Last time we posted at geekleaders, we told the story of how a collection of best practices know as the Core System came to be. These are commitments and personal/interpersonal protocols, a sort of software for your head.  Here is one very useful protocol. It is presented as a game, but it is a transcendent game.

If you google "The Perfection Game" in quotes you may well come up with a few posts of interest.

One customer recently remarked that he believed that the repeated and widespread use of The Perfection Game would eventually solve all the world's problems.

The Perfection Game effectively aggregates value.

THE PERFECTION GAME PROTOCOL

1. Players sit in a circle.

2. Each person in the circle names a task that he believes to be simple and that he is willing to perform throughout the game-for example, "snapping my fingers," "whistling a short tune," or "acting dead."

3. The first player performs his task named in step 2. This performance has the following structure:

• The player alerts the rest of the group to the beginning of the performance by saying, "Okay, I'm starting now." Everything the player does after this point is subject to perfecting.
• The player performs his task.
• The player says, "I'm done." Everything up to but not including this statement is subject to perfecting.

4. The remaining players rate the player's performance on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is a perfect performance of the task. The rating must be supported with critical analysis of a particular form: After saying the score (for example, "I give your performance a 7"), the scorer must state the following:

• Specifically, what about the performance was good and what earned the points in the score.
• Specifically, what the performer must do in the next iteration of the performance to be awarded a perfect 10.

5. The next player then performs his task and is rated by the rest of the group as described above.

6. Steps 1-5 are completed two more times, so that each player performs and is rated three times. Each person plays the role of "perfector" for the rest of the team members in between each of his own performances.

Analysis of the Perfection Game Protocol

Purely or partially negative feedback is not allowed at any point during The Perfection Game Protocol. For example, "I don't like the sound of the finger snap." The important information to transmit in this case may be something like, "The ideal sound of a finger snap for me is one that is crisp, has sufficient volume, and startles me somewhat. To get a 10, you would have to increase your crispness."

If you cannot think of a better alternative performance, you cannot withhold points. The default score is a perfect 10. You must follow the scoring routine exactly:

"I rate your performance n."
"What I liked about it was p, q, . . . , z."
"What it would take to get a 10 from me is a, b, . . . , z."

If one person breaks the protocol, the other team members must politely correct the offending person by pointing out the infraction. They must then prompt the offender by reminding him of the correct protocol immediately; "I give it a . . . " "What I liked about it was . . . ," or "What it would take to get a 10 is . . . ," as appropriate.

When playing The Perfection Game, the team will develop a sense of the ideal performance of any given act. This aesthetic will take into account the best suggestions made, with lesser suggestions being abandoned.

Including each of the suggested improvements into the next performance rarely yields a perfect performance. The "perfectors" could be wrong about their prior feedback (not intentionally, of course), or the combination of all suggestions may have a negative effect on the performance. As the "perfectee," you must accept only the superior criticism of your performance and implicitly reject the inferior feedback.

Your ratings must not use a "dislike" to "like" scale, where 1 is "completely dislike" and 10 is "completely like." The perfection game is not about whether you "like" something. The rating scale goes from 1, "The thing has no value now and I can add all value needed in my feedback," to 10, "The thing has full value and/or I can't think of anything that would make it better." It is important to hold perfectors accountable to this type of scale and respectfully correct them if you see the dislike/like scale coming into play.

In addition, the rating must be reasonable. For instance, if you rate a performance as an 8, you are saying that it is 80 percent perfect and/or you can tell the person exactly how to gain the 20 percent of missing value. You must not give an 8 and then provide only 1 percent of the missing value.

The "what it will take to get a 10" portion of the game is best performed verbally with the perfectee.

If you feel an impulse to grade on the dislike/like scale, can't give a reasonable amount of value that correlates with your rating and are unwilling to raise your rating accordingly, or feel the need to write your perfecting down instead of speaking to the person, then you should Pass. These impulses can contribute to a negative feedback cycle that distracts the team from achieving the desired results.

Adapted From: Software for Your Head: Core Protocols for Creating and Maintaining Shared Vision by Jim Mccarthy and Michele Mccarthy ISBN 0201604566

The Core System is distributed as source code under the GNU license. You are free to distribute, change or do whatever you want with it, provided you distribute the whole thing (11 pages) as is, as well. Download Version 3 of the Core from:

http://www.themccarthyshow.com/Portals/11/docs/TheCoreV3.pdf

Jim and Michele McCarthy Jim and Michele left successful leadership positions at Microsoft to form an innovative teamwork laboratory. For the last 10 years they have rigorously studied and codified the *best practices* for teams to get into and maintain a state of shared vision. These best practices are called The Core Protocols. Jim is well-known for his humorous, inspirational and educational public speaking and the couple are co-authors of the books Dynamics of Software Development and Software for your Head. They also co-host a podcast focused on business issues called The McCarthy Show which some claim is addictive. They can also be heard on Microsoft's MSDN web site.

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