Improve collaboration in teams and across boundaries. Breakdown silos and unleash the potential of your people

Effective
Interactions

Four energizing activities to introduce teamworking essentials. 

Use Handcuffed as an ice-breaker, or take it further and help people gain an insight into: planning and close co-operation within competing teams and co-operating and communicating between teams that have to work together to achieve their goals.

Gantry is a competitive activity to help participants understand the importance of customer orientation, establishing and working to priorities, planning (and revising plans), estimating costs and working within a set time frame. 

Within Four Walls is perfect for people who need to set targets and plan, but understand that original decisions may not be appropriate as new information is received; progress needs to be monitored and plans changed if necessary. 

Helipads is a wide-ranging activity designed to initiate thinking about how to achieve business success through effective team working within and between teams. It encompasses skills, behaviours and attitudes.

Remote workers
That get results

In Transport two teams that work in different locations have the opportunity to meet in a third location. The teams have to work together to build an articulated truck and two skips that can be transported by the truck. One team has to build the tractor unit and a skip that can hold all of the unused materials, the other the trailer and a skip for any scrap that is produced. To be successful teams need to be aware that their actions will have an immediate effect on each other, so they must communicate and work accordingly.

Teams that
Talk 

2 or 3 teams work independently in Carts and Horses to assemble a model of their own design. Then, using only face to face, verbal and telephone communications (nothing written or drawn) each team has to build an exact replica of another team’s model. The task becomes more complicated because each group only has enough components to create one model at a time.

Project teams
That perform

In The Rig the aim is to make money by producing a model oil rig. The value of the oil rig depends on set criteria and everything has a cost. The group has freedom to organise itself in anyway it wishes, but there are 3 set locations (tabletops) where sub-assemblies must be made before they are moved to the final assembly area. It is all too easy for the task to take over and for the overall aim (making money) to be forgotten.

Change
Champions

Initially three teams work independently to produce a product. Words, Names and Numbers seems easy but it’s not! Later they come together as one big team, the brief combining their earlier briefs but additional constraints become the big issue. Teams fail to capitalise on the resources offered by the new ‘big team’ so the merging of the ‘companies’ delivers almost no benefit. Why? The answer almost always revolves around attitudes to change and the failure to change approaches to capitalise on the new situation.

Savvy situational
Leaders

In Promises, Promises the leader has promised that two teams will each deliver a price and a product within a set time. Each team has different constraints, but the tasks seem achievable. Very quickly the stores become a major bottleneck and the promises become daunting. As pressure mounts the need for the manager to focus on the key issues (meeting customer needs and managing human resources) is critical.