Office Pictionary words for work and team games

A 15-minute team game on a video call

All anyone needs is a browser and the meeting chat, so it works the same on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet or a Slack huddle.

1. Before the call, make the room. Tap “Play these online” above, type your name and create a room. It starts with the Office stuff and Corporate slang packs, with easy, medium and hard words all in the mix.
2. Minute 0: paste the invite link into the meeting chat. Everyone opens it on a laptop or a phone, types a name and picks an avatar. Nothing to install, no sign-up.
3. Minute 2: set the length and start. Aim for about 16 drawings of 40 seconds: 2 rounds for 8 people, 3 rounds for 5, and 1 round for 12 or more. “Rounds” and “Draw time” are in the room settings.
4. Minutes 3 to 14: draw and guess. Everyone draws once a round while the others type their guesses into the game. Keep the call's sound on: the groans are half the fun.
5. Minute 15: the podium. The top three take the podium and the bragging rights. If the team wants a rematch, the host can press “Play again” for a new game in the same room.

Keep it friendly

• Nobody needs to draw well. Stick figures and arrows are fine, and the worst drawings get the biggest laughs.
• Draw the word, not a colleague. “Middle management” can be a stick figure squashed between two floors. It doesn't need your manager's face.
• Pick words for the room. On Easy, the game keeps to words like “stapler” and “herding cats”, and leaves out sore ones like “layoffs” and “severance”. Or copy the whole list, cut anything that stings, paste the rest into “Your own words” and tick “Use only my words”.
• Mind the in-jokes. If you add words of your own, choose ones the newest person on the team will get too.
• Keep turns short. 40 seconds a drawing keeps the game moving, and nobody is on the spot for long.

How to draw corporate slang

Most of this list is corporate slang: the phrases that fill every meeting and that nobody has ever had to draw. Below, it is grouped into meetings, buzzwords, office idioms, process, people, numbers and strategy.

• Draw it literally. The idioms are pictures already: “low hanging fruit” is a tree with fruit by the ground, “herding cats” a stick figure chasing cats in every direction, and “bottleneck” a bottle with a traffic jam in its neck.
• Draw the moment. Meeting talk is a scene everyone has lived. For “you are on mute”, draw a face talking and a microphone with a line through it; for “hard stop”, a clock and a hand held up to say stop.
• Draw what it does. Buzzwords are the hard ones, so show the idea in action: “leverage” is a lever lifting a heavy box, and “streamline” a bumpy line that comes out smooth.

More tricks for words with no shape are on hard Pictionary words, and every pack is on the full list of Pictionary words.