This activity works well to demonstrate the team process of making decisions – especially with new team members who don’t know each other well. An ideal team size is 3 to 5 people and the exercise requires about 20 minutes.
You will need the following materials:
- Prepared 5.x7. index cards with the name of the city, length of stay, travel time and cost
- Map of vacation destination and/or travel brochure
Start with a space large enough for groups to collaborate. Begin by painting a picture of your team traveling to an exotic destination (e.g., Italy). The challenge is that all team members must agree on the itinerary within the following constraints:
- You only have ten days total.
- You must arrive and depart from Rome (or other central destination).
- The possibilities are described on the provided index cards (hand out the cards…noting the actual time at the location as well as the travel time to get there).
- Total amount budgeted for travel and lodging is $5,000.
This will be their starting point. Indicate on each card the minimum amount of time that they must stay in whatever cities they choose and the travel time (in days) from the arrival point to the other cities. Determine how many days the vacation will last. Inform the team that it has ten minutes to decide how to spend its ten-day vacation.
Ask each team to share its travel itinerary.
Debrief and Summarize
After each team has shared the travel itineraries, debrief the activity:
- Did the team have a consensus? If not, what kind of decisions were made
- What worked well for the team?
- What would have made the process work better?
- Did the team “think out of the box?” (e.g., asking the facilitator if they could take more travel time by traveling by a slower mode or if they could allow “fluid” time so that they could stay longer in a city than planned.)
- What did you learn from this activity?
- How might we apply these lessons to our team’s work?
- How did your team make decisions?
Inspired by Sally Holloway
If you like this activity, check out my book, Team Energizers, for 49 other team activities!
Related Articles:
Strategies to Make Team Decisions
Team Building Activity: Follow the Process
Team Kick Off: How to Start a Meeting
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Kristin Arnold
KRISTIN ARNOLD, MBA, CSP, CPAE-Speaker Hall of Fame, CPF | Master has been facilitating meaningful conversations between executives and managers to make better decisions and achieve extraordinary results for 30+ years. She's a leading authority on moderating panel discussions and passionate about finding the perfect olive to complement a vodka martini.
