Our Global Landscape: A card sort activity
Are your avant guard friends coming to dinner and you’re looking for something different and meaningful? Does the weekend call for a rainy day? I’d like to share with you a fun activity that may also give you an opportunity for dialogue and discovery about what has meaning in your life.
I created this activity as part of a Human Resources Conference workshop I gave in May. The workshop centered on the theme of individual contribution within the broader organizational – and global – whole.
The premise is that in these past two decades of stress, where decision making is speeding up, work hours are lengthening, and there has been a breakdown of commitment between employer and employee – we are losing sight of the perspective of the whole. We’ve tended to hunker down in an attempt to slow things down, and yet, there is a deeper, persistent intra-planetary drumbeat that cannot be ignored.
You may be thinking: Why should I care about global issues? I can barely manage my own work hassles and family life? For some, the best coping mechanism is to disengage with the larger world. Although our industrial era culture may have taught us differently, we are all a part of the delicate web of interrelationships called the planet earth. While perhaps not always seen or even recognized, the global landscape is having and will continue to have an impact on each of us. It remains only a matter of when this reality becomes figural for us.
Have you disengaged from the larger conversation around you? What is the box you have built around yourself? To create an opportunity to see differently, try the following activity.
Steps:
1) Download and print (2-sided) the Global Landscape Cards. (Don’t look at the back side if you can help it. That has the “answers”.) Note: you will notice several blank cards. Add some of your own data to the deck.
2) You won’t want to play this alone. It’s not as fun. Find family members or friends, or work colleagues to “play”. This won’t take more than 30 minutes. (Caution! It could catalyze long, pleasant or unnerving conversations.)
3) Divide your group into teams. Each team gets a deck of Global Landscape Cards.
4) Play “true/false” with each of the statements on the Landscape Cards. Keep score of which ones and how many you or your group get correct.
5) Set up some competition – hey, that’s the Western culture way. Perhaps the first team who finishes with the most correct answers wins. Offer fabulous prizes to the winner. Or not.
Note: In spite of the rational, linear set of steps I’ve outlined above, I would suggest that you and those involved abandon all expectations of what should happen in the space you create together. There is no right or wrong way to use these cards. Be present to your individual and joint sense of what wants to happen in the moment.
Post activity thought starters:
What card was a surprise to you?
What did you notice about the cards?
What did you notice about your reaction to the activity?
What part was most difficult or easy?
Now reflect upon the following:
Who am I uniquely in relation to this global conversation?
What role will I choose to play in creating a higher vision of human purpose in the 21st century?
I’m curious to know how the activity works for you. Keep me posted.