Learning from the zoo animals

On June 5th and 6th I facilitated a retreat with a colleague. We took 50 executives on a chartered bus to the Cleveland Zoo. They were divided into 8 groups of similar size, each group was given a hand held GPS and told to learn how to use it and to figure out where we were taking them. They were given no instructions.

Once we arrived at the zoo they were given journals and were sent on a scavenger hunt (following the way points in the GPS) to the different animal exhibits. They recorded what they observed based on a series of questions pre-printed in the journal.

The next day we gathered to debrief the event and share discovery, and take-a-ways.

We were delighted to learn the following:

• This was the first time I have had a chance to visit with my co-workers in something other than a suit and in a meeting room.
• This really will help with our trust level with each other.
• I learned so much about how we interact with each other from the animals.
• Looking at one of the animals looking at me I thought this must be what it is like for our employees, they are tied to their work stations and we wander around looking at them, something needs to change at work!

I won't take the time here to list all the comments but rest assured they were all equal in discovery to the ones above.

I have been using metaphorical learning for some time but to this this scale. This success has really pushed me to design more daring learning opportunities for my clients.