Fix It, Flip It, Fun It: A Team Activity That Makes Work Better
What if your next team-building activity helped make work easier, sparked fresh ideas, and brought your team closer together—all while solving a real workplace frustration?
Every workplace has them. The frustrating process that takes longer than it should. The communication mix-up that keeps happening. The task everyone wishes could be easier. The little things that make a workday harder than it needs to be.
What if, instead of simply accepting those frustrations, your team used them as the starting point for something better?
Meet Fix It, Flip It, Fun It—a collaborative team activity that turns everyday workplace frustrations into creative possibilities and challenges your team to find, test, and learn from a better way of working.
No elaborate materials. No awkward icebreakers. No requirement to be the loudest person in the room.
Just your team, a little imagination, and a willingness to rethink the way things get done.
What Is Fix It, Flip It, Fun It?
Fix It, Flip It, Fun It is a leader-guided team activity designed to help people improve everyday work through creativity, collaboration, and the recognition of one another's strengths.
The activity has three stages:
FIX IT: Identify a real workplace frustration the team can influence and agree on which one to tackle.
FLIP IT: Challenge the usual way of doing things with playful “What if?” questions and collaboratively redesign a better approach.
FUN IT: Turn the new approach into a one-week team challenge, then compare the before and after to see what the team learned.
The goal isn't to solve every workplace problem in one meeting. It's to make one meaningful improvement while discovering what can happen when people work together to rethink the ordinary.
How to Play
Who can play? Any team that wants to make work easier, strengthen collaboration, improve communication, or bring more enjoyment into the workday.
Who leads? The team leader guides the activity and keeps the conversation respectful, creative, and focused on solutions.
How long does it take? Plan for approximately 30 minutes for the core activity. Allow additional time if your team wants to explore more ideas or redesign a complex process. The one-week experiment and follow-up happen afterward.
What do you need? Paper or sticky notes, pens, a way to collect anonymous submissions and votes, and a simple written action plan.
ROUND 1: FIX IT
Find a frustration worth fixing.
Start by reminding the team that the purpose is to improve how work gets done—not to criticize individuals or assign blame.
Step 1: Name the Frustrations
Give everyone a few quiet minutes to think and privately submit one workplace frustration they'd like to improve.
Encourage people to consider things such as:
A process with too many steps.
Communication that gets confusing or repetitive.
Tasks that take longer than necessary.
Information that's difficult to find.
Work that doesn't make good use of people's strengths.
Small, everyday obstacles that drain time or energy.
Encourage specific, observable situations rather than general complaints about people or departments.
For example, instead of submitting “Nobody communicates,” someone might write, “We sometimes receive the same information in three different places, and we're not sure which version is current.”
That gives the team something concrete to work with—and a starting point for improvement.
Step 2: Let the Team Vote
Collect the submissions and let everyone vote privately for the frustration they'd most like the team to tackle.
The most votes wins. This gives everyone an equal voice and allows the team to focus on a frustration it has collectively chosen. If no issue receives duplicate submissions, randomly draw one of the submitted frustrations to select the challenge.
Before moving forward, make sure the team can realistically influence the problem. If the issue depends entirely on a decision outside the team's control, reframe it around something the team can change.
Step 3: Define the Challenge
Turn the selected frustration into a simple challenge statement that gives the team a clear direction.
For example:
“How might we make our weekly project updates quicker, clearer, and easier to manage?”
A good challenge statement focuses on what the team wants to improve without dictating the solution.
Now the team has a shared challenge—and it's time to flip the way it thinks about it.
ROUND 2: FLIP IT
Challenge the usual way and imagine something better.
This is where creativity takes the lead. Rather than immediately jumping to the first obvious solution, the team gets permission to question assumptions and explore new possibilities.
Step 4: Ask, “What If?”
Before opening the discussion, give everyone a moment to write down ideas privately. This allows people to develop their thoughts independently before group conversation begins.
The leader then introduces playful questions designed to challenge the usual way of doing things:
What if this task took half the time?
What if we could eliminate the most annoying part?
What if this process were ridiculously easy?
What if we could make this more enjoyable for everyone involved?
What if we were starting from scratch today?
Let ideas flow before evaluating them. The objective isn't to find the perfect answer immediately. It's to discover possibilities the team might not have considered otherwise.
Step 5: Design the Team Makeover
Now it's time to turn those possibilities into a better way of working.
As a team, redesign the frustrating process, routine, or communication approach. Explore what could be removed, simplified, clarified, combined, or made more enjoyable.
The leader can guide the discussion with three questions:
What does the better version look like?
What ideas, skills, or strengths on our team could help us create it?
What's one realistic change we can try first?
This is an opportunity to recognize the different strengths people bring to the team and consider how those strengths might help solve the challenge. Someone may see a simpler process, another may spot a communication gap, and someone else may identify a creative alternative.
The team doesn't need to redesign everything at once. The goal is to agree on a better approach that's manageable enough to test in the coming week.
With a new approach taking shape, it's time to find out whether it works in the real world.
ROUND 3: FUN IT
Put the makeover to the test.
Creative ideas are exciting, but the real value comes from putting them into practice. This stage turns the team's ideas into a shared challenge with a clear purpose.
Step 6: Launch the One-Week Team Challenge
Agree on one improvement to test during the next week.
Create a simple written action plan that answers four questions:
What will we change? Describe the new approach.
What will we do differently? Identify the specific action the team will take.
How will we know it helped? Choose a simple indicator, such as time saved, fewer clarification messages, fewer repeated steps, or feedback from team members.
When will we review it? Set a date for the follow-up.
Keep the experiment realistic. For example, if the team wants to improve project updates, it might test one shared update format for a week and track whether it reduces duplicate messages or follow-up questions.
Make sure everyone understands what is being tested and how the team will evaluate the result.
The challenge isn't about getting everything right on the first try. It's about working together to see whether a new approach makes a meaningful difference.
Step 7: Reveal the Before and After
After one week, the team leader brings everyone back together for a short review.
Start with the original frustration, then compare it with the new approach.
Discuss:
What was the experience like before the change?
What happened when we tried the new approach?
Did work become easier, clearer, quicker, or more enjoyable?
What did we learn?
Should we keep the change, adjust it, or try something different?
The goal isn't to prove that every idea works perfectly. It's to learn from the experiment and recognize the value of taking action together.
If the change helped, the team can continue using it. If it didn't, the team can use what it learned to refine the approach.
Either way, the team has moved beyond simply talking about a frustration and taken a step toward improving it.
Keep It Fun, Fair, and Constructive
For Fix It, Flip It, Fun It to work well, the leader should create an environment where people feel comfortable contributing.
Keep these ground rules in place:
Fix the process, not the person. Discuss situations and obstacles without blame.
Think first, share second. Give everyone quiet time to develop ideas before discussion.
Let imagination lead before evaluation. Don't dismiss ideas too quickly.
Make participation flexible. People can write, vote, or contribute verbally; speaking in front of the group shouldn't be the only way to participate.
Choose something the team can influence. Focus energy on a challenge where action is possible.
Aim for progress. One useful improvement is a successful starting point.
Why Try Fix It, Flip It, Fun It?
Sometimes the biggest improvements begin with small questions: Why do we do it this way? Could we make it easier? What strengths and ideas are we overlooking?
Fix It, Flip It, Fun It creates space for those questions. It encourages teams to look at familiar frustrations differently, discover possibilities they may have overlooked, and turn creative thinking into an opportunity to improve everyday work.
And because the activity ends with a real experiment, the benefits don't have to end when the meeting does.
Your team doesn't have to accept every frustration as part of the job. Sometimes, a better way starts with being willing to flip the way you've always done things.
Ready to Try It?
Choose one workplace frustration, bring your team together, and see what happens when you give people permission to rethink the ordinary.
Fix It. Flip It. Fun It. Then find out what your team can make better—together.
Would you try the Fix It, Flip It, Fun It team-building activity with your team?
Absolutely! Sounds fun!
Yes, I’d give it a try.
Maybe—I'd like to learn more.
Not sure it’s right for my team.
About Goal Go-Getters
At Goal Go-Getters, we believe work can be both enjoyable and productive. We create leadership development resources that help individuals, teams, and organizations build capabilities, strengthen teamwork, and achieve meaningful results.
Discover how the IDEAL Leadership Framework™ can help your team turn everyday leadership actions into stronger people and organizational performance.
Explore more at GoalGoGetters.com.
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