At the Supporter Experience Summit we kicked off by looking at the “stinky fish” in the room; what were the concerns and worries holding us back from making progress on our supporter experience? The concept of the stinky fish is based on the idea that it is better to get our frustrations and reservations out in the open, rather than letting them fester away, getting more stinky!

You can use the metaphor of the stinky fish at the kick-off of any project, or perhaps at a mid-point if you sense there are issues the team isn’t dealing with openly. Because supporter experience projects are often complex, multi-faceted and interdependent with other pieces of work it can be a particularly useful tool to have up your sleeve for this type of work.

The stinky fish exercise is a playful way to make sure everyone is aware of each other’s concerns so they can be tackled head on, and the use of the metaphor de-personalises things which can help facilitate the conversation. It’s easy to use yourself in a meeting or project kick-off:

1. Frame the exercise, explaining the concept of the stinky fish and why you want to get everyone’s concerns out in the open

2. Give everyone a copy of our Stinky FIsh Printable

3. Let everyone have 3-5 mins filling in their sheet, there is room for three stinky fish (one big and a couple of smaller ones)

4. Go round and ask everyone to summarise what they’ve put (if you’re a large group you could just get people to read out their big fish)

5. Stick the sheets up somewhere that everyone can see for the rest of your meeting or workshop

You may then want to spend some time generating actions or agreeing on principles that address the key themes that emerge.

We’d love to hear how you get on using this exercise!

Read about the five most common Stinky Fish people identified in our workshop here