Fundamentals of Management

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STEP 1
Develop an activity that actively demonstrates barriers to effective communication.

A tsunami has hit seven islands and your team is on a launch that must drop off emergency supplies to the islands. However, there is shortage of fuel and an efficient route needs to be planned that will help reach the supplies to each of the islands in time. The team has been given packets of supplies that must be opened and the supplies must be packed according to the requirement lists in seven crates for each of the island.

Essentially, this is a planning game in which several barriers to communication will be brought out. First there will be person who will not adequately contribute to the planning process. Second, there will persons who will dominate the proceedings and will make the people believe that the solution they give is the best. Third, there will be communication barriers in goal setting. Fourth, there will be communication barriers observed in integrating delegated work. Fifth, there will be communication barriers in allocating resources. Sixth, there will be communication barriers in making decision under time pressure. Seventh, there will be communication barriers in structuring an approach. Eight, there will be communication barriers that will prevent the participants from generating alternate viable approaches. That is they will propose a solution but will not look around for a better solution that was faster and used less fuel. .

This is taken from the website: http://www.businessballs.com
"'maps' activities (team-building games, ice-breakers, warm-ups, planning and organising, geography, international business, exporting)
This is a simple activity with lots of variations, to suit many games requirements. For groups of any size, split the group into teams of up to five people per team. This also works as an individual exercise and for pairs and teams of three, although obviously the team-building benefit increases with the size of the teams. Issue each team with a sheet of flip-chart paper, a pencil and a marker pen, and give them five minutes to draw a map of a part of the world, for example, Europe, Africa, South America, the states of the USA, Asia, the counties of England, Scotland, Wales, etc. Anywhere that might relate to the group and its responsibilities or territory. It's a challenging exercise which is a lot of fun when teams display and compare their maps. Increase the degree of difficulty by asking for capital cities or county/state capital towns to be added, or populations estimates, etc. Reduce the level of difficulty by providing a list of countries or states or counties, towns, statistics, etc., which people can then work from. Orientate the exercise to your own organisation or business by asking for information to be mapped relating to your key customers, branches, markets, etc., - anything that's relevant to your purposes. As the facilitator all you need is a copy of the correct version to issue to groups afterwards. The exercise is good for people of all ages, including youngsters." http://www.businessballs.com

STEP 2

Develop a simulation activity that teaches participants effective communication behaviors.

This simulation can easily be programmed and will help participants effective communication. Teams of 7 will sit around a computer screen so that every person can see the screen and read what is presented to them. On the computer screen there will be a timed exercise for ten minutes that will ask the participants to match 12 brand names with the names of 12 companies. If they get the right match they score points. However, after the ten minutes is over, the computer screen presents ...