Making Lemonade Activity — Think Positive!

What is this thing?

The Making Lemonade ActivityTemplate helps you harness the power of positivity for your team or participants.

Why do this activity? 🤔

➡️ To get people started in an optimistic mindset. Get all those naysaying thoughts out of the way early on.

➡️ Using random scenarios can help practice the action of positive thought without touching the actual challenge you are approaching quite yet.

➡️ Using scenarios related to your specific challenge can help people think about it differently.

Where do I use it?

🏁 You can use this activity as an opening exercise that helps set the vibe and get people thinking in a hopeful way moving forward.

⚡️ You can also use this during a session to flip ideation on its head. Get those worst-case scenarios out of their minds and shift them towards what good can come of those.

How do I use it?

1️⃣ Start with up to 5 catastrophic scenarios — these can be random, or all 5 can be related to one challenge. Get these up there first instead of having the group come up with them to keep the focus on the positive answers (there are variations where you can have the group come up with these as well, although that's not included in this template)

2️⃣ Set a time for 3-5 minutes to allow everyone to ideate individual on ideas across all scenarios — Ask them to reframe that lemon into lemonade, what's something good that could come of it? Look at it in the most positive way you can.

3️⃣ After that, have everyone use the hearts to vote on the top 1 idea across all the columns that was their favorite positive idea. It helps them read through others' thoughts and practice Miro board voting if it's an opening activity.

4️⃣ Depending on the size of your group, you can have people share reflections and insights in a discussion or in another way, like chat. If it's a smaller group, go with a discussion.

Pro Tips!

⏰ Set a timer for 3-5 minutes to allow people time to individually get their thoughts out, and don't forget to save time afterward for discussion.

⚙️ Customize for different numbers of participants. Currently set up for a LARGE group of 80 participants (this is how many voting hearts are available), you can adjust this to any number by adding or removing voting hearts.

🔒 Remember to lock everything on your board except the sticky notes and the hearts! And don't forget to bring your hearts to the front!

💜 Want to learn more methods, activities, and approaches? Reach out to Rachel HERE 💜

This activity was inspired by the Making Lemonade Card in the IDEO Design Kit Card Deck.