Revealing

Sometimes the simplest of tools are the most revealing.

I ran a training session with a bunch of HR consultants yesterday and included a chinese whipers exercise to simulate an organisational communication cascade.

The construct was a series of four connected statements - with one slightly spurious one attached which had to be relayed through a chain of seven people.

Two groups competed against each other - with the added distraction of me telling very bad jokes to put them off.

The final scribes each noted one statement. Each noted a different statement and neither was actually quite true to the source document.

It certainly caused some pause for thought among the participants. Just how effective are traditional cascades - and how effective is verbal communication, especially in business environment of BAU?