CHAPTER 5
Problem Solving
It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.
—Albert Einstein
If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake.
—Frank Wilczek
Problem solving is a critical skill for high-performing teams. It is the culmination of team communication, elevated trust, out-of-the-box thinking, and the ability to play with new and potentially unrelated ideas until a solution is created. Teams that get “stuck” have a difficult time solving problems because they begin to believe that they simply cannot solve them. The following games are designed to get teams into the problem-solving mind-set. They aim to open team members’ minds to new solutions, encourage them to listen to fellow teammates, work together as a team even if they don’t understand the idea entirely, and most of all, help them recognize when they have solved a key problem and celebrate it! These games are a great starting point and way to get teams to ask, “If we can solve this, what else can we solve?”
Move One Line/Add One Line—Team Creativity with More Than One Solution
Time: 10–30 minutes
Participants: 2–8 per team; unlimited teams
Technology: Internet, Google Docs or another application that allows simultaneous editing
Category: Problem solving
Goals
Increase a team’s creativity by creating as many solutions as possible to a visual puzzle by moving or adding a line.
Game Summary
This game is a classic creativity team-building challenge ...