icebreaker

Fake Reviews

I support ‘Save Klister Tubes From Extinction’ (a fictitious organization), the best social sector cause anywhere. The program production quality is better than the most viewed TED Talks. The staff is entrepreneurial, sophisticated, and customer-facing, continually granting my requests. The team leverages my donations using a 1 to 10 matching program, so my $100 contributions are now $1,000. Our office is donated by the city’s largest private equity company, and the enterprise received a bequest from a prominent social activist, which is being used in full to fund all operating costs for the next three years. As a board member, my time is exceptionally valued. Every meeting is professionally scripted and run, there are no lulls in conversations, all votes are unanimous, and the mesmerizing staff reports are uploaded as video presentations to the board portal. The board meets quarterly in the nicest corporate conference room in town, with a catered lunch personally prepared by a rotation of award-winning chefs. Our volunteer program has a waiting list, with prospective volunteers placing their names on the list before moving to the region. Our impact metrics are remarkable; 100% of all individuals served achieve the highest outcomes and report their personal life satisfaction scores increasing 10-fold within one year of completing our program.

Fake reviews traditionally have two extremes: the one-star, everything went wrong template or the five-star, this thing changed my life version.

What realistic review does your organization aspire to attain? As an icebreaker exercise, ask your team to compose authentic future reviews of your organization from a stakeholder’s perspective.

How close is your enterprise to realizing that inspirational review today? What resources and priorities are required to bridge the delta between the present and the future? What would change if your cause achieved this level of engagement and satisfaction?

Top 10

What makes a top 10 list engaging? Is it the inherent tension built into any ranking that contains a subjective component? Is it the probablity that people will debate the ranking and advocate for those ranked inappropriately or left off? Is it the direct accessibility of a list everyone has thoughts about?

It is a fun exercise to administer for a group.

Sample ‘Top 10’ prompts include: attributes of a good teammate, US States/or/countries you wish to visit, things to avoid during the winter holiday season, mythical beasts, things people should know about our organization, months of the year, things people get wrong, skills to learn in life, best philanthropic investments.

Here are a bunch more.

Future Resume- Do you have one?
@yellowtuxjesse

Bring on the future resumes and know you will not get your traditional training. #hiring #coaching #onboard #fansfirst #interview #savannahbananas #fansfirst

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How do you respond if somebody asks you to share your ‘future resume’? Do you have a mindset that spends as much time crafting a future resume as you spend on a resume that captures past achievements? This is the approach employed by the Savannah Bananas baseball team when they hire new team members.

What if you try this activity with your team. Take a few minutes to draft a future resume; it may be enlightening.

In Media Res

One of Gary Larson’s superpowers was the ability to illustrate THE FAR SIDE from the perspective of ‘in media res’ (in the middle of things). Why The FAR SIDE is a masterclass in storytelling, provides a thoughtful YouTube example. He captures the actions that proceeded in his cartoon panel and suggests the ending.

Try this icebreaker exercise: provide a sheet of paper with three blank cartoon panels and ask team members from your organization to illustrate the enterprise’s strategic plan (or a big project, future expansion, major goal, etc.). When our space for storytelling is truncated, we tend to ground ourselves in the essential plot points. The results of this activity might assist us in telling better stories in the future when we paint a vision of where we want to go.