Agreeing a mission

This exercise is good for getting a group to work together to come up with an agreed sentence that describes its mission. There are two versions: one for small groups, and one for larger groups. Don't be put off by the bit about splitting large groups up - it works fine in practice!

Preparation

Get some blocks of post-it notes, and pens.

With the group...

Introduce the idea of the exercise, referring to the importance of a shared mission, and the group's own situation if possible. Use the supporting information as back up.

Give everyone two post-its.

Ask everyone to write down a key word that sums up their group on each of the post-its. One word per post-it.

For groups of five or less

Get the group to muddle up the post-its.

Ask everyone to arrange the post-its into a sentence that uses all the words, and says what the group was set up to do. They can use joining words like "and" and "with." Only use duplicate words once. See point 7.

For groups of six or more

Collect up the post-its and muddle them up.

You need to split your big group up into a number of smaller groups, each ending up with between six to ten post-its. The groups don't need to be the same size. For instance, if you had ten people in the big group, then you could end up with three smaller groups: two with three people (six post-its) and one with four people (eight post-its).

If this is hard to work out, look at the table showing how to work out the numbers to break down into.

Hand back between six to ten post-its to each of the small groups.

Get each of the small groups to arrange the post-its into a sentence that uses all the words, and says what the group was set up to do. They can use joining words like "and" and "with." Only use duplicate words once.

Bring the whole group together to compare sentences. If they are similar, ask everyone to rephrase them into one, agreed mission. If they're different, discuss until everyone can agree one final version.

You may well need to look at how the agreed mission sentence compares with the wording on the group's governing document. This might then mean more work updating it.

Don't forget to look at hints and tips (.DOC, 29 KB).