Great picture, example, metaphor. When the wall came down I was working as a screen printer and the company owner was from Germany. He was.. it's hard to describe the impact of that, on him. He was glowing.

When I was in residency at Royal Roads (Leadership program) we were treated to an Oshry Power Lab activity/game/play. It's like live theatre only the audience is the actor and our instructors watched . After a short presentation on Power Lab basics we (there were 40 of us) were instructed to reach under our chairs and look inside an envelope that had been taped there.

Mine said "Top" and inside were the rules of the game. We were given five days (each day only lasts five minutes) to get a product to market. In addition to us four Tops there were a bunch of Middles who were herded into a section of the room that had tape on the floor. They could only come out of their space with the permission of a Top. There were also Bottoms, who had to relinquish their shoes, two sets of Customers. Some of the Bottoms were Designers and were given a bunch of art supplies to create with.

On day one the other Tops decided we should meet as a group, alone, to plan our strategy. I resisted and conveniently found a Customer group that needed help. On day two I again avoided the other Tops who still wanted to meet privately and instead I reconnected with the Customers I had met on day one and introduced them to a Bottom that was incredibly stressed out by the multiple needs and inconsistent instructions of the Middles. I suggested that they work together, without the Middles to get the project ready.

Between days we were to reflect and write down our thoughts/feelings. I spent some of that time convincing a very distressed Bottom that the fellow guarding her shoes had no power and that if she was uncomfortable in bare feet she could just take her shoes back. Her reluctance to break the rules kind of surprised me.

On day three I did meet with the Tops and like me they had been pulled around by their own set of reflexive behaviours. One of the other Tops suggested that part of the problem was that the Middles were stuck in one place and always asking for permission to go talk to a customer or a Bottom. I agreed and suggested we just pull the tape up off the floor. We did, and there ended the game.

Our instructors said that in all the years they had been doing this activity we were the first group to remove the tape in just three days.

We debrief the activity for a long time. I learned a lot about myself, about others and about artificial boundaries...