Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

The MOI Model has one more part – the jiggle. Use it to restart the group when you hit the flat or descending part of the MOI curves.

The MOI Model has three parts – motivation, organization, and information. Recent posts have discussed how more of these helps until we reach a point where they stop helping. Then there is a point where more starts hurting.

Let’s introduce a fourth part to this three-part model. The fourth part is the jiggle. The jiggle is one of those things that you can’t describe, but you know it when you see it. How’s that for an excuse from a writer? It is another way of saying, “you guys just go out there and figure it out for yourselves.”

Let’s try to describe it with a few questions.

Have you ever been working on something with a few people and you all become stuck? The ideas stop flowing? Every one stares at the floor or the ceiling or both? An outsider walks in the room, tells a stupid joke, everyone laughs a minute, then the ideas flow again. That was a jiggle! That stupid joke that broke the impasse.

Here are some other possible jiggles:

• Bathroom break (please don’t say, “everyone to the bathroom to jiggle.” Bad form)
• Lunch break
• Walk around the block
• Reading the weather report or anything else from the newspaper
• Stupid joke (about yourself, not about anyone or anything else)
• Hold a silly face contest
• See who can hold their breath the longest (take medical care with this one)

Take care with your jiggles so that no one is hurt.

What good is a jiggle? When in the MOI model you reach the flat part of the curve and more of motivation, organization, and information leads no where, JIGGLE the group. Then more MOI may become helpful again.