POL Suggestions: table extension, cable ties

In the director's guide we suggest that you put the tri-board on 6 foot tables. I find that 6 foot tables works ok for me. However, if the facility should have 8 or 10 foot tables, it would be better to use them. Generally, what happens is a participant will spontaneously hold the panel while they insert the pegs if it starts to move on them. I just ran POL with Alan Meeker from Advantage Performance Group and he assigns someone from each group to hold the outside edge of the panel. He also asked the hotel for 3 foot round cocktail tables to put under each wing of the panel. You may want to use one or both of these approaches if you are worried about the stability of the tri-board.

Also, if you pull the cable ties tight, it may not allow you to position the boards the way you want. So if you want to tighten the ties to get more stability, tighten them after you have them in position. You may have to cut the ties to put the tri-board back in the box. There are extra ones provided, but please let us know if you need replacements.

Thanks

Garry

He Actually Said "Trust Me"!

Power of Leadership is fast becoming my new favorite simulation. Mostly because it is a hilarious/hair-raising microcosm of human interaction and frailities which can be mined for insights and learnings about power that you just can't get to any other way.

So far I have seen groups work through the simulation and come out with:
Kumbya Sing-along: Too many HR folks in the pilot sniffed out how to game the simulation, forcing an overly nicely-nicely tone to the activity. The Midders revolted objecting to the leadership vacum and making it perfectly clear that it wasn't a good thing for the organization, real or simulated.

Communism for the Faint of Heart: The Top Performers were so uncomfortable with having power that they distributed all the assests exactly evenly to everyone. The Greemers revolted because they felt their upward mobility had been scuttled.

Father Knows Best: With obvious frustration a Top Performer actually instructed the others to "Trust me" when he failed for the third time to explain that the apparent unequal division of assets would in fact benefit all of them.

Attila the Hun and Company: A group of managers at a high tech company went through PoL. I was rather shocked to see the hierarchial, top-down, directive way they ran the simulation. In the debrief it quickly became apparent that this all too precisely mimicked the way the real company was run. This realization promted an invitation to the executive team to discuss their insight and the impact it was having on retention of free spirited technologists.

The beauty of this simulation (as well as others by STS) is that the activity causes such vivid and quick realizations to form that most participants can't help but laugh at their own actions, reactions and interactions. And once you get them laughing they are willing to cop to their good and bad approaches, perceptions, hidden reservations and made-under-pressure decisions.

Time management can be tough because there tends to be multiple paths to explore. It's a pleasant problem to have. If you're interested in discussing PoL just give me a call @ 510-654-0312. Birdi