  Marooned
An energizing 1 ½ hour ice breaker that emphasizes consensus decision making.
The Survival Simulation
A pleasure cruise along the French Polynesian islands goes sour when your group is stranded on a deserted, nameless island. Your task: rank the 10 action alternatives that will best ensure the group's survival. Marooned works perfectly as a fun and instructive ice breaker.
Background
As with many survival simulations, Marooned has been developed and tested to ensure plausibility and defensibility by the facilitator. Due to the locale of Marooned (The Society Islands) being a place of great natural beauty, more description was incorporated into the narrative than might ordinarily be done. Paul Gauguin, the great impressionist painter, is famous for the vivid colors and bold shapes he used in painting the ordinary scenes of native life. Gauguin was strongly influenced by the beauty of his surroundings. In a similar way we have tried to employ strongly-colored imagery to create word pictures that would accurately depict this paradise for your participants.
Development
The basic idea for the story was developed during the authors cruise through the Caribbean. The cruise line hosted a sumptuous picnic on an uninhabited island. The ship's crew did not take roll or count the passengers as they arrived on the island or as they departed after the picnic was finished. This was true for other ports of call as well. Although it never actually occurred, the authors could not help but wonder what might happen if some passengers were accidentally left behind after the picnic was over.
 Several members of the crew and other passengers were interviewed independently to determine if such an incident had ever occurred. As people reflected in their memories, they were able to bring forth humorous and happily nonfatal instances in which people had been unknowingly left behind. One officer remembered a passenger being left behind in a particular port but then being quickly picked up when a small sailboat radioed the ship of the passenger's plight. Another officer remembered a crew member being left because he failed to show up after a wild shore leave. A passenger recalled a situation where two similar looking ships arrived at the same port. Passengers became confused when they returned to the docks and boarded the wrong ship. In all cases the mistakes were quickly rectified. It should be noted that the particular cruise line used in this story is very reputable and has never had a situation like the one described in the narrative. In addition, most passengers are probably acutely aware of the possibility of being stranded, so they are careful to be punctual about returning at the appointed time. So, while being left behind is certainly possible, it probably is not likely.
The basic narrative and alternative courses of action were developed during the week-long cruise itself. Toward the end of the cruise, six passengers were asked to participate in the first try-out of the exercise. Based on their rankings and later discussion, the exercise was revised.
Following the shipboard experiment, the exercise was administered several times before the final draft of the instrument was prepared. All of the scores from the test groups appear in the normative section of the Facilitator Guide.
How to Order Marooned
Order one Facilitator Kit per trainer and one Participant Guide per team member. Note: Marooned works best when participants are divided into teams of five to seven people.
Facilitator Kit includes: Administrative guidelines, sample Participant Guide, 2-hour workshop design, expert rationale, alternative training designs, and CD-ROM containing Microsoft® PowerPoint® presentation, reproducible masters, and color slides of scenario location.
Participant Guide includes: Scenario description, instructions, pressure-sensitive response forms for ranking action alternatives and daypack items, score chart to determine whether team has achieved synergy, and guidelines for team discussion.
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