Boom! Whack! An inspirational team-building exercise using percussion (quietly)

​I recently had the opportunity to run a team-building exercise within my normal group of colleagues. I had a blank canvas. Previous exercises had ranged from the deadly serious (a brainstorm of the diversity issues preventing us from being a fully-inclusive workplace) to the silly (a quiz of observation, in which we were sent out of the room and subsequently had to identify which physical attributes / articles of clothing our colleagues had changed during our absence).

I immediately wanted to do something musical, if possible; something that would be enjoyable, but also force us to work as a team. My first idea was to acquire a set of those Christmas crackers containing tuned whistles. With one person per whistle, this is the ultimate in building a co-ordinated team: in fact, the players are more dependent on one another than they would be in a real band. Everyone must play exactly on cue, otherwise the melody simply doesn't work.

I also researched companies that would come into the office and run singing or percussion workshops. Apart from the cost, I foresaw one major issue with this - and also with my cracker whistle idea - which is that we'd rather quickly become deeply unpopular if we held a noisy bongo workshop in a meeting room next door to a customer sales pitch.

Tactfully tuneful

So now I was on the hunt for something musical, but quiet, and also cheap. With just a few days to go, I discovered a website describing Boomwhackers. Boomwhackers are coloured plastic tubes of varying lengths. When hit against a hand, thigh, or immovable object, they produce a dull thud that happens to be a pitched note. A complete set of eight Boomwhackers contains a diatonic octave. It is also possible to buy sets that add the semitones to form a full chromatic octave, or to extend the range to a second or third octave. A simple plastic cap over one end of the tube alters the pitch down by an octave, providing even more options. (For reasons that a physicist can explain better than me, the resonance of a tube with a closed end produces a standing wave of half the wavelength of the standing wave in the same-length tube with an open end. This supposedly explains why a clarinet plays at a lower pitch than a flute, despite being of similar lengths.)

Because they are simple, cheap, brightly-coloured and indestructible, Boomwhackers are used mainly in early-years musical education. A search on YouTube found that they are used by adults primarily as a comedy esoteric musical instrument, in much the same way that a kazoo might be. Audiences apparently find them delightfully funny; in order to play any sufficiently advanced music, the players must be constantly and frenetically picking up and putting down different tubes.

Thanks to Amazon Prime's next-day delivery, I acquired two sets of Boomwhackers. With the help of an enthusiastic Boomwhacker blog, I created a set of Boomwhacker "sheet music" of gradually-increasing difficulty. I reasoned that some of the workshop participants would not be able to read traditional music notation, so I used a simple block representation.

The scratch orchestra

I announced that we would be forming a scratch orchestra of sorts, with a stated aim of learning and playing a piece of music, with harmonies, within the half-hour slot I had allowed. There was a moment of mirth when I opened my holdall to reveal the Boomwhackers for the first time, but also an immediate sense of some excitement when I demonstrated how they worked. Everyone grabbed one or two each, and we ran through the first couple of exercises - simple scales - with ease. It was working well.

The remaining exercises introduced different rhythms and a modest amount of harmony, to get the participants used to reading more than one line of "sheet music" at a time. Finally, we came to the promised outcome: the traditional song, Frère Jacques, to be played as a round. The first run-through was scrappy, but after just a couple of attempts, we managed a more than passable performance. There was even a little cheer at the end, and everyone was grinning.

Conclusion

Assuming that you could allow half an hour, I'd be confident running this workshop as the ice-breaker at the start of a conference, say. Sure, there will probably be some people who aren't that musical; but I think they'll have fun anyway. There might be a handful of people who see such an exercise as a waste of time, but my participants seemed to buy into the idea that we were doing something as a team that we could not possibly have achieved without the full co-operation of everyone present.

A Business Operations Manager is ...

My role in the company is called Operations Manager, or more formally, Business Operations Manager. It's not a role that translates very well to other organisations, encompassing aspects of General Management and Resource Management. This is an internal blog post in which I attempted to characterise the role. Especially useful if you've been baffled by my "poetry" on the same subject.

... the ​conductor of a symphony orchestra

Barbara Hannigan's description of her own job as "a humbling realisation that the conductor is part servant, part leader and, most of the time, just trying to stay out the way" sounds suspiciously like Operations Management. It's the engineers and the consultants and even the salespeople that have the individual skills to make the business work harmoniously. Without the Operations team, though, they might as well all be playing their own tunes.

(Source: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/mar/11/barbara-hannigan-conducting-britten-sinfonia)

... but not a fighter pilot

Commonly, multi-tasking is considered to be a valuable and transferable business skill. It really isn't - unless, that is, you're the pilot of a fast jet. Because, really, very few professions actually require a single person to be performing multiple skilled roles at the same time.

What's really valuable is the ability to rapidly assess problems and tasks, and deal with them in a sensible order. Often I find I start an important email first thing in the morning and it's still half-drafted at home time, because less important but more urgent things have occurred in the meantime. Finishing the email without repeating points I've already made, and making the whole message flow, is a bit of an art in itself. When somebody calls and says that they're following up on the IM conversation from earlier - it's not always trivial to slip back into that conversation without further context. In each case, I'm not multi-tasking, but context-shifting: picking things up; putting them back down; responding to calls and instant messages and emails in something like a managed order rather than complete chaos. And that leads nicely on to ...

... a first responder

I'm not a Helpdesk. I don't get assigned tickets in a predetermined order. I get contacted by people who are more or less unhappy about something and who need something done to resolve the problem. Some of those problems are inherently deeply personal. Some affect entire teams. Some will have a serious impact on the performance of the whole business.

There are established tools and techniques for medical triage. Sometimes, it would be nice if the same techniques could be applied to business problems. Tie a green tag to the Finance Manager who needs to know if some hours can be moved. A yellow tag for the member of staff who's told his line manager he's not happy in role. Ah, but it's financial month end: now the Finance Manager's problem has deteriorated and warrants a red tag. And that unhappy member of staff has found a new job and quit. Black tag: pain relief only now until the inevitable end.

But caution all the while on communicating your intentions. No patient wants to wake up and discover a black tag tied to themselves.

... but not a surgeon

A Delivery Manager might well get the chance to spend an hour - or a whole day - picking apart the issues facing a single project team. The Operations Manager will probably never have that chance. The Operations Manager will always need the broad view of the problems. That, sadly, will always come at the expense of the deep view.

We're working on "professionalising" our Operations team, but the reality is that Ops touches many different functions within the company, all of which are demanding and dynamic. It's exceptionally rare that we'll get the chance to sit in a quiet place and just work on one single problem at a time.

... a gardener

The adage says that a weed is simply a plant growing in the wrong place. Surely, then, this makes the Operations Manager a gardener: moving plants to their best location; allowing them access to the light; letting them flourish.

Furthermore, it's been said that gardening is never really about putting plants in the ground; nature can do that perfectly well without any help. It's much more about clearing space, removing obstacles, and letting growth happen naturally.

... and a master LEGO builder

The central job of an Operations Manager or a Resourcing Manager is to take the available resources and make them fit the work available. However, there's not a single right answer to any resourcing problem. It's a bit like taking the pieces from one Lego set and the instructions from a different set. At the same time, the Operations Manager needs to constantly guess which Lego sets will need to be built next, and next year.

In the meantime, there will be a steady supply of new Lego pieces arriving that are almost certainly the wrong shape, but which perfectly fit the instructions from six months ago.

An op to the head of the Head of Ops

A misleading excuse for a punning headline. This will be extraction of two lower wisdom teeth under general anaesthetic.  Completely routine day surgery. Home in time for lunch. Spoiler alert: I survived.

0745. A bright, beautiful winter's morning. I'm not nervous, yet. The outpatients building looks dilapidated but the staff are welcoming and perky. Wifey is directed to a waiting area, while I sit alone in Room 8. It's bare and tired, but clean. There is trolley with a surgical gown and blanket folded neatly on it; a cabinet; a couple of plastic chairs; a sink; a shelf with magazines from 2010; and a floral curtain concealing the back half of the room, stamped with the words "Do not enter - privacy and decency". I wonder if there's someone sleeping on the other side.

I contemplate reading my book. I've brought with me a bag containing just that and a few coins. The latter is in case I find myself groggily wandering around the car park after my op. Wifey assumes that I'll have had the clarity to remember to pick up my bag before absconding.

0815. The staff nurse comes in to do paperwork, talk about drug options ("I'm rubbish at swallowing pills," I tell her, apologetically, trying not to sound like a two-year-old) and take my blood pressure and weight. She attaches an identification wristband. Then she wants to see my ankles. "It's so I know what size surgical stockings you need. You look ... medium."

Wifey is allowed to join me now. There's not much to do or say, but I'm glad she's here. A nurse wanders up and down the hall, singing. She's very good. We join in a bit. We're not very good.

The consultant comes in. More paperwork. "Did we talk about the risks?" Yes, a small risk that you'll accidentally paralyse my face. "It's not a small risk. Your alveolar nerve runs right next to the roots. What would you like to do?"

What I would like is to have more than five seconds in which to digest this information and make a decision based on quantifiable risks. One in a thousand chance of paralysis? One in ten? Evens?

I tell the consultant that I'll accept her best recommendation. She thinks for a moment and decides to hedge her bets: extract one tooth and perform coronectomy on the other. She gets out a permanent marker and draws a large figue 8, with a line over it, on one side of my face; and 8C, with a line over it, on the other side.

This is so you don't cut off my leg by mistake? I ask.

"Or something else," she says, gravely.

Wifey and I are left alone. I find an open packet of sweets in the bedside cabinet and contrive to spill them all over the floor. Wifey ventures past the "Do not enter" curtain and discovers a birthing pool - a relic of this building's past as the maternity ward.

The staff nurse returns with a soluble paracetemol. "How bad are you at swallowing pills, really? I could get you an antibiotic solution and soluble painkillers, but I'd have to go all the way over to the pharmacy ..."

Do you know those tiny anti-malarials? I ask. I can't swallow them. Sorry.

She does a fairly good job at pretending that she's not annoyed.

A man in a quilted jacket wanders in and announces that he's the anaesthetist.  He looks at the paperwork and asks a couple of questions about allergies and when I last ate.

We are left alone again.

But then it's all go: a nurse tells me to get into the surgical gown and stockings. She returns ninety seconds later to check that I've done so - to find Wifey laughing hysterically and taking photos while I try, with low levels of success, to don the stockings.

Then I'm on the trolley, paperwork in my lap, and being wheeled out of the room by a porter and anaesthetic nurse. I'm wheeled into an unfamiliar corridor and we joke that I'm going to be dumped in the car park. Unfortunately, I've forgotten my bag full of change.

It's disconcerting being fully in control of my faculties, yet being pushed around the place. However, I remember that, in just a few minutes, I will be completely helpless and in the hands of a group of experts. A trolley ride now is nothing.

I'm taken into the tiny anteroom of the theatre and the anaesthetist from earlier appears. He and the nurse check my signature on the paperwork and the ID band on my wrist. There's a clock above the inner door: it's just about 0955.

A cannula is inserted into the back of my left hand. "Are you allergic to penicillin?" the anaesthetist asks. I've never had it, I tell him. He looks genuinely taken-aback. "Not even as a child? Never had tonsilitis?" A long pause as he weighs the risk. "Welcome to being a human," he mutters, which seems unnecessarily dismissive of my previous years on this planet.

My trolley is moved into the fully-reclined position. On the ceiling, there's a large poster of a tropical beach. A mask appears from behind me. "Are you OK with masks?" asks the nurse, clamping it to my face. "It's just oxygen. There might be a slight smell of gas." What gas? Natural gas? Something sulphurous? Chlorine?

"Have you been anywhere nice on holiday recently?" she asks, and I recognise this as the precursor to being knocked out. I gesture towards the poster on the ceiling. Caribbean for Christmas, I mumble through the mask. "What islands?" Barbados, St Lucia ... "Smell of gas now - breathe deeply," interjects the anaethetist. One deep breath. "I hear St Lucia is nice," says the nurse. "Breathe deeply," commands the anaethetist. A second deep breath. It's beautiful, I agree. A third breath.

Suddenly, I'm at work. Everyone is happy and relaxed. This might be a dream.

Then I'm in a yellow room, and very cold. Someone asks if I'd like another blanket. Not sure whether I can speak, I nod. One is brought.

Now I'm awake, definitely, and in the yellow room for real. The clock on the wall opposite - there seems always to be a conveniently-placed clock - reads 1120. There's a desk in the corner of the room and a nurse working behind it.

I surreptitiously check that I haven't wet myself during the surgery. All good.

I close my eyes a few times. When I open them again, and keep them open, two people come to wheel me back to my own room. I'm told to rest for a while.

I sleep. At one point, I think I hear a nurse phoning Wifey to let her know I'm out.

After forty-five minutes, a nurse comes in to check on me. I'm awake and more alert this time. She asks me to move from the trolley to the chair. She waits a few minutes to make sure I'm OK. "If you're still feeling OK in ten minutes, you can get dressed," she says. In ten minutes, I am and I do.

1300. Wifey returns to fetch me and the staff nurse brings my soluble medicines and tells me to go home. It feels a bit of an anticlimax. I thank her, and the reception staff, and go home to spend a week sleeping in front of daytime TV.

Captain's storytime

Post-breakfast, we're grateful to be in the air-conditioned comfort of the small, polished-mahogany lounge. On the deck, some crew members are performing routine maintenance in temperatures of thirty degrees or more.

There are far more chairs than necessary for the dozen or so passengers who have gathered to hear the billed "Captain's storytime". Nobody seems quite sure what to expect, even the passengers who have experienced this cruise before.

Captain Sergey enters. His smile seems shy at first, but it quickly becomes clear that he's quite a showman at heart. In fact, with his lean physique, moustache and pristine white uniform, he resembles an older, but still charismatic, Freddie Mercury. Instinctively, his audience move closer to one another, in order to be closer to the speaker.

It does not start promisingly. "What would you like me to talk about?" he asks, before revealing that he used to be an acupuncturist before becoming a seaman. Several audience-members exchange glances. While he's explaining his theory of holistic medicine, a couple of people slip out, not as inconspicuously as they hoped.

But suddenly he's talking about the worst storm of his sailing career: as second officer aboard a cadet training ship, in swells of 25m. We were scared, he says,  until we realised that we were going to die. Then we weren't afraid any more. The kids realised they were going to die, and they were also no longer afraid.

Every time the bow went under the waves, we didn't think it was going to pop back out. We had two cadets on the ship's wheel, but we had to replace them every few minutes, because it was so exhausting and painful. The wind blew salt into our faces so hard that we were bleeding. It took three months for my skin to grow back.

Someone asks whether he's ever taken this ship, and its passengers, through such a storm. He laughs.

No, nothing like that. Not this ship, not with passengers.

The worst thing we had to deal with on this ship was the pirates.

Our route used to take us through the Indian Ocean, past the notorious Somali coast. Pirates were a real threat. We took precautions: razor wire and 10,000 volt electric fences welded around the hull of this ship, this beautiful ship. Screens so that attackers couldn't see where the passengers were on deck. All the watertight doors closed, all the time. Safety muster areas within the bowels of the ship.

Back in the present, the carpenters start noisily sanding the deck outside. The captain excuses himself, disappears, shouts. The noise stops. The carpenters scurry sheepishly past the window of the lounge.

The captain bounds back in and continues.

The owner offered to fly any passengers who wanted to disembark; we would pick them up again in Goa in a couple of weeks. Eventually, he insisted upon it - it was just too dangerous. We took a look at our radar system. We had to calculate its effective range at picking up the small, fast boats used by the Somali pirates. We worked out how long it would take to identify a threat and sound the alarm before the pirates were within firing range. We thought we'd have about thirty seconds to get every passenger below decks. It wasn't really feasible with a full ship.

But we did make the passage once, with passengers. There was a Spanish MP on board. We were protected by the international naval coalition who patrol the corridor. A Spanish warship took special interest in us, because of their MP. We had a small escort boat of British commandos as well.

And they gave me a machine gun. Just one, and a thousand rounds of ammunition.

The British commandos followed behind us, the Spanish warship some distance behind them. The crossing was going OK until we saw an unexpected blip on the radar. A small, fast boat, just like the ones the Somali pirates use. It was heading right for us. We radioed to our support vessels. The Spanish warship started accelerating to catch up.

The unknown boat didn't respond on any of the normal radio frequencies. It got closer and closer. It fell behind us, in a direct line between us and the British commandos. This is exactly what we feared might happen. A wrong decision now could be very serious indeed.

A warning shot from the commandos would be the most appropriate signal to pirates that we were not to be trifled with. But if they started firing back, we couldn't defend ourselves; the unknown boat was on a direct line between us and the commando boat.

At the last moment, a call on the radio.

They weren't pirates; they were Yemeni coastguards.

Yemen didn't participate in the international naval coalition, but they did like to protect their own waters, and they liked doing it their own way. They had seen the British commandos' boat and assumed it belonged to pirates, just as we had assumed that the Yemeni boat must be pirates. If somebody had opened fire, it would have been very ugly indeed.

The captain glances at his watch. He's been talking for nearly 45 minutes and the audience are on the edge of their seats. He apologises, but the port pilot is due on board in exactly twelve minutes and he must return to the bridge now.

Zen and the art of Business Operations Management #7

19

First: plan for success.
Second: for failure. Third: for
complete disaster.

20

Moon wanes then waxes,
inconstant yet returning.
Forecasts rarely wax.

21

You had success, and
were happy. I remembered
targets, and was sad.