Zooming Around

Choose this exercise

Purpose: Review and reinforce steps in a process by intentionally toggling between broad context and precise operational details.

Use it when: Use during procedural reviews, operational post-mortems, or technical walkthroughs when participants need to see both high-level purpose and tactical steps clearly.

Skip it when: Skip when participants are exploring an unfamiliar topic with no prior domain knowledge to narrate, or when precise script adherence without improvisation is strictly required.

Group arrangement: Pairs (Person A and Person B). If there is an odd number, form one group of three with two rotating directors.

Timing: Source specifies 10 to 20 minutes for pair play. Suggested plan uses 15 minutes to include setup and debrief.

Materials and tools

• One countdown timer for the facilitator
• Optional scrap paper and pens for notes

Before participants arrive

1. Decide on the target topic or work process to be reviewed (for example, handling a support ticket, onboarding a customer, or running a code deploy).
2. Arrange seating or standing space so pairs can speak comfortably without shouting over nearby pairs.

Say this to open

In this activity, you will work in pairs to retell a process as an improvised story. One of you is the storyteller; the other is the director. As storyteller, you narrate what happened from start to finish. As director, you hold a camera control. You periodically tell the narrator to zoom in or zoom out. When told to zoom in, dive into fine tactical details, exact words, or concrete actions. When told to zoom out, pull back to high-level goals and the overall sequence. Let us set up pairs and begin round one.

How to run it

1. Form pairs and assign roles 2 minutes

   Ask participants to pair up. If someone is left over, place them in a triad with two directors. In each pair, label one person A and the other B. For round one, Person B is the storyteller and Person A is the director. State the chosen process topic clearly.

2. Run round one 5 minutes

   Start the 5-minute timer. Person B begins narrating the assigned process from the beginning. Person A listens and calls out 'zoom in' or 'zoom out' every 20 to 30 seconds. Directors may call the same prompt twice in a row to force extreme detail or extreme overview. Stop narration when the timer sounds.

3. Swap roles and run round two 5 minutes

   Partners switch roles: Person A becomes the storyteller, Person B becomes the director. Announce a related phase or the same process from another angle. Start the 5-minute timer. Pairs proceed under the same rules until the timer ends.

4. Facilitate brief debrief 3 minutes

   Bring the whole room together. Ask two targeted questions about what detail level revealed unexpected gaps or shared understandings. Take three to four brief participant responses from volunteers.

Debrief questions

• When forced to zoom in, what procedural details emerged that usually get overlooked?
• When forced to zoom out, did the overarching intent of the process remain clear?
• Which direction felt more difficult to narrate under partner direction, and why?

Finished output: A spoken walkthrough of a target workflow completed by both partners across multiple levels of abstraction.

Remote

Create breakout rooms with pairs (or triads if an odd count). The host broadcasts announcements at the halfway mark to switch roles. In chat or on a shared slide, post the target topic and the two commands: 'Zoom In' and 'Zoom Out'.

Hybrid

Pair in-person participants with in-person partners and remote participants in online breakout rooms to prevent acoustic crosstalk. The facilitator broadcasts timing instructions both over the room speakers and into online text chat simultaneously.

Access and participation choices

• Participants may take 30 seconds of quiet note-taking on scratch paper before speaking if helpful.
• Anyone who prefers not to improvise speech out loud can serve as a director, take silent observational notes for the pair, or request a written variation.
• Personal disclosures are not required; stories must remain focused on public workflow tasks or neutral fictional examples.

If the session gets stuck

The director does not say anything, letting the storyteller monologue at one level.

Remind the room halfway through that directors must call a zoom change every 20 to 30 seconds, and suggest calling 'zoom in' immediately.

The storyteller gets stuck or runs out of things to say when asked to zoom in.

Direct the speaker to describe concrete sensory items: the button clicked, the exact sentence spoken, or the screen displayed.

Terms used here

• Zoom In: A command instructing the speaker to focus on a minute tactical step, sensory detail, or specific phrase.
• Zoom Out: A command instructing the speaker to step back to the overarching goal, context, or wider stage of the process.