I actually have waaaay too much to say about the card house activity, so I’m actually going to pick a topic we touched on in class during the discussion because I’m no where near done thinking about some other things I observed.
Framing: “us versus them”
I was in the winning…erm sharing…ecosystem. “We” were the 20 of “us” and “they” were the 20 of “them.” If I recall what some of the losing…erm…yeah losing…teams said about who they were competing against they said they were competing in their small groups of 4 against the other 4 teams in their ecosystem. Well isn’t that interesting how the two ecosystems had such differing frames. I’m not sure I’d cite the chair/table arrangement as the main reason for this, but it certainly played an important role.
What was pretty key thought was that we became convinced that our best hope of winning the most points was to come together. In strategy terms (MS&E 270) we focused on growing the pie instead of trying to get a bigger slice. In the end we all had equal sized slices… but it was a pretty big pie.
Other things I’m thinking about:
- What I knew about this exercise coming in, what I decided to do with that knowledge, and how it may have affected the outcome and the lessons learned.
- How one group in the communal ecosystem tried to screw everyone over near the end but came to the realization that everyone would be super-pissed at them had they done so (and that they actually would have lost had they done it anyway).
- How hard it is for me to step out of the moment (without disengaging from the activity at hand) and to learn meta lessons while they’re occurring.
- Why no one questioned the meaning of a “card” and why the meaning of a “house of cards” was only stretched a bit.
- How and why no one from the other ecosystem tried to “cheat” off of us.
- Unrelated: How (physically) painful gaining empathy can sometimes be. Ughhh – I feel sick to my stomach!