Wednesday, September 4, 2019 at 6:30:00 PM VeriShip 8880 Ward Pkwy #300, Kansas City, MO

COME PLAY! After the holiday weekend, this is JUST what you need to be inspired! I'm excited to bring this game I played at Agile Games New England from Derek W Wade and David A. Koontz. We will need at least 10 people to play, so bring a friend! There is a complete facilitators guide available, so you can take this interactive game back to your organizations at no cost.

The game is intended for leaders, managers, Scrum Masters, and other organizational change agents working to think about psychological safety. Players experience the effects of directive change such as mandating/training new behavior without consideration for social factors. The workshop offers an alternative approach to encouraging innovation, improvement, or other changes to the status quo.

Context
High-performing organizations innovate. Whether they are leadership teams, software teams, or something else they achieve results by being willing to challenge the status quo.

This can be scary. It's all very well to be encouraged to "fail fast" or "think outside of the box," but without the fear of looking foolish or being punished lead us to do what everyone around us is doing.

Ignoring the power of psychological safety is how organizations get stuck. We buy heavy-weight, detailed processes. We set up a chain of command. We define roles and responsibilities in great detail. We run everyone through training classes to ensure compliance with our new method. But somehow, people are even less innovative and more wary. Our fear of threat causes us to become so fixated on doing the new process correctly that we have no thought for performance.

Note: Pizza will be served, and beer is on tap. Bring your own beverage if you prefer. Refrigerators are available!