Desert Island Game

Start the Desert Island Game by giving participants the following scenario:

You are all stranded on a desert island, and may choose only three of the following objects to survive. 

The list of objects may include items such as: 

• a bag of fruit and vegetable seeds
• a Swiss army knife
• a fishing net
• sunblock
• a 100 ft rope
• a waterproof bed sheet, 
• a large, strong bucket 
• 2 litres of kerosene, 
• A lighter, and so on.

You can make these objects as obscure and strategic as possible so that members are challenged to really think and plan for their survival. One of the great things about the Desert Island Game is that it is endlessly flexible: you might add items to the list which reflect the team you're working with.

For smaller teams (<10 people), you can ask each person to individually choose their three items and explain why.

For larger teams (>10 people), you can split the team into groups and allow them to collaborate on which items they want to choose (using multi-room video conference options). Once all the smaller groups have decided on their items, continue the virtual meeting and ask each team in turn to explain their choices.

Activities like this naturally make team members see each other as teammates. It can also create pride, healthy competition, and excitement within the team, plus it can help virtual workers learn how to collaborate in a virtual setting.

Debriefing

The goal of this activity is to encourage creative thinking and decision making.

As a facilitator, you might ask people to explain why they chose the items they picked, and how it plays to their strengths. The rest of the team will now have some new information and a fresh perspective about their fellow team members. 

When closing the loop and providing a takeaway for the group, it can be useful to ask folks to think about how this might apply to their day-to-day work. How might this scenario help the way they think about collaboration?

Simple variation of the Desert Island Game

If you're short on time or want to seed the concept of dot voting in the group, here's a variation of Desert Island you can run in just five minutes using a whiteboard.

1. Start by letting people know the scenario: we've all been stranded on a desert island, but we can each bring just one item with us but it must correspond with the rule.
2. Choose a rule. Your rule could be "must start with the same letter of the alphabet" or "must cost under $20" or "must be something you could carry."
3. Start the game by adding an item yourself as a facilitator and then call on a person from the group to add another item that matches the rule and write it on the whiteboard. 
4. If people suggest something that doesn't match the rule, you can either just leave it off or what I like to do is separate the board into an island and an ocean, and add those ideas that don't match the rule end up in the ocean.
5. Once everyone has added an idea, you can end it there by asking the group whether they think the group would survive on the island with the items you've listed and what they notice about the items collected. Alternatively, you can go further by introducing the concept of dot voting to the group.
6. (optional) Give everyone in the group 2-3 voting dots and ask them to come up to the whiteboard and add a dot to the item they think is most important to survival on the island. 
7. (optional) Once everyone has voted, elevate the 2-3 items with the most votes and ask the group to reflect on the items the group chose. It can also be useful to let the group know they've just used a simple method of generating ideas as a group and voting on those they'd like to move forward with in just a few minutes This is a technique they might use in the future in other work and which can help improve decision making processes too!