2 Playing the Project Game

I knew Al was only half kidding about his fifteen-minute time limit. In the warp speed world, people want everything to be instant except the coffee. So we got right down to business.

“The purpose of this game,” I reminded the group, “is to see if we can catch ourselves in the act of creating the very frustrations we identified as standing in the way of our success. Although the game lasts only fifteen minutes, I have attempted to simulate as many real-world conditions as possible.

“For example, take the wide geographical distribution of project coworkers. We will pretend that you must actually coordinate your work over great distances. Therefore, you will not be able to communicate verbally but must use e-mail, which we will simulate by passing handwritten sticky notes.”

I then showed them the seating diagram on the next page to explain who could communicate with whom.

Al rolled his eyes. I sensed that he was not thrilled with the pace of the experiment so far.

“Once again, to make this as much like actual working conditions as possible,” I continued, “I’m going to interrupt your work every five minutes so that we can have a status review meeting.”

A number of people, including Al, chuckled ruefully over this line. This was his kind of humor. I explained that, at five-minute intervals, I would ask them to tell me what percent of the project they believed was complete—a practice that mirrored their real-world behavior.

I then asked them each to sit in the chair corresponding with the first letter of their names. In other words, Al sat in chair A, Brenda in B, Christi in C, and so forth. When they were seated, I gave them each an instruction sheet and asked them to begin the first five-minute round.

As they began, a giant quietly slipped into the room. He looked like he could have played center in the NFL and obviously planned on sticking around for a while, so I walked over and introduced myself. That’s how I met Tom Costello, Christi’s boss. He had dropped by to observe the class. I quickly filled him in on the basics of the game and then tried to give him a feeling for the challenges posed by the exercise.

“The first thing you should know,” I told him, “is that team members often begin by assuming the instruction sheets they have been handed are all the same. This is not true. Everyone does receive a set of five different abstract shapes (circles, arrows, squares, and so forth). But only Al, sitting in the A chair, knows that the project goal is to find the one shape all five team members hold in common. The other instruction sheets simply say, ‘Here are your symbols.’ As a result, Brenda, Christi, Dave, and Ellen will probably spend the fifteen minutes busily passing notes and exchanging information with no idea what they ultimately are trying to accomplish.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them find that experience painfully similar to their real jobs,” said Tom. “I know a number of folks in Christi’s group respond to the enormous time pressure we all work under by resisting all planning efforts. When the consequences of that choice hit them, they act as if they’ve been tricked and offer a number of different theories as to who it is that’s tricked them.”

“They’re not alone,” I told him. “It’s difficult for any of us to see the unintended outcomes of our own behavior. Making those outcomes easily visible is exactly what this game was designed to do.”

“How does it do that?” Tom wanted to know.

“Well, there’s a short answer and a long answer.”

“Let’s start with the short one,” he said.

“Speed forces us to respond automatically,” I told him. “Most preprogrammed behavior comes laced with flawed assumptions that generate costly consequences. This game exposes those assumptions so we can make better choices.”

“Interesting,” he said in a somewhat noncommittal tone of voice. “And the long one?”

“If you’d be willing to wait until the end of the exercise, the discoveries that result would be the most powerful way to provide you with that answer. Forgive me if that leaves you feeling a bit up in the air, but keep in mind that you already have more information about the rules and objectives of this game than any of the players have received. Still, as you try and understand their experiences, you may feel a sense of confusion,” I cautioned him. “Even though you know the goal of the exercise, exactly what people are trying to accomplish may seem unclear. You may wonder who’s supposed to be doing what. This is precisely what Christi and her team are asking themselves as they play. This confusion is the root cause of what we’ve been calling ‘warp speed poisoning.’”

“Fair enough. Let’s wait and see what happens,” Tom said.

At the conclusion of the game, I gave them a few minutes to talk with each other and compare notes. “Look at each others’ instruction sheets,” I told them. “Find out what was going on and what got in the way.”

As they figured out that only Al knew the goal of the exercise, the volume of the conversation rose. Why hadn’t he told anyone else? He countered by asking why they failed to follow his simple instructions. When the accusations had subsided, I interrupted their conversation to make the following point.

“I have played this game for over a decade in every conceivable type of organization. I want you to know that there is no mistake you have made that does not occur every time this game is played. These are not personal or organizational failings you have discovered. You have encountered a blind spot in our makeup as human beings.”

To help us learn more about this blind spot, I asked if they noticed any parallels between what happened in the game and their experience in real-world projects.