Agility guru Johann Tambayah taught me this awesome icebreaker that I use frequently to break the ice at hashtag#Ignite big room planning workshops.
It's a great way to introduce the forced ranking prioritisation process that the team will have to use at some point during the workshop.
The concept is simple: 50 celebrities are on a dream cruise ship on it's way to the tropical Bahamas. Unfortunately it has hit an iceberg (it happens!) and starts to sink. Even worse, there is only one lifeboat on the ship, and it can hold just three people!
So it is up to the team to agree which 3 celebrities survive for the future of civilisation (or at least survival on a desert island).
Simple to setup - prepare 50 photos of different celebrities: a mixture of actors, sports stars, musicians and political influencers.
Then give the team 5 minutes to vote (3 votes each using a marker pen or sticker) on who they want to save. Total up the votes to see who survives.
Then have a fun discussion on why certain celebrities did or didn't make the cut.
See, it aint so hard to force rank - sometimes you have no choice - it's something we face in business frequently - a decision has to be made quickly if there is not enough budget, people or even lifeboats!
This also works in the virtual sense in that you can setup the photos in Whiteboard, Mira or Mural, and introduce everyone to the interface and voting mechanism.
Oh... and Chuck Norris and Mr T always seem to survive - I mean, who would argue with them?
Robert Cass, Anthony Kandi, Simone Hambrook, Jason Wu, Sushrut Kamath, Devon White, Annie Spiteri, Robert Hogeland, Johann Tambayah
