35 Game (Thiagi)
The 35 Game is Thiagi's structured-sharing exercise: everyone writes one idea on a card, the cards get traded blind and scored by strangers over five rounds, and whichever idea scores highest - not whoever pitched it loudest - wins, surfacing the group's best thinking without status or personality getting in the way.
Cards pass from hand to hand across five rounds, scores stacking up as ideas travel further from their author.
Reach for this when…
- A team keeps deferring to the same two voices whenever ideas are on the table.
- You want everyone's best idea heard, including from people who won't speak up in a group.
- A brainstorm needs a way to rank ideas that isn't just whoever argues hardest.
How to run it
- Ask each person to write one idea or suggestion on an index card, then turn it face down.
- On a signal, everyone circulates and swaps cards repeatedly until nobody still holds their own.
- Blow a whistle: pairs compare the two cards they're holding and split 7 points between them, writing the score on the back.
- Repeat the swap-and-score round five times in total, so each card can carry up to 35 points.
- Count down from 35: whoever is holding a card with that total stands and reads the idea aloud.
A worked example
Situation. Kwame Asante runs Asante Toy Works, a toy manufacturer in Accra, Ghana, and his twelve line supervisors each swore their own idea for cutting changeover time was the one worth funding.
Applied. He had them each write their idea on a card, then ran five rounds of blind swap-and-score until every card had been rated by strangers rather than allies.
Result. The two ideas that came out on top weren't from his most vocal supervisors - they came from two people who rarely spoke up in meetings, and both went into the next changeover trial.
The catch
A card carries one sentence, not the reasoning behind it - a good idea explained badly can score low simply because the card reads unclearly. People sometimes guess whose card they're holding from handwriting or phrasing and score accordingly rather than blind. It rewards the idea that reads well cold, not necessarily the idea that holds up once you dig into feasibility.
A high score means the idea read well to strangers, not that it's the right one to act on. Take the top few into a proper decision, don't just fund the winner.
Origin: Sivasailam 'Thiagi' Thiagarajan