Checkmate: Using Chess to Change Lives

In a Wall Street Journal article this week, Stephanie Banchero highlight's one St. Louis school's innovate strategy of using chess to change lives. Below is a snippet from school founder Jimmie Edwards quoted in the article:

"Most of my kids are impulsive, reactionary and they lash out without thinking through the consequences," said Mr. Edwards, who walks the school's halls almost daily. "Chess teaches them patience and teaches them that there are consequences to bad decisions."

This is an excellent read, especially if you are interested in the many many applications of board games and board game mechanics in the school and the workplace.

Settlers of Catan Mechanic and Race for the...Meeting?

My staff members have all turned into sprinters.

That's right, every Sunday night they sprint down the hallway to be the first to arrive at our weekly staff meeting.

Why?

And more importantly...how?

Board game mechanics can teach us a lot about why and how people behave. Be careful when you write the rules for your team!

Consider the following--more traditional--rules to combat meeting tardiness:

Rule 1: (Desired behavior) "Don't be late!"
Rule 2: (Define) "If you're on-time your late, if you are early you are on-time!"
Rule 3: (Penalties) "If you are late you will be written-up!"
Rule 4: (Some concessions) "If you have an emergency tell me ahead of time and we can make an exception..."
Rule 5: (More concessions) "First time you're late is a verbal warning, but next time is a write-up!"
Rule 6: (Threats) "If you get three write-ups you will be referred to the big boss!"
Rule 7: (Tie-up loose ends) "If you're late you will have to meet with me to go over what you missed."

This traditional approach may work, but there is one drawback.

If the main rule is, "don't be late" then there is no incentive to get to the meeting any earlier than 1 second before the meeting starts. Consider the following model:

The yellow area is the "Window of Arrival," or the average arrival time of staff members.

If you are like me, you always plan to get to meetings as LATE as possible and yet to still be on time, but of course what happens then?

COFFEE SPILLS, FRIEND CALLS, FORGET YOUR PHONE, LEFT YOUR KEY INSIDE

Whstever the excuse...YOU'RE LATE!

Let's call the pink area SPILLOVER, and we all know that spillover occurs. (Just try to fill a measuring cup to exactly the top level with water.)

I propose instead a different system!

First, let's assign every staff member a color (So...Brian=Red, Ted=Green, Sam=Brown...ect.), and then get a pawn to represent each color...

(For example: these pawns can be purchased from Board Game Bits.com)

Next, adapt an innovate BOARD GAME MECHANIC (I just love when I actually write a post that goes with the theme of my blog) from Settlers of Catan to suit your needs.

Ok, so the adaptation of the Settlers of Catan mechanic takes a little bit more explanation. Allow me to summarize.

See the following picture to jog your memory about the circular "chits" that are used in Settlers to denote probability:
When you roll two dice, the probability of rolling a "7" is the highest and of rolling a "12" or a "2" the lowest. In Settlers, numbers 2-12 are placed randomly on the board to demonstrate the probability of any given resource being "produced." So, a player would want to locate his towns near resources that have numbers close to 7 to produce the most resources.

Remember how that works?

Good!

So, to apply the same principle, count the number (n) of people you want to arrive to your staff meeting on time (in my case 8) and assign a probability to n outcomes along a continuum, such that a roll of two dice will have one outcome.

Next, make a board! Like this...
And assign each staff member's pawn to a location on the board according to when they arrived at the meeting. Those arriving first are placed at the low levels of probability and those arriving last are placed in the high levels of probability. In this instance, green arrived first!

Last, explain that you will ask for volunteers during the meeting to help with projects A, B and C. If nobody volunteers say that you will roll the dice and the person who's number(s) are rolled have to volunteer. (Alternative: Allow staff members who volunteer before the die is rolled move up in position on the board)

This works! But why????

One more model should explain:
The arrival window has been expanded! Instead of having incentive to arrive 1 SECOND before the meeting time, incentive has been changed to arrive SOONER.

As a result, spillage is depleted to ZERO:
And so my staff are SPRINTERS!

...and they are also PAWNS.

But they make it to staff meeting on time, and yours will too!

(Of course, you will occasionally have to make good on your threat to roll the dice, but it is ever so fun to be able to let fate (and their own decision to be later than others) decide who gets punished).

Chutes and Ladders

There have been a "flood" (over 25 each day) of new visitors to this blog over the last couple days.

I wish I could attribute this to excellent Pinebars content!

Actually, its apparently a result of people searching for chutes and ladders on Google. I'm not sure why this has never before yielded so many visitors, but I do know that if you search "chutes ladders board game" on Google image search that the first picture that comes up is the one from this blog.

Hope everyone is finding exactly what they are looking for!

Cheers,

Dennis

Premio Archimede Finalist

After several months of waiting, I am pleased to announce that my card game "Drop Site" has made it to the "finalists" stage in the Premio Archimede tournament. This field consists of 69 games (narrowed down from 141 entrants), and there are several prizes to be won. I am hopeful for an award, but in all honesty, I am just happy to have made it to this round.