Sister Teams

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Sister Teams is a fun but challenging business game which encourages players to confront their entrenched positions, exposing the separatist attitudes that can have such a destructive effect on organisations.  It shows how quality interaction between groups can benefit the whole organisation, helping players move from thinking about their immediate team to the wider organisation.
 

Objective

Participants will be able to:

• Identify attitudes and behaviours that limit an organisations effectiveness
• Recognise the benefits that can be gained from cooperation amongst a wider group
• Reflect on the role of the leader beyond teams boundaries

How it works

Each team is a separate work group tasked with completing a set number of tasks to an acceptable standard. The teams have separate work areas and are able to communicate by telephone. If the groups work together they will realise the tasks, which each group otherwise tends to see strictly as its own affair, are in fact linked.  For example, the solution of a problem by one group might yield an item of data that would enable another group to solve a different problem or two groups may have problems that they perceive as different but only because they are presented in different forms. Cooperation would mean the problem needed to be solved only once by the whole group.

At the end of the time period the teams calculate their team score and the facilitator calculates the organisational score (sum of all team’s scores). This organisational score is then examined to determine what improvements would have been possible had there been greater communication between the teams.
 

Participants will be doing

Each team has six tasks they need to complete. They will need to match each task to the abilities of the team members, make contact if desired with other teams and complete each task to the best of their ability.
 

For what levels is it appropriate?

All supervisors and general managers. All students of organisation and human behaviour.

Included

Tutor manual, Materials and all supporting documentation.