Steps
1. Roll a ball from person to person as quickly as possible without dropping
it.
2. Ask everyone to stand in a circle, then give each person a gutter
or ask people to pair up and give each pair a gutter.
3. The gutter per person method is great, but if you focus on partnership
or don’t have enough gutters, use the pair method.
4. Use the gutters you have to transport this ball from the first person
to the next all the way around and then back to the first person.
5. Now that you have a feel for the task, let’s try for an efficient
and effective process. Try to send the ball through the process as fast
as you can, beginning and ending on the first person’s gutter.
This time there will be a few constraints for solving the problem.
• No one’s gutter can be skipped.
• Gutters cannot touch each other.
• Gutter per person method -- your own pinkies must be touching
at all times
• Gutter pair method -- each person must choose one end of the gutter
to hold and hold it within three inches of the end.
• People cannot touch the ball as it travels from beginning, through
the process, and back to the beginning.
• If the ball falls from a gutter, the process must be restarted.
6. Add this story to the game. Your team has been commissioned to help
a candy factory with their production process. The company has observed
from its place in the market that its cycle time is too long. Candy is
taking too long to go from the first conveyor in the plant, around to
each of the stations and back to the beginning of the production cycle.
Your task as a consultant is to first replicate their current process
(pass the ball all the way around) and then discover ways to decrease
cycle time without reducing the number of steps (gutters) in the process.
7. Facilitator’s Notes: The solution for gutterball is similar
to warp speed that asks a team to juggle a ball as quickly as possible
around the group. The gutters seem to add an extra challenge and paradigm
shift to the final solution. If you are working with kids, be aware of
possible sword fight which commonly occur with the gutters. Potential
for injury increases with each new weapon. Most teams of ten to fifteen
people tend to get their time down to seven or eight seconds before benchmarking
a “world record.” A “world record” time tends
to be under one second! If it seems impossible, good...but it can be
done.
I have witnessed a wide variety of record breaking techniques. A C.A.T.
team from Ford currently holds the fastest time I have witnessed at
.21
seconds! The variety of possible strategies and solutions is a strength
of this activity.
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