MUR
Do you remember the first time you rode a roller coaster? I sure do…I wasn’t even sure at the first that I want to give it a shot but finally I put aside my nervousness and anxiety and decided to embark on that adventure. When I finished the ride, the first thing I said was – Let’s Do it Again!
In our ‘The Roller Coaster Challenge’, though you do not get to experience a real roller coaster ride, the experience of participating in this challenge leaves you with same mix of feelings and emotions.
In this thrilling challenge, participants get to build their very own roller coasters. Each team has to design the rollercoaster to enable a ball glide down the track, complete with dips, curves, and loops, by using only gravity. To encourage creativity and innovation, the participants are provided plain and raw daily common items to build the roller coaster. It’s totally a ‘Just do it yourself’ task.
Below are the three key lessons that our participants learn from the Roller Coaster Challenge.
Focus is the Key
When you want to get something done, all you need is to focus your attention on the task until your brain follows your instructions seamlessly. Remember, the first time you drove a car, how hard it was to concentrate on brakes and clutch at the same time, but now, you drive effortlessly. The concept is the same while you perform the roller coaster challenge. A lot of focus and attention is required to design the roller coaster in such a way that the ball can travel through the entire rail system effortlessly. The activity also helps stimulate and develop logical reasoning and critical thinking skills of the participants.
Creativity and Innovation are Important
Creativity and innovation have become critical skills to achieve success at work and in personal life. We often hear our managers saying that we need to think ‘outside the box’ to outshine others at work but what is this ‘outside the box’ thinking. Very few of us know that this outside the box thinking is all about creative and innovative ideas that we bring at work. Similarly, in the rollercoaster challenge, there are no fixed manuals or custom-built kit to stifle members’ creativity. The material for designing the rollercoaster is plain and raw so that the participants are encouraged to stretch their creativity and innovation quotients.
Teamwork and Cooperation Matters
Teamwork is one of the qualities that managers and leaders repeatedly try to instill in their team members. Without a doubt, it is necessary for the people working together to cooperate and collaborate on tasks to ensure seamless and effective operations. Author John C. Maxwell nicely sums up these thoughts in his words by saying, “Teamwork makes the dream work”. The roller coaster challenge also encourages teamwork, where individuals together as a team experience the ups and downs of the challenge and discover various means to manage the inevitable factors and dynamics of a team during the process.
Co-relating the experience of a roller coaster challenge to some real-time scenarios at work, the activity highlights the concerns that affect individuals in a team and how they come out of their comfort zone to work together and overcome their fears and doubts. Most importantly, they learn the value of working together as a team to achieve the common organizational goal.
We, at FocusU, believe in the value of learning through play. If you agree and want your team to experience the thrill and excitement of this challenge, reach out to us at hello@focusu.com and we’ll ensure you get to experience every bit of that Real Thrill!
