to any other person with their hand up and then lowers his/her hand. (The hand up is just a way of identifying who has had it and who has not). Continue tossing the ball around until everyone has had the ball. The last person to touch the ball throws it back to the one who started. You have just defined a work process for this activity. Now repeat the process. Each person must touch the ball in the same order as defined above and return it to the starter. This requires that you pay attention to who your supplier and customer are in the process definition part of the activity. Your instructor will time you during the operation of your process and give you additional instructions as appropriate during the remainder of the activity. Instructor Notes: Once you have defined the process and allowed them to practice it once (while you timed them). Tell them that a competitor down the street can do it in 1-2 seconds depending on your class size. They will have to get faster. Let them go again and time them. There will probably be some slight improvement. The only rules are that everyone must touch the ball in the same order as defined at the start and the same person has the ball at the start and finish. The groups will usually start by moving closer or throwing harder/faster. This usually causes someone to miss and then they get blamed for the failure to meet the time goal. We are back to blaming people. The only way to meet the goal is to change the process. They will usually start by lining up in order and pass the ball around. Then the person who starts might run around the circle or down the line and touch the ball to the outstretch d hands of the participants in order. The fastest way seems to be if they form a tight circle in order and the starter kneels in the middle and twirls the ball over his/her head and touches all the hands in order. Discuss the activity and what people observed and experienced. The main point is that things don't improve by working faster and harder, they get better by improving the process. Operational Definition Activity. This is one of the mini activities that we did as part of the profound knowledge presentation. Have everyone write down the first 10 words that come to mind when they hear the word "learning". Put them in groups of 2-3 and have them compare their lists. For each word that appears exactly the same on all the lists in the group the team gets a point. After comparing ask how many got 10 out of 10. They will laugh because most got one or two if any. Count down, 9 out of 10, etc. Here was a group of educators from institutes of learning, yet learning meant different things to different people. Come back to the need to operationalize particular data items before we go out to collect them. A nice follow-up is to have them define late for class. Is it measured by the clock, do I just have to be in the room or seated, or as long as the instructor hasn't started yet? They will get very creative. I have others but don't have time right now to list. Also, I'd like to hear from others whether this is appropriate for the list. Dave Vollmer, Chippewa Valley Technical College, 620 W Clairemont Ave., Eau Claire, WI 54701, 715-833-6510, 715-833-6470 (fax), DVollmer@mail.chippewa.tec.wi.us