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 ...

Get 50 Digital Team-Building Games: Fast, Fun Meeting Openers, Group Activities and Adventures using Social Media, Smart Phones, GPS, Tablets, and More now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.