The objective of this exercise is to experience what it is like being on the boundary of your team or organization and to experience the boundary person’s divided loyalties.

1. As a full class, decide on a stake you are willing to wager on this exercise. Perhaps it will be 5¢ or 10¢ per person or even more.

2. Form into teams. Select or elect one member from your team to be an expert. The expert will be the person most competent in the field of international geography.
3. The experts will then form into a team of their own.
4. The teams, including the expert team, are going to be given a straightforward question to work on. Whichever team comes closest to deriving the correct answer will win the pool from the stakes already collected. The question is any one of the following as assigned by the instructor:

(a) What is the airline distance between Beijing and Moscow (in miles)?

(b) What is the highest point in Texas (in feet)?

(c) What was the number of American battle deaths in the Revolutionary War?
5. Each team should now work on the question, including the expert team. However, after all the teams come up with a verdict, the experts will be allowed to return to their “home” team to inform the team of the expert team’s deliberations.
6. The expert team members are now asked to reconvene as an expert team. They should determine their final answer to the question. Then, they are to face a decision.
The instructor will announce that for a period of up to two minutes, any expert may either return to their home team (to sink or swim with the answer of the home team)
or remain with the expert team. As long as two members remain in the expert team, it will be considered a group and may vie for the pool. Home teams, during the twominute decision period, can do whatever they would like to do—within bounds of normal decorum—to try to persuade their expert member to return.
7. After the two minutes are up, teams will hand in their verdicts to the question, and the team with the closest answer (up or down) will be awarded the pool.
8. Class members should be prepared to discuss the following questions:
1. What did it feel like to be a boundary person (the expert)?
2. What could the teams have done to corral any of the boundary persons who chose not to return home?