MUR
Before the pandemic turned our world upside down, we would run a high-tech team building activity called City Race Challenge. With the use of sophisticated equipment like handheld GPS, this adventure filled fast-paced challenge was one of our most popular team building activities among the corporates not just in India but abroad as well.
On 24 March 2020, we all went into lockdown; work from home was no more an optional thing but a compulsory mandate. We have been virtually quarantined at home ever since. During every interaction we had with our clients, we made sure to ask about the one thing they miss the most during the lockdown period, and the inevitable answer ‘Travel’ among other things.
This seemingly unanimous response compelled us to ask ourselves, ‘How can we get them to travel virtually and explore different places while sitting at home?’ We took an inspiration from our previous experiences of treasure hunt and came up with a variation of Virtual treasure hunt called Map the City Challenge, as part of our bouquet of virtual team building offerings!
Lets first look at what is Virtual Treasure Hunt?
Well, it’s the same as a traditional “treasure hunt” with clues to solve as you eventually find your way to the victory station; except you do not need to even leave your room for it! We have conducted Map the City Challenge for various teams across different levels in the last four months. We have been running this more often on Zoom & Microsoft Teams and ideally recommend a group size of maximum 250 team members for seamless engagement.
It could be facilitated purely as an engagement activity or as an activity with a purposeful debrief at the end. When debriefed, the activity is brought to a close with participants sharing their different thoughts, experiences and insights from the activity and connecting the experience back to their different workplace situations. More often than not, these three adages come to the fore very commonly –
– The way one plays in the way one works
– You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation
– We can achieve a lot when we work together
Virtual Treasure Hunt : A DIY Guide
Step 1:
Work out the logistics –
How many people will play? What would be the duration? What platform you would be using to run this?
Step 2 :
Decide on theme and the location accordingly. Best part is you can set up for any location in the world. For Example, you can have Hawaiian theme and set up the clues for Hawaii
Step 3 :
Set it up like a race using Google Maps and the search engine. One clue leading to another and remember the objective is to get the participants to experience the flavor of Hawaii.
Step 4 :
Prepare a presentation with objectives, rules, instructions and tips
Step 5 :
Divide the group into smaller teams and share an invitation with them
Step 6 :
Facilitate the activity with lot of energy and enthusiasm. You will witness conspicuous change in teams’ energy and bonding
Or, you could simply reach out to us and watch the magic unfold for your entire team, with minimal fuss!
