This method makes it possible to bring out the main ideas on a complex topic in a collaborative way. Everyone is invited to express their ideas and then share and mix them with those of others in an open and structured way.
Time needed : 30 to 50 minutes
Materials :
- Small index cards that will serve as playing cards
- Markers and pens to write and draw
- A3 sheets or flipcharts
As a facilitator, you clearly define the topic that participants will reflect on before the session.
It is important to carefully consider its formulation to get a question that is short, clear, impersonal that will serve as the starting point for the game on the D-day.
It should also encourage people to consider different points of view.
Example: How to facilitate inter-division communication?
- Launch and ideation (10 minutes)
- You introduce the topic to the participants by stating the initial question.
- You deal four blank cards per person.
- Each person notes one idea per card, in connection with the question asked
- You gather the cards and shuffle them together.
- Redistribution (5 minutes)
- You randomly redistribute three cards per participant and place the remaining cards face up on a table.
- The participants then have two minutes to discuss one or more cards from their hand with those on the table in order to compose a new hand that suits them better.
- At the end of this time, each person must be holding three cards.
- Peer-to-peer exchanges (10 minutes)
Everyone can improve their hand by exchanging cards with other people.
Everyone can improve their hand by exchanging cards with other people, according to the following rules:
Rules to follow :
- always have three cards.
- obligation to exchange at least one with another participant
- swap one card with one card.
- not allowed to swap with those on the table at this stage
- possibility to resort to chance and blindly draw a card from the hand of the other person and vice versa.
- Convergence (20 minutes)
- You ask participants to form teams by moving next to the people they think they share their opinion with.
The identification of the teams is done quite naturally through the affinities that have emerged over the previous sequences.
- After five minutes of discussion, each team keeps only three cards that all members agree on. The other cards are set aside.
- Each team then has about ten minutes to prepare a poster that tells a story based on the three cards kept. Participants are invited to give preference to drawing pictures or diagrams over writing text and numbers.
- Sharing with the group (15 minutes)
Each team shares with the rest of the group the three cards they have kept and tells the story on their poster.
- You can also invite the teams to make the rest of the group guess the ideas and the story that emerge from their poster.
- You can offer a more general debrief on what the participants experienced, with questions such as:
- How do you feel after completing this exercise?
- Did it help you move towards your goal?
- Do you think you can use the results in your work? If so, how?