A visual, collaborative exercise where teams map their interactions with other teams using a metaphor of islands and bridges. Each bridge represents a connection, with bricks indicating the quality of the relationship (green, orange, red, purple) and ownership for improvement.

• Clarify dependencies: Identify who your team interacts with and how.
• Assess collaboration quality: Highlight strong, weak, or missing connections.
• Drive accountability: Assign responsibility for improving relationships.
• Encourage continuous improvement: Turn insights into actionable commitments with deadlines.
• Strengthen teamwork: Foster transparency and proactive communication across teams.

Your team is represented by the central island.

Around you can see other islands ! these are the teams you interact with!

But how do you do this?

Your goal: Create connections between your island and the surrounding islands. Build bridges!

The facilitator pitches the workshop to explain its purpose:

“Your team is represented by the central island. Around you are other islands! And on each island, a team.

Your objective: to identify which other islands you interact with and, more importantly, how? To do this, you need connections: a bridge between your island and the surrounding islands.”

Step 0: Prerequisites

• Put your team's name on the central island
• Put the names of your team members on the island

Step 1: Identify cross-functional collaboration

• List the teams your team interacts with (be thorough)
• Identify the key members of these teams

Step 2: Identify the connections Step 3: (Re)build the connection

There is a bridge to build with each team you work with.

Each bridge will be built with "bricks": these represent the item that link the other team to yours.

The Rules

The bricks are placed on the bridge according to the responsibility for the relation.

• If the brick is near your island: it's your responsibility.
• If the brick is near the other team's island: it's their responsibility.
• If it's in the center, the responsibility is mutual.

The colors of the bricks represent the quality of the link :

• Green bricks: Good link
• Orange bricks: Mediocre link
• Red bricks: Bad quality link
• Purple bricks: Link does not exist

Step 4: Who builds?

• Designate a person responsible for the brick = they are or will be responsible for improve the link.
• Commitment: each red or purple brick must be addressed as a priority (the person in charge commits to a result and a maximum date).