The Fearless Journey game was conceived in 2010 by a small group of Agile software practitioners, at the Play4agile unconference. The concept was turned into this game by Deborah Hartmann Preuss.

Here Deb tells the story of its creation and what happens when teams play the game.

TRANSCRIPT:

This is the story of how our community made this game, and what happens when it’s played.

 

Now, I’m an experiential learner for sure. And this definitely describes me:

• I hear, and I forget.
• I see, and I remember.
• I do, and I understand.

So when I went to the first Play4Agile in 2010, which I helped organize in Germany, I had in mind to create a learning game.

Once upon a time, in Open Space at Play4Agile …

I brought with me Don Gray’s Fearless Change index cards, which I’d found somewhere on the web. They’re excerpts from the Fearless Change books by Linda Rising and Mary Lynn Manns.

And Ole Jepsen, from Denmark arrived, inspired by the book Switch, How to Change Things When Change is Hard. The book talks about decision making and how it’s not merely logical, but it also is led astray by emotions – and we need to recognize both. Organizations, similarly, have logic and culture. And change agents often find themselves riding (or being being led astray by) the elephant of culture. Ole had in mind to design a leadership game using this metaphor.

So about a dozen of us held a session, and workshopped the concept that later turned into the game. The workshop was led by Antti Kirjavainan from Finland. And when we were done, I took the concept and sort of chewed on it for a couple of hours, and that night in my room I created the actual game. And the next day we tested it!

Play-testing the game.

One of my clients was present at Play4Agile, someone who had been stuck on a problem, so we played the game with that problem. We played with rea the issue and obstacles. And it had surprising results! He saw new possibilities, where last week we’d been stuck. We continued play testing it further, asking people to assess their “stuckness” on their Big Goal, before and after playing.

The community continued to grow the game.

Since then, it’s been translated into French, German, Spanish, Japanese  – all by agile community volunteers. And we were gifted a Dutch version by a group that had discovered the game and was using it in the domain of affordable public housing, who just said, “Hey, we’ve translated it, do you want this?” Which was awesome.

How we play Fearless Journey.

If we were all together here, I’d have you come and stand around and have a look at the cards. So instead, I’m just going to show you a couple of slides, I won’t explain the whole thing, but just enough so that the stories I tell you make sense. If you want to know more, just check the website FearlessJourney.info . All the details are there.

Fearless Journey is a table game, designed for a team-sized group of up to 10 people. It has

• a card deck, that you can download and print (or you can purchase a deck online).
• Also, Tile cards, which create a path (inspired by the Carcassonne game)
• and some small blank index cards, which will become the Obstacle deck.

That’s all you need to play.

And the gameplay is to create a path from Today to your Big Goal using the path cards.

It’s both Real and Play.

What’s cool about the game is that even though we’re playing, we use a real challenge of a real team. They name their “stuckness” of Today. And also they name a Big Goal that they cannot reach by themselves.

And then, in addition to that, the team members writes real Obstacles for the game on the blank cards.

 

And then we have the magic of play, where the players use the Fearless Change strategy cards to remove the Obstacles that block their Path to the Goal.

How does the game get people un-stuck?

Fearless Journey invites people to talk about old, frustrating topics in new ways. Of course, the magic sauce is collaboration.

The real goal of the game is not so much to teach the patterns – there’s a lot of detail in the books, and we do hope that one of the players is inspired to go read and learn more. But the real goal is to spark new ways to influence change in a real situation. And, secondarily, to model a culture of open collaboration and problem solving.

One key is that the facilitator of the game must hold a space of play, where new things are possible. And where the business-as-usual rules don’t apply. This allows the Strategy cards to have a chance to inspire ideas, courage, new alliances and new possibilities.

Note that in the game, the mechanism is not to solve the problem, or to be sure. The mechanism is to try to agree together that the patterns might work, that they’re worth trying; to play with them. It’s this lightness that lets people engage and explore in new ways. It puts old facts in new juxtapositions, sparking different ways of seeing and doing.

So what happens when we play it?

To start, just writing the Obstacles gives people permission to openly talk about their frustrations.

And the facilitator’s presence is really important, because the facilitator actively works to remove the authority voice: resists participating, resists giving them the answers, just maintains the clear rules. Because they will ask, “Oh, are we allowed to do this?” Or, you know, some rule in the game is not clear. And this is the first culture hack that you’re going to do, which is to say, “You can decide!” or “What would you do in real life?” So that they stop looking outside the circle of the game and look inward toward each other and decide what they want to do.

And then you’ll see that they start out with their their cards in their hand, like a normal poker game. But soon enough, they should naturally be laying their cards on the table, literally. And you’ll find that they’re moving them around, sharing them, touching other people’s cards … and the boundaries between what’s my solution and what’s yours start to get kind of blurry.

They may also go into old habits of long discussions, arguing and endlessly tweaking the ideas that are on the table. This is another hack that the facilitator can bring: “This is not about consensus, it’s not about perfection! Propose something!”

The game teaches consensus decision making.

When I facilitate, before the game begins, I teach them the Decider Protocol from Software for Your Head. (Which some people also call Roman Vote – but there’s a lot more to it than thumbs up/down, and I encourage you to read it at LiveInGreatness.com).

When I notice that they’re starting to devolve into picky details or even, you know, furious agreement with one another (which wastes time), I say “Why don’t you just try Decider now?” And the first time there’s a little resistance, but then they realize that it quickly gives them the information they need – to know if they can move on – if the present proposal is “good enough” – or if more discussion is actually needed.

And then they get into the flow of the game and they they start solving each other’s obstacles.

Some of the things I’ve seen happen.

• They stop accepting that “it just has to be that way here,” and they start discussing the undiscussable.
• They are able to hold their contributions lightly. So they can suggest something, even if they don’t know fully how it’s going to connect to what’s on the table. Even if they’re not sure if it’s going to be in the final solution.
• They are not worried if the card they offer isn’t used. The focus is on solving the problem, not each person’s contribution. They can contribute, and and know that the group will figure out what fits.
• They also start offering perspectives – different people see the problem from different angles. And one angle that I often hear is, “Yeah, that could work. But only if we get management buy-in.” I simply ask: “Does somebody have a card for that?” Then they start looking at their cards. “Oh, I have this one”. “Oh, and what about this one?” Then then discuss one more time, then they vote again with decider.
• People become more confident – they see that their ideas have value, because different voices are invited to add what they know.
• And, more than once, I’ve heard a group say later, “Oh, we’re using decider all the time now.”

Debriefing boosts learning.

A debrief is part of the game. I’ve heard some interesting things in the debrief:

• “You know, at work, we don’t share our problems. But when we shared our problems here, we got better solutions.”
• “I liked the saying-thank-you part”. The game has you thank people who contributed to a solution. When Ole’s teenage daughter played it with a friend, they were cheering and giving each other a high five, and they quite enjoyed it. So just let the flavour of your team develop whatever comes out of this game.

Helpful for un-stucking Wicked Problems

I played this in a country that had a really wicked problem, entrenched by the government’s employment policies. They were so discouraged, they didn’t even want to play the game on this problem. I said, it’s perfect, let’s try it. In the end, they only played for about 20 minutes – they couldn’t stop talking. It had sort of loosened their “It has to be this way here” belief.  They left th game and talked about the actual situation! Somebody said, “What if we could find somebody who has influence in this aspect of the government? Then we could move it forward.” Somebody knew someone! And there they were, talking about a real solution. They left the table in the middle of the game, which is great! That’s what you want.

The game hacks the team’s familiar patterns.

The game lets people turn fresh eyes on old problems, gives themselves permission to (once again) say what’s true, even if it’s awkward, even if it’s been discussed before and it hasn’t helped. And it makes it ok to lean on each other – on each other’s vision, on each other’s perspectives. And to use the patterns. This is the strength of the patterns: they help people who feel powerless to imagine new ways to have influence.

Not just for teams.

There are some variations on the website to this basic game. For example, there’s a solitaire for consultants and leaders who don’t have a team, who are new or who are working in some kind of isolation. Here the Impact-Effort grid and Stakeholder Analysis activities provide thinking tools for using the Strategy Cards as an individual.

And there’s also Community Edition, which you can use at a conference where people aren’t a real team, but they want to learn the game. This version way also designed at a subsequent Play4Agile, by a total newcomer to the community!

From play into the real world…

Now, we’ve been talking about play, and imagining how they could solve it, but it may be important, for a team that needs a win, to move into actual real-world action.

The group can ask: what do we have here that we want to try? How do we make it work in the real world?

And if there’s overwhelm, or uncertainty, you can use the solitaire exercises, as a group facilitation, to help them think through how they want to apply the ideas that they found in playing the game. For example, the Circles-and-Soup exercise can help prioritise when there are too many Strategies found.

Fearless Journey helps teams find hope again.

The game teaches that, to help a team move forward, a leader doesn’t need to have all the answers. They simply need to create a space where people feel safe to speak and to think together.

I’ve really enjoyed using this game with people. I love seeing the hope come back into their eyes.

PS: 🦋

The butterfly that appears on the card deck is no “decoration”. It’s a Monarch, and it’s an encouragement.

I live in Canada, and every year clouds of Monarchs make the migration between their summer home with us, and their winter home in South America – and back! That’s thousands and thousands of kilometers. Talk about a Fearless Journey :-)

What’s your story?

If you’ve used this game, think for a minute What have you seen happen, and what effect has it had on people? Leave me your comments below.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai