The treasure hunt was coming to an end, and I was definitely in trouble. And to make matters worse, I knew it was my own darn fault.
The scene: a classroom at the Boston Museum of Science. The players: a group of thirty management consultants. Everyone had come through the first stage of the hunt in the museum with flying colors, returning in record time, with all the clues correct. Clearly these were a bunch of sharpies; surely, I figured, I could up the ante in the second hunt – push them out of their comfort zones a bit. So, ten minutes into their 90-minute stage two hunt, I rushed in and announced, “Management informs you that the deadline for your current project has been pushed up – dramatically. You now have only one hour for this hunt. Terribly sorry.”
Chaos ensued. Teams started scribbling madly on their clue sheets. Representatives from teams started bartering frantically with other teams in an effort to swap answers and exchange clue resources. Some groups even tried to create alliances, divvying up their clues with other teams so they wouldn’t have to visit all the locations in the hunt. This was a rather splendid idea, I thought, except that each team, by rule, was also required to take a group photo of their team at each location. Hence the complication – if you split the clues with another team, you only get half of the required photos. Tempers flared; temperature rose; I’d made a terrible mistake. By reducing the time, I’d pushed the challenge beyond the people’s ability to succeed – and they weren’t having it!
In my last blog entry, I wrote about my attendance at this year’s NASAGA conference. In one fascinating session, presenter Bernie DeKoven spoke to us about “flow”, a term much-popularized by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. According to DeKoven, the “flow” state is like being “in the zone”; we feel like we’re at one with our task -- whether it’s hitting a tennis ball or making a presentation. One of the main characteristics of “flow” is that the challenge closely matches our abilities. In other words, if the challenge is too high for our capabilities, we’re likely to check out in frustration. Conversely, if our abilities are too high for the challenge, then we’re again apt to check out, this time in boredom.
By changing the rules on my treasure hunt group, I had escalated the challenge beyond the group’s existing ability to succeed. In short, I’d taken them out of “flow”. Thankfully, just about everything that comes up during a training is “debriefable”. So, back to the wall, I ventured: “Well isn’t this just like work?” Management pushes you up against an impossible deadline. How do you react? Do you sit and suffer, or do you make it work for you? Etc.”
As you can imagine, the discussion was animated, if not a bit acrimonious. I’m sure I deserved it. I’d like to think that they got some learning out of it. This is what we trainers call “rationalization”. I know I learned something: be careful how far you push people for the sake of “teachable moments”. There’s a lot to be said for allowing people to experience that rare and elusive state of “flow”.