One of my favorite organizations is NASAGA, the North American Simulation and Gaming Association. Every year its membership of teachers and trainers meets at their annual conference to exchange ideas about how games and simulations can bring alive classroom lessons and training workshops. I’ve been going to NASAGA conferences for 8 years now, and found each one a treasure trove of innovative presentation techniques, game design tips, icebreakers, jolts, etc. Having been in the training business for a decade or so, I thought I’d seen it all until – during a workshop at this year’s NASAGA conference in
Everyone in our class was handed a potato and a straw -- not one of those flimsy stirring straws, mind you, that dissolves in your coffee. These were good, strong restaurant straws and hard, red Russett potatoes. Ken instructed us to place the potato in the crook between our thumb and forefinger. Then, on the count of three, we were to summon up our mental and spiritual energy, let out a might “Yaw!” and thrust the straw through the potato. I’m a pretty open and optimistic fellow, but I’ll admit I was a bit skeptical about that little piece of cylindrical plastic making its way through an intractable, starchy tuber like a potato. Well, what the heck – if I fail, I’m sure at least a few others in class will do likewise. Surely in advanced karate classes, not everyone manages to break his board, right? So I lined up my straw, visualized it going all the way through the potato like a knife through butter, and uttered my most full-throated “Yaw!” And by golly – the straw went right on through my potato. Remarkable!
I haven’t yet used Ken’s potato activity in one of my teambuilding workshops, but I’m surely going to. After all, we are often faced with challenges in our life that seem impossibly hard and impenetrable – like a potato. Sometimes all it takes to get through is a simple, ordinary tool, and a whole lot of belief.