June 2020

ProgramIT Consulting | Virtual Team BuildingObjectiveDue to the high demand of Digitalization, the team had been working very hard during the 6 weeks of confinement. It was indeed tough to maintain a balance between the highly demanding work, and the family for most employees. Despite that, the team had been able to deliver good results and had been very committed. Hence the head of the department has been very keen to offer them a small break out of the daily routine work.BackgroundOur client is one of the premier organizations in the IT Consulting space. They regroup people with years of experience in the things they do best, “Deliver the Goods.” The company helps their clients sustain and extend their IT strategies and objectives whilst effectively mitigating the IT risks which may arise.The key services offered by the company include: IT Strategy & Governance, Project Management, System Integration, Big Data Analytics, IT Assurance and Cyber Security.The company has worked on projects in Mauritius, Seychelles, Madagascar. Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. SolutionAfter internal brainstorming and discussions with the client, the engagement finalized was: Actual Execution:PHASE 1 : BOMS Challenge – for the smaller teamHow it works? Think of it like the Ironman fitness challenge. The buzzer goes off and the action starts! A series of challenges – one after the other, that engage different aspects – Body, Mind & Sole. In case you are wondering why this is called the BOMS Challenge, the previous sentence would give you a hint. A funny, crazy acronym that just stuck with all our participants and us!BOMS (Body, Mind and Sole) is an activity with a combination of physical, mental and running challenges. The buzz for the activity was generated as the session started – with a few fun energizers! This got the participants primed up, in a competitive mode and ready to go, the minute the stop clock started.Teams working in smaller groups had 15 minutes to crack an assortment of challenges - involving finding different items from the house, solving riddles, and also doing some “crazy” things! The challenge was done in two rounds - and it was nice to see teams coming back with resonating war cries that built up the energy! Before they could realize it, 45 minutes had zipped by! Finally, the scores were unveiled and the winning team was announced. The team came out of the whole experience totally energized!Impact:The feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive – sample a few:Thanks FocusU for an engaging and fun session. I never imagined we can do a mini team building in a virtual environment. It's a great booster, especially when we are all working remotely. It's an excellent way to connect to our team members and know them better. Thanks again to your team and you. Keep up the good work. Head of departmentThank you to you and the team for such a lovely time we had virtually. Never thought it will be so fun and that we will have so much of laughter. Hope we can do this activity with my whole team. I'll speak to the management team tomorrow. Cheers.HR ExecutivePHASE 2 : #Donotrushchallenge – for the larger team engagementThanks to the impact of the Phase 1 session, done for a team of 12 participants, the Head of Department decided to go in for the engagement for the whole department of 60 participants.This time though, the activity chosen was #Dontrushchallenge as this was trendy and had gone viral on social media. It was also felt that this activity would allow the team members to experience something different & new while challenging them to get out of their comfort zones. The key messaging to be landed was also that even at such times, where there was social distancing, they could all still be virtually connected through a fun activity and experience!The entire session was kicked off with a few virtual energizers to get everyone into the right spirit for a challenge like this. Once everyone was sufficiently charged up, our Facilitators explained the ground rules and parameters for the #Donotrushchallenge – and then moved the participants into different break-out rooms!The challenge was simple: Each and every participant had to shoot a video of 15 sec – with some conditions and parameters of course. Participants together brainstormed different ideas and recorded their video clips on smartphones. Use of props, help from family members was encouraged while shooting of the videos. The whole process of putting ideas into action, creating videos was thoroughly absorbing for all participants.For example, one of the teams that had “Keeping Fit” as a theme, came up with a storyline of eating chocolates in one clip, and doing exercises in another. Each group had a unique storyline illustrated uniquely too!Like in the teaser session that was run earlier, time just flew by. Finally came the wow moment for all the teams: Showcasing of all the final videos live and having team members to vote for them!! The excitement at this stage was palpable.The activity was brought to a close by a meaningful debrief at the end of the session, where several themes related to good teamwork cropped up. Here were a few:• Ownership: Every team had to come up with their own video. However, the quality of the video depended on the extent of ownership taken by each and every team member.• Resilience: In uncertain times, the success of a team depends on how resilient they are. And a team’s resilience depends on how effectively they can tap onto each other’s strength, ask for help and support each other.• Situational leadership: Natural leaders emerged during the course of the activity. We used the observations to debrief around the importance of situational leadership at the workplace. Leadership is not through the title we hold, but rather through the actions we take. Anyone can take up leadership through their actions at the workplace.Impact:Like in Phase 1, even after Phase 2, we received a lot of positive feedback from the participants that gave us the sense that the intervention had made an impact on them. Here are a few we received:• Thank you. It was a pleasure participating. We did enjoy ourselves🌺• We had a great time doing the video. Thanks 😁• Good job team❤️.We might be not the best.. but we did our best.. that is more important! We enjoyed🥳• Thanks FOCUSU. Much needed fun during the confinement 😀• We indeed had a great time together. Thank you FocusU team!• Hi FocusU team ☺️. Today was really a refreshing change and break from the routine life. 🙌🏻 I fully enjoyed myself. Thanks again ✌🏻• Keep up the good work! Thanks to the whole FocusU teamDownload this Case Study

June 2020 - FocusU

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