Team jamming
Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users posted Build something cool in 24 hours yesterday, based on an idea for total immersion / ultra-rapid game development from the wonderfully named game developer, Squirrel Eiserloh:
The notion is this: stick people in a house for 48 hours, with a goal to have something created at the end… participants may be collaborating (like building a game together) or working alone (musicians composing, writers writing, etc.). The key is the process - a process that forces you to supress the “inner judges” that stifle creativity, and gives you not just permission but an order to create as much as possible, as fast as possible… even if what you end up with is 97% crap.
The point is to learn something valuable from the experience… by working under the ad-hoc/jam constraints, you’re able to “improve your craft” and discover things about yourself and the work that you might never find in your traditional work environment… What could take weeks, months, or years to evolve suddenly happens in hours.
Great stuff - and just the kick in the pants I need to get one or two of my projects really moving again. It’s like a vertical day on steroids.
The thing is the team-working part of this reminded me of an incident that took place when I was a conference producer. I had put together a conference on manufacturing and, then as now, teams were a hot topic. The speaker I invited to talk about teams promised to be provocative and - bless him - he was (Note to all conference speakers: provocative is good).
Half way through his presentation he stops dead and says:
Let’s take a break. Together with the people at your table, design me a dog walking machine. You have five minutes from now. Go!
There were half a dozen people at each table, so we all turned to face one another and got to work. Or at least we thought we got to work. Afterwards, the speaker sketched the various machines on a board and made jokes about how the consultants who were sponsoring the conference had come up with an effective, but very expensive solution , and we all had a laugh at the speaker’s suggested machine which included a roller skate and a large spike (sorry dog lovers).
Eventually someone asked the speaker: “Why the dog walking machines?” His reply was illuminating:
A bit of fun. And to prove a point. When I started the clock on your five minutes, how many of you got straight to work? And how many of you took a few seconds to overcome embarrassment? Then you had a round of introductions, which you should have done this morning when you first arrived, but you were too nervous, or because you had introduced yourselves this morning, but you’ve forgotten each others’ names. Then you passed round business cards. Then you didn’t say or contribute anything because you didn’t want the others to know that you didn’t have the right answer . Then, with probably thirty seconds to go, one of you sketched the first thing he could think of and showed it to the rest of you. You all thought “I could do better than that” but you all approved his design, because - uh oh - time’s up.
So please understand - working in teams is tough. You cannot just come to the door of your executive suite and pronounce to your people “I want you all to work in teams.” We are supposed to be at the top of our field, the best of the best. And if we can’t work together in a team on a simple, fun task, then how will your people take to being stuffed into a new way of working, for eight or more hours a day, with their livelihoods at stake?
I love the simplicity, the purity of Kathy’s idea - in fact I am inspired to jam solo on a web project this weekend - but when teams are involved, especially in a work context, things can get tricky. Some participants may be less committed to team working; some may be concerned that the boss will get credit and their good ideas will be glossed over. Some may have forceful personalities; others may have great ideas, but speak too softly to be heard. Some may even be determined to sabotage the process.
None of these things are insurmountable problems, especially not if there is good management and facilitation before, during and after the jam (think Rosa Say , Lisa Haneberg and Johnnie Moore for starters). But whatever you do, don’t just go to the door of your executive suite and pronounce to your people: “I want you all to build something cool in 24 hours.”
Jam sessions, then, may well be another one of those areas where simplicity is hard work .
2 comments August 25th, 2005