How I teach Business Agility with a simple puzzle

Yes, I use a kids puzzle to teach leaders about Releasing Business Agility. It's childish but it's fun.

The game helps to explain why a positive and clear future is so essential, and how growth and delivery are achieved by removing problems and aligning people around the right work. Effective communication underpins all of this.

In this post (and video) I explain how I use the puzzle, the lessons involved and instructions on how to play this game yourself if you wish to.

In this post:

1. History of the puzzle
2. How to run the game
3. Lessons from the game

The History of the Puzzle

I’ll never forget the first time I ran the Releasing Business Agility seminar using a kid’s puzzle.

Would it be too immature? Would the audience resonate with it? Or would they think I’m a childish fool?

All of these thoughts, and more, were rushing through my head as I lined up 25 managers and execs in a hotel conference room in Hampshire.

As I introduced the game I was worried I was wasting their time. As it happened, it was a roaring success. They were engaged, they had fun but more importantly they came away with some wickedly insightful lessons on business agility.

The kids puzzle proved an excellent way to teach Business Agility.

The fact that a kids puzzle, designed for 3 year olds, resonated so much with business leaders says something deep about how people come together at work.

Are we just like kids? Is there a timeless truth about what happens when people come together to solve a problem?

After this first session I proceeded on a campaign of childish teachings. I’ve run this agility basics workshop over 700 times now.

I’ve run this game for teams of 6 people all the way to 140 people in a room. And it works. It gets people buzzed and fired up. It’s got so many lessons that it’s ridiculous. I’ve only listed the obvious ones in this post – but there are always more.

In one company they wanted to play this game with those who couldn’t make it! They still play this game as part of their onboarding to this day!

How to play the game

Here’s how the game works.

Firstly, it starts by finding a suitable puzzle to use. I like to use a simple “Match Them Up” kids puzzle. The one I use is from Tesco (and sadly you cannot buy them anymore).

Top Tip – If you’re going to run these games, find one that works for you and buy many packs of the game in case they stop selling them.

The puzzle game I use involves kids (or in my case, leaders) piecing together a number, an image and a word.

For example, they would need to match the number 25 with the image of 25 houses, along with the number "25".

So, each puzzle picture is accompanied by a number and a noun word.

The goal is to match the three things up.

Each puzzle pack has about 25 individual "pictures", so I can cover 5 small teams who are each working on 5 pictures.

Step 1 - Get people into teams of 3-5 people.

I typically run the workshop for 20 + people, so you could end up with 4-5 teams.

Any fewer than 3 people in each team and the team-working lessons are less effective. Any more and the game takes longer.

I once did this game for 150 people in a room, split into teams of 5 people - and it was wild fun, so it scales well.

Step 2 - Build the puzzle.

Ideally, you would have already built the puzzle for them and left it on the table.

If you are using 5 puzzle cards, then each table should have 5 cards already built on the table.

When distributing the cards I also ensure some teams have easier cards than others (this is a key lesson). I will also give one team six cards, and maybe another team 7 cards.

Don't say how many cards you've given out if you do this! It's also a valuable lesson covered later.

Step 3 - Explain the rules.

Explain that they will need to work as a team to recreate this same matched combination as they see in front of them.

• Anyone can play any role during the game.
• The game will be timed.
• The team who rebuild the puzzle, to the same quality, in the quickest time, wins.
• Once the team complete the puzzle, they must shout their team name.

Step 4 – On a whiteboard or flipchart write the names of each team.

On a whiteboard or flip chart you will capture the times of each team.

For large groups you will need assistance with this as teams tend to finish at similar times.

Write each team name down the left hand side in a list. Draw a line under each team name across the page.

Then draw a line top to bottom to create a suitable sized grid. I tend to play four rounds of the game so would need a grid that has four columns.

The more visible this is, the better.

Step 5 – Mix it up

Ask them to now put the game into the starting condition.

This is all pieces turned face down, shuffled around and then stacked into a tower.

Each game will start this way. The reason we don't hand the pieces out in this way at the start is because it's really important that players have seen the end state (i.e. all puzzles completed and face up).

This is a key aspect when moving smoothly and quickly towards your goals; you need goals and you need somehow "see" them. In the Releasing Business Agility model I call this a painted picture of the future.

Step 6 – Grab a timer and get them prepped.

Explain it’s competitive. Get your phone or timer ready.

Tell some jokes (if that’s your style) and get them excited about competing with each other.

Ask who’s competitive and who isn’t? Build some energy. Double check everyone understands the rules; build the puzzle, to the right quality, in the fastest time.

Step 7 – What’s their strategy?

At this point you should ask them what their strategy is for the game.

How are they going to build these puzzles? They may choose to jot this down on paper, or just chat within the team.

Observe the dynamics and how long this takes.

Don’t interrupt them or call the game to start – just let them discuss it for as long as it takes (of course, more than 5 minutes of this is wasting everyone’s time). Use your judgment.

Step 8 – Run the game.

Give them a count down then let them go – ensuring they shout something to you when they believe they are finished.

Each team continues until all teams have finished.

Your job is to make a note of the completion times for each team on the flip chart. It can get quite chaotic, so you may benefit from a co-facilitator.

Go through the times. Ask them, in their teams, to reflect on their time and come up with a strategy for the next round, that will help them get quicker.

Same rules, same game but maybe they will have a new strategy.

Step 9 – Rinse and repeat.

I find that 3/4 rounds is enough to spot the many lessons we’ll go through in a minute.

Extra variations:

• I often include word searches or cross words alongside the puzzles.
  • When asked what they are for, you can articulate that those problems don't stand between where you are now (puzzle tower), and where you're trying to get to (completed puzzle). A valuable part of moving smoothly and quickly is knowing which problems aren't on your path.
• I often change the rules of the game - and explain that they are now not competing with each other, but instead are all working together.
  • If one team finishes quickly, they often then try to help other teams. Often they get in the way and slow everyone down...a valuable lesson.

Step 10 – Reflect

Ask them, as an entire room, to reflect as a group.

• What did they learn?
• What lessons could be brought to their regular work?
• What did they notice from the game?

Write down all of the reflections and lessons on a whiteboard or flip chart.

Step 11 – Explain the lessons from the game

Go through the reflections with them, then pull up a slide or some other communication that explains the following lessons.

The Lessons in Business Agility

The game is packed full of lessons. When I run this with a team, I have a series of slides that I use. These slides are then explored in further detail during the seminar.

Reading the lessons here does no justice at all to the game - it's more valuable when the lessons are discovered and discussed by those in the session.

However, here are just some of the lessons:

Not all work is the same (size, complexity, value)

If you seeded some teams with 5 puzzles, some with 6 and some with 7, you may find they noticed this and called it out.

This is like everyday work though, isn't it? Some teams have far more work than others - and the work every does is not the same. Some work is more complicated than other work.

It helps to understand what success looks like

This is one of the 5 core principles underneath the model. What are we moving smoothly and quickly towards? And how can we help people "see" it?

Not all teams have the same experience, skills and pressures

During the game you will likely find one team that just crushes the times. They just seem to get it. Everyone will eventually, but some people are just more suited to visual puzzles than others.

This is the same in work - people have specialisms, niches, skills and expertise. Working out how to pull all of that together to achieve the goal is essential.

It sometimes doesn’t take long to get feedback on an idea

During the game it's important to time how long the teams spend talking about their strategy. In most cases it will be longer than the 20-30 seconds it takes to build the puzzle.

This is often the case in work too - we spend longer discussing our strategies and tactics, than it would take to try something and get real feedback.

We need a safe and fun environment to work (fun is the canary in the coal mine)

People have fun playing the game. There is spirit and positivity. There is laughter.

Spirit, joy, fun and energy get things done.

Not all experiments give positive results

Between each round we ask people to talk about their strategy. As such, some teams try a different approach, one they feel will get a great time. Sometimes though, they get a worse time.

Not all experiments will result in a positive outcome. That's why experimentation with new things in work should be done carefully - and with measures, ideally measures of purpose.

We can get better, but sometimes we reach the limits

If you run the game several times, you will find that the team simply cannot get any quicker. They have reached a limit. This is true in business too. There is a limit to improvements and work sometimes takes as long as it does.

We change strategies too quickly

Want to know a secret? The best way to win the fastest team is to pick any strategy at all for building the puzzles, and then just keep doing that.

The more we stick to the initial strategy, the more fine tuned we become at it, and hence, the quicker we get.

Teams that change their strategy and approach between each round, typically score slower times.

This is so true in business too. Every year it can feel like there is a new strategy or initiative without giving the last one time to bed in.

We often must do the work before we understand it (and then optimise it)

The puzzle works because people learn how to optimise their times (assuming they stick with a single strategy) only after they have played the puzzle for the first time. This is true in work - we learn how to get better by doing the work and understanding it.

I have seen some beautiful strategies, tactics, delivery plans and theories that have never been tested. We only really know how to make the work better by doing the work - the rest is theoretically and hypothetical.

We often cut down other people’s ideas

One less desirable element of the game is that people sometimes shoot down other people's ideas. This is particularly the case when I run this for leaders....sadly.

During the gaps when the team talk about the strategy, it's not uncommon to hear people shooting down other people's ideas. As we showed earlier though, the feedback loop (in this game) is short.

Maybe the idea would work? Maybe we should try it and see? Maybe it's quicker to try it than to argue over it?

Some further lessons

1. Having the right people in the right place, with the right skills helps
2. We are focused and doing one thing at a time - not distracted by emails, the other cross words or anything else
3. When we collaborate, co-ordinate and co-operate we get results
4. When we get feedback, we see the shadow of the future (i.e., the consequences of our actions)
5. Variety must be catered for – our work is never standard
6. There are always more problems in business than we can ever solve – so it pays to know which problems matter
7. It pays to focus on being effective first, and then making that more efficient