xpday2006: Resistance as a Resource
In Lasse Koskela’s workshop entitled Resistance as a Resource, we played a game which explored the concept of effectively dealing with resistance. You need a group of people, four sets of coloured cards and some markers. The coloured cards each represent one of:
A move consists of taking an appropriate colour card and writing on it either a form of Change, a form of Resistance to that Change, a possible Reason for the Resistance or finally a possible Response to that Resistance. Moves can be played in any order by anyone. Here’s a picture of one of the areas we explored - Fixed Price Contracts:
So, what was this all about? As a consultant, you often come across resistance to new ways of working. For example, introducing Pair Programming is often met with resistance from managers who don’t understand why we are doing it. I sometimes find myself trotting out the same responses to this sort of resistance, without really thinking about it.
I thought the game was interesting because it made me focus on exactly what is the reason behind resistance, rather than making assumptions about it. I think you could adapt this game to get some interesting results in Retrospectives.