Oh No! The Planning Game
You can Download all of the materials to conduct Oh No! The Planning Game. This material is for your personal use and may not be re-sold as a part of another training package.
Overview
What is it about planning? It seems to hold many promises. We all talk about it and most people think it is important, yet when we sit down to do planning the mood of the group often shifts to one of resignation. Many of us have engaged in planning activities in our organizations. In most organizations, planning is unavoidable, but we frequently do not have confidence in the validity or the viability of our plans. In many cases our doubts about our plans and our planning process may be based on evidence (usually our own direct experience) that our plans have not been implemented in the past, or if they have, they did not produce intended outcomes.
We believe that organizational leaders can increase capacity for producing valid and viable plans by focusing on three elements of planning:
• planning context
• planning process
• plan content
How The Planning Game Can Improve Planning
From our experience in facilitating planning meetings, the tendency of planners is to jump to the content of the plan without first attending to the context and process. We believe that this is a major factor in the dissatisfaction with planning. The intention of The Planning Game is to attend to the planning context and to serve as a bridge to talking about the planning process.
By "planning context" we mean all those organizational conditions that exist in the background of our planning activities. Context is a set of conditions that influence us to take some actions and not others. Crucial conditions of the planning context are the moods of trust, ambition, and inquiry.
The game does this by placing the participants in a simulated organization with a "stovepipe" departmental structure and a lack of customer focus. Over several rounds, the participants attempt to coordinate action and produce products to serve the customer. From the simulation, participants can:
• Observe the effects of trust on planning
• Observe effects of planning on customer service, team performance, and use of resources.
• Observe the benefits of involving the customer in planning
• Identify improvements in the planning process and workplace applications
Preparation
Materials Needed (for each set of players)
A table with six chairs arranged with one at the head, one at the foot, and two along each side. Players must be within arm's reach of each other & the middle of the table.
A deck of UNO cards, sorted to include only
- numbers 1 through 6 in green and yellow
- numbers 1 through 7 in blue and red
Instruction sheets for each of the six players
Set Up for the Game
Shuffle the cards well and deal out three cards for each of the four places along the sides of the table.
Seat players at the table so that the Department Heads are along the sides (where there are three cards set out for each), the Client is at one end, and the Donor is at the other. Give each one an instruction sheet, so that you have four "Department Heads," one "Client," and one "Donor." Give the Donor the rest of the sorted UNO deck.
Leader's Guidelines
Tell the players:
Each of the four players with cards represents a Department Head of a not-for-profit organization. This is the start of the fiscal year, and the cards they already hold represent the resources they already have. All of our department heads are new to their jobs, but they have some idea of what they are to do.
The player at this end of the table is the Donor. The Donor holds a lot more resources, and will be giving them to your organization during the course of the game.
The player at the other end of the table is the Client. The Client DESPERATELY needs the services (represented by sets of cards) provided by your organization.
When the game begins, the Donor will start making contributions of resources to the Department Heads, who will assemble the resources into sets (or services) and then deliver them to the Client.
For this first round of the game, no talking among you is allowed before we start -- like so many organizations, new employees are expected to "role up their sleeves" and "hit the ground running" and just "get the job done."
Donor, are you ready to deal? Department Heads, are you ready to assemble & deliver your sets of cards? Client, are you ready to receive the services? Go!
Discussion After the First Round
Ask the Client: Did you get what you needed? What did you need? Are you satisfied with the service you received? How many usable "services" did you receive? (Count the cards.)
Ask the Department Heads: You sure were working hard. How do you feel about what you've done? ( Count the unused and unusable resources.)
Ask the Donor: What do you think about what you just saw happen with the resources you gave away?
Ask everyone: How do you think your organization could do better in using donor resources to meet client needs in then next fiscal year?
Tell Department Heads: You have five minutes to discuss how you want to do things differently, and then we will try this again. Shuffle cards & re-deal three to each of the department heads; give rest to donor. Run game again.
Discussion After Second Round
Ask the Client: How do you feel about the services you received this time? How many usable "services'' did you receive? (Count the cards.)
Ask the Department Heads: How do you think it went this time? (Count the unused and unusable resources. Announce the counts compared to the first round.)
Ask the Donor: How do you feel now about your organization?
Ask: What differences did you see between the first & second rounds?
(note: the best possible score is four complete product sets and four waste cards, if the groups are close to this outcome you may want to stop the simulation here)
After Third Round
Ask the Client: How do you feel about the services you received this time? How many usable "services'' did you receive? (Count the cards.)
Ask the Department Heads: How do you think it went this time? (Count the unused and unusable resources. Announce the counts compared to the first round.)
Ask the Donor: How do you feel now about your organization?
Ask: What differences did you see between the second and third rounds?
Final Debrief
How did you feel about the simulation play?
How was the simulation play similar to or different from your experience at work?
How did you improve service delivery during the simulation?
Ask for discussion (and make list on newsprint): what do you see are the benefits of planning? (e.g. better use of resources, meet customer needs, encourages cooperation & communication)
Learning Applications
Effects of Trust on Planning
During the first round, participants will grab for resources without regard for the resource needs of the other departments. Players will sometimes hoard cards in the hope of meeting their departmental objectives. There is no focus on the customer. Players compete simply to meet their own departmental objectives. As the rounds progress, players begin to cooperate and have a sense of trust that the other players are engaged with them in meeting the customer needs, not simply meeting departmental objectives.
Effects of Planning on Customer Service, Team Performance and Use of Resources
A dramatic aspect of the game occurs after the participants play a second and possibly third "fiscal year". As they implement their strategy and engage in conversation and cooperation throughout the fiscal year, the number of useful products increases dramatically. Teams often go from producing no useful products to producing the maximum number of useful products.
The teams are accomplishing more, yet they are using exactly the same deck of cards, and hence, exactly the same resources they used in the first fiscal year. The difference can be found in the waste rate. The waste rate is the number of cards left unused at the end of each fiscal year. Even the most efficient teams will still have two cards which are not in a completed product at the end of the year, since it is impossible to delete all waste from a system.
If the participants have input into the budget process for your organization, they may see parallels in resource use and allocation. During the first fiscal year, each department tries to grab as many resources as possible. The process becomes more orderly and productive once the team formulates a strategy for allocating resources. Rather than stockpiling resources, departments take only the resources they can effectively use. Perhaps more importantly, participants clearly demonstrate for themselves that meeting departmental goals is not enough to ensure the success of the organization. After developing a shared vision of success, they cooperate with one another to employ any particular resource in the way that most effectively meets the goals of the organization.
The Benefits of Involving the Customer in Planning
The key to improving organizational performance is to determine the customer's expectations. The team does not receive credit for products that fail to address the needs of the customer, no matter how much energy or enthusiasm went into producing them. In a real competitive market, customers will switch to another organization's services or products if their current provider cannot meet their expectations, so it is important to determine current customer expectations.
Unfortunately, customer expectations aren't static. In fact as quality improves, customer requirements often become more stringent. When an organization takes a product or service to a new level, customers expect future products to meet or exceed the new, higher standard. In the game, the initial customer requirements may simply be to receive the packs of cards in the necessary order. In later rounds, customers may demand that the cards in each pack be in numerical order or that the packs be delivered in a particular manner.
Improvements in the Planning Process
Throughout the game we often hear, "This is just how we work together!" Improvements to planning that participants have identified include; a multi departmental approach, tying objectives to the real results expected in the organization, building a shared vision, and work-flow improvements. Over the rounds, players have usually modified the work-flow procedures of the game. We use the game work-flow and the changes they have made to begin to talk about idea work-flow and coordination.
Future Applications
As we continue to learn from playing The Planning Game, here are some future applications we are exploring:
• Effects of rewards—Rewards for meeting department objectives vs. rewards for the number of useful products produced.
• Effects of stovepipe planning—When multiple teams play, having the department heads meet in like groups, for example, all of the heads of department "A", rather than in cross-departmental teams.
The Planning Game has proved for us to be both a useful vehicle for learning about planning and an organizational "learning landscape" for exploring other organizational performance issues as they emerge in the course of play.
Handouts
Each player receives one of the following:
