Library of facilitation techniques

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Featured Author – Gamestorming

Gamestorming is a set of co-creation tools used by innovators around the world. Explore this collection of 66 methods and bring the power of structured play to your next session.

Gamestorming
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445 results

Methods (445)

Liberating Structures

Nine Whys

With breathtaking simplicity, you can rapidly clarify for individuals and a group what is essentially important in their work. You can quickly reveal when a compelling purpose is missing in a gathering and avoid moving forward without clarity. When a group discovers an unambiguous shared purpose, more freedom and more responsibility are unleashed. You have laid the foundation for spreading and scaling innovations with fidelity.
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Gamestorming methods

3-12-3 Brainstorm

This format for brainstorming compresses the essentials of an ideation session into one short format. The numbers 3-12-3 refer to the amount of time in minutes given to each of three activities: 3 minutes for generating a pool of observations, 12 for combining those observations into rough concepts, and 3 again for presenting the concepts back to a group.

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Liberating Structures

Talking with Pixies

Uncover and challenge the hidden beliefs, assumptions, and internal voices that are limiting progress toward an important goal. In small groups, one person shares a personal or professional challenge while two others play contrasting “pixie” roles – one advocating for change and possibility and the other representing resistance and caution. Through this playful exchange, participants surface unconscious assumptions, explore opposing perspectives on risks and opportunities, and gain clarity on how to move forward. This structure helps reveal internal barriers, generate new insights, and support more informed action planning in individual and group settings.

Liberating Structures

Critical Uncertainities

You can help a diverse group quickly test the viability of current strategies and build its capacity to respond quickly to future challenges. This Liberating Structure prepares a group for strategy making. It does not produce a plan to be implemented as designed but rather builds resilience: the capacity to actively shape the system and be prepared to respond to surprise. This means being better able to see different futures unfolding, better prepared to act in a distributed fashion, and more ready to absorb disruptions resiliently.

Liberating Structures

Social Network Webbing

Social Network Webbing quickly illuminates for a whole group what resources are hidden within their existing network of relationships and what steps to take for tapping those resources. It also makes it easy to identify opportunities for building stronger connections as well as new ones. 

The inclusive approach makes the network visible and understandable to everybody in the group simultaneously. It encourages individuals to take the initiative for building a stronger network rather than receiving directions through top-down assignments. Informal or loose connections—even your friends’ friends—are tapped in a way that can have a powerful influence on progress without detailed planning and big investments.

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Hyper Island

History Map

The main purpose of this activity is to remind and reflect on what group members or participants have been through and to create a collective experience and shared story. Every individual will gain a shared idea of what the group has been through together. Use this exercise at the end of a project or program as a way to reinforce learnings, celebrate highlights and create closure.

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Thiagi Group

Decisions, Decisions…

When it comes to decision-making, why are some of us more prone to take risks while others are risk-averse? One explanation might be the way the decision and options were presented. 

This exercise, based on Kahneman and Tversky's classic study, illustrates how the framing effect influences our judgement and our ability to make decisions. The participants are divided into two groups. Both groups are presented with the same problem and two alternative programs for solving them. The two programs both have the same consequences but are presented differently. The debriefing discussion examines how the framing of the program impacted the participant's decision.