| It takes the 12 of us just a few seconds to gather into subgroups distinguished by those feeling Happy, Anxious, Curious and so on.
In the next round we group according to ‘Your special power that you’ll will bring to the session’, and finally re-assemble categorised by our ‘Best hopes for today’.
These self-organising groups can by of any size, which is a slight change to the rules of my original version. In the classic form you are obliged to find at least one other person to form a group. The intention is to create options and for everyone to find meaningful common ground with someone else. Hence the crunch in the name Category Cruncher. Here a group of one is OK, which makes sense for this purpose.
What struck me this time was that the activity is probably new to almost everyone in the meetings and conferences we are attending and facilitating. This makes it a great choice for an exciting, energising and probably unfamiliar start to a session.
It also remains fresh even for those who may have done it several times before – there are new people and new questions each time, and you can vary your personal playing strategy (if that’s your kind of thing) from leading by naming a category to attract (or repel) other participants, to waiting until you hear a title you like the sound of before joining as a willing follower.
I guess for the purpose of starting meetings, this activity deserves a fresh, more exciting and all-encompassing name now. So… please arrange yourselves into groups according to your first ideas on creating a new name!
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