Change Management Games: To Introduce The Concept Of Change Management Through A Training Game

Change Management Games  are training games that participants play in change management training sessions.

These training games will help them understand the rudimentary issues that organisations encounter in the process of change management. These are also a variety of training games.

These corporate training games prepare participants mentally to look at change as positive and manageable. It makes them aware that changes occur often and humans have already got it in them to adapt and be successful through change.

Through these training games participants learn the basic understandings of change management such as:

• Assess the skills required to act through the change process.
• Develop personal strategies to deal positively with the change
• Develop patterns that help to successfully implement the change
.

Having said this let's look at the first of the training games. The following training game is also treated as an energizer elsewhere on this site. This is the advantage of knowing both training games and content well. You can then fit the training game to the situation. After all it is the debrief that settles matters.

Change Management Games: 1: 'Keep the ball up'. The aim of the first one of the change managment games is, to keep a ball up for hundred counts.

1. Ask the trainees to stand together in a tightly knit group.

2. Pass them a throw ball.

3. Tell the group that it is expected to throw the ball in the air and keep it up for a 100 counts to win the game. If the ball is allowed to drop on the ground before reaching the count of hundred, then the training game should be started anew beginning the count from 1.

4. Once the group has succeeded (usually in fifteen minutes)debrief the first of the change management games.

5. The first step in the debrief is for them to understand that change is inevitable. If outward conditions do not motivate them to change already, change will visit them any way. (You threw the ball at them and expected them to follow your instructions. So you announced the change and the group had to cope with it.)

5. Bring to the notice of the group the strategies they used to succeed in the first of the change management games - discovery of a few experts who are able to control the ball and keep it in the air; as soon as the ball strays, the group directs it back to the experts; discovery of some experts who are also leaders and who bounce the ball towards as many of the group as possible so that they will also be involved.

6. Draw further parallels with the process of change management as listed above.

7. Materials you will need: A volley ball or a throw ball, or a good sized ball.

8. You'll need to be in a high ceilinged room in about 500 sq. ft. of space, if you are playing indoors. I prefer to play this training game outdoors.

9. Caution the participants not to throw the ball too high as it could hurt somebody's fingers or face as it falls down.

Change Management Games: 2. Group Juggling

1. You'll need: three small basket balls per group, and five to six people per group

2. Demonstrate this training game with one group. Once you have shown them how to play it then the other groups can start playing.

3. Instructions for playing the second of the change management games:

• Ask the group to stand in a circle
• Assign one of the group members to be the initiator and keep all the three balls at her feet
• Tell them that all throws should be underhand ones. The way to be successful in group juggling is to focus on only two things. The first is to remember who threw the ball to you. The second one is to remember whom did you throw the ball to. Tell them at the end of it the group will have all three balls being passed simultaneously and the group will have successfully juggled the three balls. At first this training game will seem unachievable, but a trial will change the perception.
• Also tell them that if they drop the ball or balls during the training game then they will have to start the training game from scratch.
• Ask the initiator to throw one ball to another member of the group. This member then throws to the next person and on it goes until the last person throws to the initiator again.
• Follow this pattern for a couple of iterations until the group gets used to the pattern of throwing and receiving
• In the third round after the ball leaves the initiator's hands, gesture her to throw the second ball in the same pattern.
• Let the group get used to two balls for a couple of rounds.
• Again gesture to the initiator to include the third ball.
• By now the group will be so focussed on the juggling they will hardly notice the third ball for a couple of seconds. When they do the excitement is so high that they continue the juggling with renewed focus.
• Of course they will drop the balls a couple of times, but they will get back into the training game and succeed.

The success in the second of the change management games leads to excited jubilation. The successful groups traipse over to the still struggling ones to provide tips.

This training game the second of the change management games provides a success experience which requires team work and consistency. After they have had a few successful rounds of group juggling you can stop to debrief the training game.

During the debrief of the second of the change management games, draw their attention to:

• Change once it has visited the organisation finds a champion in the organisation - usually the leader.
• The leader has the task of initiating two or three sub changes simultaneously.
• To succeed she sets up a pattern of information and performance flow
• Once the pattern is fixed on she introduces a second sub-change.
• As long as the stakeholders know the pattern they do not mind sticking to their piece of the change process.
• The pattern gives the stakeholders the comfort level that they need to complete the change process as it grows to its full size.

To know more about how to use training games contact us.

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They can also be used to communicate a concept effectively. They add the 'aha' or 'Eureka' or 'got it' factor to presentations and lectures. They are great tools to use in debriefs of training games and learning games, to drive home a crucial point.

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