Today in class we talked about organizational change. I was not familiar with the theories, the terminology, the thought leaders, or any of the topics covered. Our presenter was a very smart, outgoing, and dynamic woman who is doing great things in this space. She was funny and had great interaction from the moment we shook hands at the door. This class is now session 3, and we have been together for 7 days and counting, so while we all knew each other, she didn’t know any of us. Very impressive to jump into this wild and crazy group half way through the course.

One of the things that is being modeled in our course is a wide variety of training techniques and activities. Not all of them may work in every situation, but I know that the few things I have begun to add have been perfect additions to keep the audience engaged and promote learning. Adults, for the most part, are flexible and willing to go with the flow, as long as the activity has relevance to the topic.

Here are some things we did today that you might find useful next time you do any training or presenting.

1. For our introductions she had a wide variety of pictures cut out of magazines. We had 1 minute to all rush the table, find one that we liked and tell how it represented the idea of change in our life. There were pictures of everything from trumpet players to a bottle of beer! You can imagine the comments and laughs they inspired.
2. Another activity was designed to show how to manage unanticipated changes. Each table had a flip chart and 8 minutes to finish the activity. We had to write the alphabet down and find something in the room that began with each letter. It was a mad scramble of people trying to write letters and words and find objects. Every couple of minutes our instructor handed us a new piece of paper with new requirements: every 6th word had to be written backwards; 4 of the words had to be pieces of furniture; and the last one was to circle each word that had more than 4 letters in it with a red marker. Unbeknownst to us, they had removed all but one red marker from the tables and put it in a separate location in the room. There was a lot of dashing about, compromising, team work, and creativity going on!
3. Many factors are involved in organizational change. We were given a list of about 25 different factors and asked to create a mobile from the sticks, yarn, and various cutouts she provided. On each cutout we had to write down one of the change factors. It was a fun activity to illustrate the need for balance in rolling out organizational change. Here are our final products.

There were quite a few other activities, but these stood out to me. If you aren’t teaching about change, you could probably come up with another way to tie these activities to your topic. Or, it could just be a great activity to rev up your audience after lunch or a break.

Hope you come back for more ideas tomorrow. I’ll be here all week.