Hmmn! I Love The Whisper

I am sorry, can you repeat that again? Asked Wale trying to understand the words. Patricia smiles and whispers again in his ears “The Sixth Sick Sheikh’s Sixth Sheep’s Sick”. Wale turns around to the next player, and whispered “The Sixth Sick Stick Sip”. 

You are reading this and thinking “oh no” they are getting it wrong. That’s the supposed best part of the game. You the reader know the right words because you read it above, they who are participating think they are right, but we know they are getting the information mixed up. So, grab a popcorn and a drink like me, as its about to get more fun with laughter.

Participants may form a line, an information is whispered to the first person, then each player whispers the message to the next player hoping to successively pass the information unfiltered until the last player gets the message.

Agile practitioners use this game to show to team importance of communication and collaboration. I have also watched related games, with same technique but different method - a motor cycle revving hand signal with a right leg jack gesture that looked like engine-kick-start-with-the-leg.

Common end results no matter how many times teams play this game is, content would change by the time it reaches the last player. What I haven’t seen yet is addition of an inspection spot. As much fun as we love to see players get information wrong in the game, it will be great to also incorporate a second round to the game with my recommendation below.

I hope you still have your popcorn half full and your glass of drink topped up because this is about to get more fun. Misinterpretation of information may have flowed through the players in dysfunction ways below;

Diluted Content

• No one true voice as information gets passed down different sources. In a real world scenario, this can happen when a team member is nominated to represent in a meeting which requires all development team attendance. Some omission/misinterpretation may occur just like in the game.

So Confused Dot Com

• As the game progresses, it got more fun to watch then I noticed some players body language “like well I think this is it but em I am not sure” facial expression whispering to the next player. In an environment where check-up point isn’t practiced to check validity of what is in flight, they are more likely to build the wrong output. Empiricism teaches us to inspect and adapt frequently ensuring it doesn’t get in the way of work.

The Zombie Flow

• This occurs when there is a hunch that what we are doing may be wrong but we too deep into the process that we don’t have the time on our side to stop and inspect due to pressure to deliver or finish.

The catch is loop in short feedback cycles in the game for us to learn.

Some teams may suffer from effects of Chinese whisper if they do not collaborate and communicate well enough. Also it is essential to endeavor to stay away from having information passed down from different sources instead of one true source because when this happens, information may be misinterpreted or lost. 

The aim of this article are two focal points; one, suggest an additional technique to the game and two, stress importance of feedback loop.

New Suggestion

Upon completion of the first round, we will realize the information the last person received will be different from what the first person passed on. Thus, this second phase of the game I am suggesting can be introduced next.

Imagine we had ten people initially who played the first part, we can split this into two groups for the second phase; nine participants to act as the players, and one participant act as the output reviewer (O.R). The duties of the output reviewer are to pass the information to the first contact (F.C) act as information verifier to the rest of the players (team).

1. The team need to agree at what stage (after how many people) would the feedback loops be implemented to verify and validate information is still correct. Having a shared understanding and team agreement is essential.
2. The O.R will pass the information to the first contact (F.C), as soon as the F.C has a clear and understood information, he/she will pass this on as clearly as possible the next player whispering.
3. As soon as the info is passed, the F.C will step out of the line and wait at the feedback loop spot (which could be after every 3 players) to verify if the information is still correct by asking the third player to whisper in his/her ears. If wrong, the F.C corrects the information at that point and the flow of info goes forward not backward.
4. The game continues incorporating the feedback loop process till information reaches the last person (time box over), the O.R will ask for it to be said out loud for validation. Chances are that the output would almost likely match initial description given by the O.R due to the frequent feedback loop incorporated into the game.
5. The game should end with the output reviewer and first contact listening to the last person to verify and validate if output of what is been said was same as input.

I expect this to help the team reflect on how their feedback loop process.

As I was writing this article, I shared it with a colleague, Roman who gave some useful feedback, afterwards he jokingly said “… but you do know that’s the real fun - when participants gets the info wrong”. For a moment it sunk on me this may be true, but I hope I do not take away that fun but add to it with this additional suggested phase to allow agile consultants spice things up.

Thank you and I look forward to hearing from outcomes of your experiment.