Meddlers Game
The Meddlers Game is a hands-on activity that encourages teams to explore and visualize different organizational structures, promoting discussion around roles, responsibilities, and value networks. It helps teams collaboratively design and adapt their structure to better manage change and achieve agility.
Use this method when you need to facilitate a conversation about organizational design, team structure, or how to improve collaboration and value delivery within a team or across multiple teams.
Solves: Siloed teams, unclear roles, inefficient communication, resistance to change, lack of understanding of value streams.
- 1
Step 1: Introduce the Meddlers Game and its purpose. Explain the meaning of the different game pieces (faces, hats, function tiles). (5 min)
- 2
Step 2: Present a challenge scenario (e.g., a business unit with specific customers, a growing startup, a geographically distributed team). (5 min)
- 3
Step 3: Divide participants into smaller teams (4-6 people). Provide each team with a set of Meddlers game pieces. (5 min)
- 4
Step 4: Teams collaboratively design an organizational structure using the game pieces, addressing the challenge scenario. Encourage discussion about roles, responsibilities, and team interactions. (45 min)
- 5
Step 5: Each team presents their proposed structure to the larger group, explaining their reasoning and the benefits and risks of their design. (15-20 min)
- Encourage creativity and experimentation with different structures.
- Remind participants to focus on value delivery and collaboration when designing their structures.
- Facilitate discussion about the trade-offs between different organizational models (e.g., functional vs. cross-functional teams).
- Use different challenge scenarios to explore different organizational contexts.
- Introduce additional constraints or rules to make the game more challenging.
- Use the game to evaluate existing organizational structures and identify areas for improvement.