In this game, everyone writes a challenge they’re trying to tackle on a piece of paper, and they get back a crowdsourced set of solutions from everyone else. The more intentional people are with this one, the greater the experience!
How to do it
This game doubles as a mental warmup and a creativity game. Give everyone a sheet of paper and a marker. Ask them to write their name on the top, and then a particular challenge they are facing at work, that they think the rest of the group might be able to help with.
Then, ask everyone to pass their sheet of paper to the person to their right. That person has 2 minutes to write a possible solution. After 2 minutes, that person passes it to the person to their right, and so on. The game ends when each person gets their own piece of paper back, brimming with possible solutions!
Variations
If you’re meeting remotely, you can still do this icebreaker using chat software with threaded conversations (e.g. Slack). Ask everyone to type their challenge into the same channel, and then ask everyone to add their solution to everyone else’s challenge using threaded comments. That way, everyone has a set of ”˜Mastermind’ solutions sitting neatly under their own challenge!
If you think your group is up for it, rather than asking everyone to write their solutions to the challenge on each sheet of paper, ask them to write the WORST SOLUTION THEY CAN THINK OF. Who knows, maybe the best solution is actually hidden behind a silly idea...?
Here’s another variation, especially for large groups in a large room: once everyone has written their challenge at the top of the piece of paper, get them to fold it into a paper aeroplane. On the count of 3, everyone launches their Challenge Plane across the room. Everyone catches a plane (or picks it up off the floor, or retrieves it from the ceiling fans), opens it up, writes a solution, and then refolds it back to being a plane. The planes are then tossed through the air again! Repeat at least a few times.
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