Newsworthy! A Brainstorm Activity for Alignment and Excitement

In this playful exercise of making up the news, Newsworthy! encourages participants to reach for the ridiculous levels of success in inventing the industry, national or even global news coverage of the effects your workshop session will have once implemented - either in broad media like the Time magazine, or your industry’s most respected publications.

Newsworthy! is an icebreaker, warmup, and goal alignment exercise all in one. 

Time: 40 Minutes +7 Minutes Per Group

Materials: Whiteboard or Flip chart paper , Sticky notes, Scentless markers, Timer

Setup: 

Split your workshop into smaller groups of 5-7 people with attention paid to professional and personal diversity. 

Split their game space (sheets or whiteboard) into 6 sections: 

• Idea Board

• Headlines

• Sidebars & Visuals

• Quotables

• Cover

• Presentation

How to Play

Ask each group to consider the higher objective you’re looking to accomplish or solve for with your session. If you accomplished it brilliantly, what publication would be the most impressive outlet to share?

3 Minutes - Instructions

15 Minutes - Group “Fill-In” of 5 Working Boards

12 Minutes - Group Discussion and Final Compilation for Presentation

7 Minutes - Group Presents to Full Workshop

*Note - The time doesn’t add up because we allow a minute or two for task switching. :)

Share Instructions (3 Minutes)

Define each section of the gameboard for your groups. 

• Idea Board - Place initial thoughts, concepts that don’t quite fit yet, or seeds of genius in this working area. Placing a sticky note here will free up your brain to move forward without losing that gem. 

• Headlines - Bold, captivating claims. These can be very specific (“Awesomeco reduces hold times by 98%”) or more open (“Awesomeco raises the bar for customer satisfaction!”)

• Sidebars & Visuals - Use Sidebars and Visuals to expand on some of your headlines. Some groups may also choose to start with these details and then build the headlines. Invite them to try either to see what works for them. 

• Quotables - Your remarkable success is bound to make people, well, remark! Similar to headlines, who is talking about this and what are they saying about it?

• Cover - Bring it together! Bring a visual, quote, and headline that feels great and elevate that to the cover! 

• Presentation - This board should have a smaller version of your 5 working areas. In the last 8 minutes of the activity, your groups will coalesce each section into key shareable highlights. There are no wrong answers, but there are definitely some favorites. 

Share the timeline for the three remaining sections of this activity, and ensure the timer is clearly visible to all. (Either with a workshop timer or by Googling your time length and sharing a Google Timer on the main screen.) 

Group “Fill-In” of 5 Working Boards (15 Minutes) 

Each group should work together to complete each section of the board. For many groups, it can be easier to start with Headlines or Idea Board and spread out, but there’s no one right way to play so long as each member can contribute fully. 

After 10 minutes or so, you should start hearing the energy change as your groups begin to move past the field of comfortable expected answers and into some interesting branches. It’s tempting to stay here but this is an energy-intensive headspace and it’s just your warm up! Stick to your timer.

The Flexible Facilitator: If the people in your groups are very new to each other and/or the challenge, consider adding extra time into your plan for this step. 

Group Discussion and Final Compilation for Presentation (12 Minutes) 

Over the next 12 minutes, ask each group to consolidate elements of the story which they’re most excited about into a final board for presentation. This final presentation should include elements from all 5 sections to be presented in 7 minutes. The common presentation is to have a section for each on a whiteboard or flip chart paper, but I’ve had enterprising teams go so far as to sketch it out on individual pages of paper that they could then flip through like a magazine. 

Group Presentation and Reflections (7 Minutes per Group) 

Bring us through your story! Encourage your participants to look for similarities or differences between each group’s idea of ridiculous success.

Takeaways

Facilitated well, Newsworthy! can charge the air for engagement as well as act as an accessible introduction to the kind of structured collaborating the group can expect to see in a well-planned workshop. 

Because it can bring together understanding from your group in a context of celebration, it’s a flexible tool to have at your disposal. It's a handy tool for reconvening groups - such as crystalizing day one’s findings and alignment on the morning of day two. I’m tempted to try it as a closing activity in a corporate retreat where a more polished version of the final artifact can act as a memorable touchstone for the team that doesn’t mind dreaming larger than the goals they’ve set. 

This activity is adapted from Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers.