This Simple Icebreaker Will Improve Your Company’s Culture: Draw three cards from a deck which feature images and words like “love,” “forgiveness,” and “anger” and say what the words on those cards mean to you

November 18, 2013 Leave a comment

This Simple Icebreaker Will Improve Your Company’s Culture

ALISON GRISWOLD NOV. 15, 2013, 3:55 PM 3,055 3

Amy Errett, the CEO of in-home hair color provider Madison Reed, says her company has a cocktail hour every Thursday. At the cocktail hour, the team regularly plays an ice-breaking game, Errett tells the New York Times. They take a deck of cards, place the cards — which feature images and words like “love,” “forgiveness,” and “anger” — face down on the table, and ask everyone to draw three cards. “Then we’ll go in a circle, and say what the words on those cards mean to you,” Errett explains. “And if it doesn’t work for you, just pass. That’s cool.” The exercise might sound simple, but Errett refers to it as “the biggest breakthrough thing we’ve done in terms of culture.” She says that people were initially hesitant to respond to their card and would ask to pick a different one, but now everyone participates. It’s a simple routine that any company could try as a way of building stronger teams and company culture. “I’ve had so many people come up and say, ‘Thank you,'” Errett says. 

Filed under Life

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

Leave a comment