HOP Into Action: The Jenga® Exercise
Ready to run the Jenga Exercise with your team? Use it to spark real conversations about conditions, capacity, and controls and convert fragile “green dashboards” into resilient everyday work
Why use Jenga to learn about safety?
Modern work is complex. A Jenga stack is a simple, hands-on way to “see” that complexity: many separate but interdependent pieces interacting to bear weight. When we remove or weaken pieces, the tower may still stand until the right (or wrong) conditions align. That’s work as done.
The HOP Jenga exercise transforms abstract safety concepts into tangible experiences, allowing people to interact with them physically, moving conversations from blame to understanding and from single causes to systemic issues.
What the exercise demonstrates
From dominoes to complexity: Contrast the 1930s “domino” model (linear cause→effect) with a living stack where multiple conditions combine over time.
First Story vs Second Story: Start with the obvious acts/conditions; then surface the deeper organizational and operational factors that actually shape outcomes.
Weak Signals & STKY: Each loose block is a weak signal, easy to spot and easy to dismiss. “Stuff That Kills You (STKY)” reveals the system's hidden fragility.
Different perspectives: From the top, things can appear “green” and stable; from the sides (frontline, other departments), instability is readily apparent.
Controls that matter: You can’t make every stack perfect, but you can design or reinforce critical controls where instability concentrates.
Jenga® is a registered trademark of Pokonobe Associates.
