Large Group Activity With Straws And Masking Tape … And A Twist

My friends from my last job, I am sure, can readily relate to what I am going to write here. Head to part 2 if you wish. For the benefit of the rest of the avid readers, let me elaborate just a little bit. In the past, some of our projects involved having a full day workshop with a large group of clients (anywhere from 20 to 80). You see, giving lecture on strategy can be boring to the participants, even if it is half an hour per topic. Having break-out sessions brainstorming on how to articulate and measure strategy can be both tiring and dry. So what we consultants did was to make their days fun and memorable. The intangible value as you may say. These are the people who have stepped out of their daily operation and have a chance to finally socialize. To us, we have a piece of deliverable to complete and we need to tap onto their brains. To them, they just want to have a good time and finally get to chat with the girl in the next cubicle near to them or near the other door far far away.

It is not until I have made a switch out of my last career do I realize what it is like viewing from the other side. Recently I have attended a team building event organized by an external party hosted at Sentosa. I must say, the event triggered a walk down the memory lane and some of the ideas that this organizer has is refreshing.

PART ONE – SELLING THE FUN FACTOR

There are many ways to get work done. Nothing beats the fun way. In the past, I was used to have a group of capable and creative consultants who took part in spicing up the events. If I am going to sell you a piece of work that involves X number of people Y number of hours in a duration of Z number of weeks and you will have this wonderful piece of deliverable that propels your organization to a higher level, you may bite onto it, you may not. If I am going to sell you a series of events and working sessions that not only will you have the same piece of deliverable, but also your team (apparently large) will have a chance to bond with one another, new ideas will be harvested from the ground (read: buy in … further read: change management) … and you can even throw in a BBQ session in the end of the day so as to boost morale. Now, that sales pitch flies, I am telling you.

To make the day fun, it is not that hard. First, split the boring stuffs (read: real work) into pieces. Make sure they are well spaced out with a 10.30am tea break (cannot be too close to breakfast nor lunch) and a 4pm tea break. If the group is new, throw in an “Icebreaker” activity. At appropriate timing, throw in an “Energizer” activity to break the monotonous of the facilitated session. Or just to re-focus the audience back onto the day’s activities. Did you know that when you gather a group of people after the lunch hours, their minds are still somewhere out there? An “Energizer” activity helps them to forget what occupies their minds and to bring them back to Planet Earth.

My team has lots of creative ideas. We seldom recycled the same activity too many times. And we always found ways to add a twist to the old games. There are many ways to carry out “Icebreaker” activity. The key is to let people get to know one another better. One of my favorites is to ask each person to draw a symbol that represent themselves on a piece of paper and within each group, go round the circle and present what this symbol means to them. In turn, we consultants got to pick people in random to present their pictures on stage. It is really not that tough to find some funny ones. Usually you can judge the reaction from the audience to see which one to pick. And don’t forget to pick up the ones from the bosses. People usually have a good laugh out of it. Of course, you can ask everyone to stick their pictures onto the walls so that people get to see what others are like during breaks.

“Energizer” usually ties back to the theme of the topic the consultants want to talk about next. Some can be as simple as a quiz with simple scoring system. Some can be as straightforward as a puzzle solving competition amongst teams. Perhaps I am an engineer in training, I love the ones that involve people building things.

Straws and masking tape are wonderful materials when it comes to building activities. Off the head, we used to have “build a bridge” or “build a tower”. The specifications are flashed out via the projectors and each team is given 20 mins or half an hour to complete the task.

PART TWO – MORE STRAWS AND MASKING TAPE

What a role reversal. Now I get to play the games that the external organizers put together! Hooray! I was excited because for the past two years or so, I only got to see people play the “Energizer” games, scratching my head and the heads of my team to think of the next better and more fulfilling game.

For one of the indoor games that we played in Sentosa, the objective was simple: build a track to keep a ping pong ball in motion. Whichever team that clocks in the longest time wins. Each team was given 1 hour to complete the task.

1 hour?! Isn’t it a bit … too long.

I was amazed at how time flew.

The twist I was talking about is not keeping a ping pong ball in motion for the longest time (though I must say it is refreshing on its own). 15 minutes into the activity, we were instructed to send 2 of our members into another team for 5 minutes and in return, we received 2 new members from a different team (hence, not a swap of team members between two teams but rather a rotation of team members). It was interesting because suddenly there was new idea injecting into the our team and those who got send away would bring back new idea from a totally different team.

30 minutes into the activity, we were asked to abandon our own track and to take over our next team’s work. That was actually quite interesting. Some of our initial reaction was … to sabotage another team’s work. But that quickly dissolved I am sure. Others worked on the half baked track in fear that we have to take over the work from then on. Of course, some of us genuinely wanted to help.

I still remember how much shock we had when we looked at the track that hardly worked. One side of the support was collapsing and we were at lost as in what to do next. I started working on the support and some others started working on the track. And within 10 minutes, we actually got a working prototype! We loved it so much that we did not want to move back to our old track – but we did have to, as announced by the organizer.

You would have thought that we all more or less built the same thing right? Well, while we all have the concept of oscillation in order to keep the ball in motion for as long as possible (according to the organizer, not many actually thought of that) and we all finished on time (our department is responsible in delivering projects … duh … job hazard), our designs varied. My team has come up with a very neat and simple design rested on table with moderate height. One team has the height of twice of ours rested on the floor. Another team went for the length. One created a very long track (about 4 meters) with a few humps. Another one made a small circular track that spiralled towards the center. I noticed that those teams that built the structure on the floor, the structure itself tended to be a lot bigger.

Another interesting piece of fact is that the result did not vary much despite such a variation in design. The timing was in the region of 40 seconds for all of us. I wonder if I can create a mathematical model based on that one day. It is a pretty fun game. Give it a try when you have a large group next time.