A group at work (what Accenture calls a "community," which is a group of geographically related, if not project-related, employees) was planning a meeting with a "games" portion at the end. There were going to be 3 Wiis (Bowling, Boxing, and Trivia), Bingo (I'm still puzzled why this game was selected), and Pictionary. Excellent! Pictionary is my game.
I knew all this in advance almost by accident - I am on the community's communication team, and the communication lead was out when they were having the meeting to discuss the plans for the meeting. So I was asked to attend in his place.
It was actually a little difficult for me. I realized for the first time in my entire Accenture career I was not part of the Activities committee that planned all the details of the events. I readily offered to bring Pictionary, but when they started talking about how to reward the winners of the game, I started to squirm. I didn't see how you could successfully balance rewarding a team winning Pictionary with someone winning 7 Wii boxing matches. But I tried letting it go and letting the activities team work out the details.
I was only partially successful. A few days after the meeting, I sent a list of items I thought they should consider to the activities team lead. She was gracious, thanked me for my input, and alerted me to the people leading the Pictionary event to discuss deciding about the house rules beforehand.
So I then composed a slightly longer email detailing my suggestions for house rules for Pictionary. The fact that they hadn't thought to decide on house rules beforehand was a little troubling, but regardless I was happy to explain how I thought the game should be run (no writing letters or numbers at any time, answers have to be exact, how to pick teams, etc.). I got a slightly stunned response back, but again, they were gracious and agreed to use my suggestions as input.
A few days later, I learned the person who would be running the Pictionary game had changed, so I forwarded her my suggestions. Again, I think she was a little suprised at the level of detail of my suggestions, but she planned on using them.
When I got to the meeting with my Pictionary game in-hand, I sat by one of my ex-coworkers for lunch. It turns out he was given responsibility for Pictionary and he had very little experience with the game. He was more than happy to accept my gracious and self-sacrificing offer to take over the Pictionary duties from him.
So in the end, I got to set-up the room, lay out the game, explain the rules to the group (many of whom had never played before) and guide the gameplay during the event. Because so many people were unfamiliar with the game, I remained as the host and did not play on a team. So I didn't actually play Pictionary that day, but I did get to run the game the way I thought was best. I think I can safely say that everyone, including myself, had a good time.
And in case you're wondering, I think there is no causal relationship between my detailed suggestions and the number of times people relinquished their Pictionary duties.