Remote Workshop Activities

It doesn’t matter where you work and what your job role is, if you work with other people together as a team, you will always encounter the same challenges:

• Unclear goals and miscommunication that cause busy work and overtime
• Unstructured meetings that leave attendants tired, confused and without clear outcomes.
• Frustration builds up because internal challenges to productivity are not addressed
• Sudden changes in priorities lead to a loss of focus and momentum
• Muddled compromise takes the place of clear decision- making, leaving everybody to come up with their own interpretation.
• In short, a lack of structure leads to a waste of time and effort, projects that drag on for too long and frustrated, burnt out teams.
  

By using the metaphor of a sailboat, teams can articulate what is working well and also, what is holding the organization back. Individually think about and note down:

What is moving us forward and What is Holding us back in as an organization or team.

Moving us forward: what's working for us, what's really good.

Holding us back: what challenges are we facing?

The Culture Design Canvas is a framework for designing the culture of organizations and teams. You can use it to map the current culture, design the future state, and evolve your company culture.

The purpose of a retrospective is to reflect on the process of the team’s collaboration, rather than on the content of work itself. This opening icebreaker helps participants to get in a reflective mood and share their thoughts and feelings.

This playful method creates a powerful shared picture of the feelings in the group. Checking-in is a simple way for a team to start a meeting, workshop, or activity. By using the metaphor of a rollercoaster this alternative version supports participants to think differently about how they are feeling. People place themselves at different points on the rollercoaster, explaining their dominant feeling right now.

Everyone covers their camera and one person makes a statement that is true about themselves. If it is true for others on the call, they show their face to the camera as well. The initiation for the next prompt is passed to another person in the group.

This Pizza Game is a great way for new or established teams to understand the principles of Lean & Agile by diving into Kanban in a quick and fun way that is hard to communicate through words alone. It teaches you how to get from an existing process to a Kanban system, how to visualize the system, and start modifying it.

The Pizza Game enables the teams to have a hands-on experience feeling the pains, gains, frustrations, and fun throughout the process - and to reflect on improvements that the participants can share back in their workplace. Bonus: you get to make (paper or digital) Pizza!

A fun and engaging team-building game that tests employees' knowledge about their workplace while encouraging collaboration and friendly competition.

This is an essential process designed to help teams define their purpose (why they exist) and their culture (how they work together to achieve that purpose). Defining these two things will help any team to be more focused and aligned. With support of tangible examples from other companies, the team members work as individuals and a group to codify the way they work together. The goal is a visual manifestation of both the purpose and culture that can be put up in the team's work space.

This is a structured process designed for teams to explore the way they work together. The tight structure supports team members to be open and honest in their assessment. After reflecting as individuals, the team builds a collective map which can serve as the basis for further discussions and actions. The assessment is based around 6 dimensions. Each one encouraging the team to reflect and analyse a different and crucial element of their behaviour.

A fun and interactive storytelling game that helps team members learn more about each other by guessing which colleague’s experience matches each story.

As a virtual game in Zoom, have people narrow their screen so they only see 3 people in a row. Each person will simultaneously try to have one person sitting, one standing , and one out of the frame in their row.