Ingenious networking idea
Last night I attended MahiFX’s launch
event at St Mary’s Axe.
The company has launched an online trading platform for the foreign
exchange market and my job was to maintain some credibility among suited bankers whilst sporting an arty haircut and a fairisle knitted sweater.
Such an event could easily have been a dry affair, however, it turned
out to be a great example of how to use business games to get everyone to stay
until the end and provide incentives to network.
Money game
Each delegate was given 50 notes, which were split into five suits of
‘business attributes’ – including strength, precision and intelligence. The
task was to swap (trade) your notes with others so that you had as many of one
suit as possible.
The winner was whoever has the most notes from any given suit.
I chose to collect notes marked with intelligence (nothing to do with my
out of whack ego), and set about frantically trading until I had nothing but
intelligence-marked cards in my hand.
This may sound geeky – and make no mistake, it is – but after a few
beers it’s actually pretty entertaining.
Once you max out on one suit of cards, you can collect more random ones
from MahiFX’s glamorous assistants who were creating a qualitative easing
effect within the game.
Yes, I patted myself on the back for thinking of that.
Eventually I realised that teaming up with others – and agreeing to split
the mystery prize accordingly – offered the best odds of winning.
This tactic matched the principle of creating monopolies in business, I thought. *Pats own back again*
So – the end result was that I won a free meal (which I donated to my team mate).
The real winner was networking and business learning *cue enthusiastic thumbs up*.
– Conference Boy
