Challenge Activities (These typically take 50 minutes each for orientation, activity, and debrief - unless otherwise noted.)

Islands (Getting clear on the goal and when it's reached, figuring out relationships with other teams)
This is a one, two, or three team activity that requires each team to move from atop its starting island (a large wooden platform), across to a middle island (a small platform), used by every group, and then across to each team's respective outlying island. (The program area is made up of square box-like platforms.) The objective is for each team to get to its outlying island in a set time using only the boards available. The boards represent limited resources to the groups. If anyone comes off an island (box) or drops a board in the process, the respective team must begin again. How well the teams interrelate to share resources and support each other is left open for the teams to initiate to ensure shared success. (This activity requires clear problem identification up front to be successful. It's a good start-off activity.)

The Seeds You Sow (Big goals require breakthrough thinking about collaborating to win.)
This activity focuses on the need for two teams with similar objectives and limited resources to work together to reach a shared win. The teams start out on opposite ends of a rectangular area. Inside the area are several dozen golf balls (seeds) scattered among several discs and cones (hot spots). Hot spots cannot be touched while someone is in the area. Anyone inside the rectangle is blindfolded as they gather seeds. Those outside direct. A total of forty seeds must be brought out and touching to achieve the objective, which is to stave off world hunger. But there are not enough seeds for both sides to be successful on their own.

Channels (How to collaborate with former competitors when goals and accountabilities merge.)
Here’s a moving challenge that promotes interrelated teamwork. Each team is given a small ball, and each person on the team is given a "channel" device. Each device is slightly different from the others. The challenge is to get the ball from a designated starting point to a target point without dropping or making physical contact with the ball. A series of related standards must also be met for each of the channel support structures (people) that construct the channel. What starts out as a fairly straightforward objective, soon becomes a bigger challenge, as more balls must be moved, the target moves further away, and new obstacles must be avoided. A second team (or more) can enter the picture as teams share channel routes, targets, and even balls in the process. This activity requires collaboration, coordination, cooperation, and tactical skill to be successful. Engagements with other teams can produce elegant and effective solutions, or can impede performance depending on how the groups relate with each other.

On Your Mark . . . (Learning from the competition to improve everyone's performance.)
How fast can your teams complete this challenge? A large game area is circled off. Inside are dozens of "hot spots" (disks) on the ground, each one with a specific marking to distinguish its place in a series. The challenge is for the team to make contact with each mark in series as quickly as possible. Another team is nearby and has the same challenge, and its hot spots are also inside the game area. Multiple play areas can be set up with two teams assigned to each. The challenge is to achieve the fastest combined time for touching the marks, in series. The game area with the fastest combined time wins. As an alternative, if there is only one game area with one or two teams, participants are challenged to meet a predetermined standard. The activity encourages out of the box thinking for ways to create an efficient process and for cooperating across teams.

Air Express (Producing predictable and replicable high performance results)
This is a high-energy activity about producing results. Two teams can work this activity from opposite ends of a volleyball court. The starting boundary is 30' feet from the net. At the start are three beach balls. On the other side of the net are three inner tubes. The team must get the balls over the net and onto the inner tubes in the quickest time they can, without carrying the balls in transit, or touching the net. They are aiming for the quickest time possible. In order to be able to claim a time as legitimate, however, they must be able to predict the time, then meet or beat the time twice in succession. The teams can either collaborate or cooperate in the process, or find a mix that meets everyone's needs, and produces the best result. (This activity generates enthusiasm and creativity from everyone involved.)

Electric Maze (Developing an effective process with limited budget and time constraints)
The Maze activity is conducted on an electronic checkerboard patterned carpet and involves one or two teams. Starting at one end, each team needs to figure out the one path across the maze so that each person can cross without setting off an alarm. The carpet has weight sensors that are programmed to sound if one steps on an "off-limits" square. Teams set their own time and performance goals. Performance goals are measured by minimizing repeated hits on alarmed squares. Each subsequent alarm from an identified square has an incremental cost, measured in chips the team budgets for itself at the outset. If these chips are depleted, the facilitator/banker advances a team up to ten red (debt) chips, and after these, up to ten blue (equity) chips. The best collaboration effort between teams resulted in "0" cost - a perfect outcome.

Color Blind (Effective communication within and across teams, problem solving)
This is a cross-team communication challenge in which participants are provided partial sets of materials with the aim of identifying which specific pieces of the whole set are missing. During this activity everyone is blindfolded, There are five sub-sets, each a different color, and each piece in each sub-set is a different shape. (Participants can ask the facilitator about a piece's color, but not about its shape.) One sub-set is split between the two teams. They will need to collaborate to realize this fact. But with this information, they can figure out the answer. Everyone on both teams needs to collaborate and communicate well to be successful, particularly in the area of listening.

KPM Transit (Kinetic People Movers - Trolleys): (Effective project hand-offs between teams)
This activity can be done by one team, or with several teams working together. Participants are given a set of props that are identified as a trolley. The team needs to move the trolley along a route that goes to the end of the line and then returns to the station. The trolley operates to an exact timetable that the team sets before leaving the station. With multiple trolley teams, the challenge requires switching trolleys with another team at the end point, and returning the newly acquired trolley to its original station on the schedule set for it by the other team. The interaction produces inter-team dynamics common to hand-off efforts between teams, especially where "just-in-time" coordination is critical.

Hot Stuff (Three Mile Island) (Getting clear on roles and responsibilities, creative problem solving)
A "nuclear reactor" is represented by a circle on the ground, about twelve feet in diameter. In the center is the "reactor core" with some "fuel" lying on top. A "containment device" is located off to the side. Outside the reactor, in the "control room," are materials available to the team. The team is informed it has about thirty minutes to contain the fuel (some balls) on the nuclear reactor core (a pedestal) to prevent a nuclear meltdown. No one can go into the reactor area, and must wear protective gear (blindfolds) if touching anything that does go into the reactor. This is a "hot" activity to demonstrate the need for clear roles and responsibilities, effective leadership, good communication, and shared problem solving to be successful. Teams can do this activity simultaneously and potentially help each other's problem solving. Or they can work in isolation and compare results later.

Bridges: (Figuring out the problem as you get into it. Attention to detail)
This can be either a single or interrelated teams activity. Each team starts out on a "river bank." They are told that the "river," which is rapidly rising, flows with acid, not water. They need to cross the "river" by building bridges with boards between blocks without touching the acid. They can lose a board if it touches the acid (ground), and participants can lose use of an arm or vision if they come in contact with the acid. They must finish before the rising river covers the blocks and makes crossing impossible. The solution doesn't become clear until after the team is typically well into an action mode, trying out different tactics, which may work at the outset, but ultimately need to change for the team to be successful. With multiple teams, groups start off from different banks and have to share resources while crossing each other's paths.

Beam Us Up, Scotty!: (this is a 90 minute activity)
(Simultaneous multiple problem solving across several teams)
Participants become Star Trek explorers visiting a distant planet about to be hit by an asteroid belt that is fast approaching and makes departure via shuttle craft impossible. They need to build a transporter to beam them back using materials they have available, but each of the three teams has only partial information on how to do this. Furthermore, each team is stranded on a "river bank" that flows with acid, not water, and they need to cross to an island in the middle where transporter materials (dilithium crystals) are located. They must build bridges with boards between blocks without touching the acid, or they can lose a board or participants can become handicapped. They must build the transporter and move everyone to the island within the hour, or face annihilation. There is no time to waste for anyone in this activity, which uses a fun fantasy to play out real team and inter-team dynamics. Multiple levels of leadership are required to be successful with this situation. Featured in Successful Meetings Magazine!

Spider Web (Setting and adhering to high standards, trusting and supporting others)
The team members find themselves at a large web like structure made out of string*, and containing a dozen holes of various shapes through which people need to be passed to the other side. The group needs to set a quality standard for their performance related to how much movement is allowed in the process of moving each other from one side to the other, and enforce their standard during the activity. The group figures out who best fits through which hole and in what order, and aims to complete the task in 30 minutes or less. This activity stimulates a lot of excitement and cheering as the group succeeds in meeting, hopefully, high standards that it sets and maintains. (*This activity can also be set up indoors using an invisible motion detecting field. See Sentinel ->)

Warp Speed: (Continual process improvement - creative problem solving)
Participants are challenged to continually improve the performance of passing several balls through a set sequence that the group develops at the outset. Each time they succeed, the challenge becomes to do the task in half the time. In order to succeed, the team members need to change the way they are doing things. This usually is only possible if they challenge their assumptions about how something "must" be done, realizing that many limitations are self imposed. New ideas that work are often the result of combining several people's ideas that no one person would come up with on their own. The message: we need each other in order to adapt and change and become more successful in response to outside demands.

The Pyramid: (this is a 90 minute activity) (Cross-team collaboration on a complex project)
Two teams simultaneously perform different tasks required to operate a single device called "The Pyramid," formed by four hinged aluminum poles. Two sets of control strings operate a 'grabber' that hangs down from the top of the pyramid into the center area. Each team manages one set of strings such that one team controls the device's position while the other team controls its grabbing function. The teams must coordinate their efforts to move and stack a set of props inside the pyramid area without physically going inside this area. The activity can be structured many different ways. For example, a sighted group may represent engineering expertise, with a blindfolded team representing operators trying to implement this expertise in the field. It also provides a great tool to practice leading across an organization.

Geodesic Factory (Blind Polygon) (this is a 70 minute activity) (Sharing accurate information and inter-team collaboration)
Here's a fun activity that can involve four teams together. As the scenario goes, the teams work at the "Bucky Fuller Geodesic Factory" which produces pyramidal geodesic structures. A representative from each team is informed that Bucky needs the team's help to produce a part of this structure, shaped as a perfect triangle and formed from some flexible line. During the process, everyone in the group wears protective eyewear (blindfolds). After each team gets its perfect triangle formed, they combine it with three other triangles from other production teams to form a perfect pyramidal structure. The four triangles need to be the same size in order to form the pyramid. This activity is about coordinating leadership and sharing a "vision" within and among teams to complete a project. This is a good climactic activity in a program.

The Sentinel (this is a 90 minute activity) (Creative team problem solving in an uncertain environment)
This is a "high-tech" indoor activity that creates a three dimensional maze in which participants need to navigate a path through a series of electrified towers programmed with motion detectors. The detectors are positioned at various levels within each tower, but not visible to the eye. Participants figure out the location, direction and size of each alarm field and figure out how to get team members to the other side by going over, under or through the safe space within the invisible path, without setting off an alarm. This is like combining spider web and maze, and really challenges a team's problem solving and agility.

Product Launch (this is a 90 minute activity) (Plan and execute an effective strategy to maximize results)
This is a wild activity that needs a wide-open field and teams that like to toy with water balloons - without breaking any - if they can! The team is in the "business" of distributing a powerful new product, packaged in capsule form (water balloons), code-named: "Love Potion #9." The field contains a product launch site where three team members - using a giant sling-shot - fling the product out to various distribution targets, where other team members retrieve the capsules. Teams aim their launches through distribution channels (a series of hula hoops held by still other team members). A team earns points for flinging capsules through hoops and reaching the retrievers - intact of course - at targeted areas. The challenge is to set an aggressive sales performance budget based on pre-targeted deliveries and then meet or exceed that budget ... oh, and try not to get too wet.

Egg Launch (90 – 120 minutes) (creativity and innovation, inter-team collaboration)
Each activity team sets up two launch groups that organize to design a launch vehicle for a fragile payload. One member from each team is designated a NASA observer and is provided with mission briefs to help them assess team performance for later feedback. Teams are given materials and information they need to construct their launch vehicles. Teams must also formulate the proper "fuel mixture" to be able to qualify for a launch. The "rockets" with payload are then taken to one of several launch pads and launched to a designated target area. Prior to launch, each team makes a short presentation about their launch devices and strategy. Teams that successfully land their payloads and achieve high scores win a contract for future NASA launch work. Scoring is based on several criteria that are cumulative across launchings within related activity teams. Teams can make judgements about their challenge level, strategy across sub teams to maximize points, and "rocket" design elements.

also ask about Quick Links, Mass Pass, Trust Series and many other activities that are available.

Added Option:
Do a Personal and Team Style Program
Participants often value and enjoy the process of identifying the personal behavior styles that produce the team dynamics. People come to understand these styles as typical, predictable, and necessary to have in a fully functioning team, in that the differences ensure the kind of diversity necessary to help the team be productive. At times these styles can cause friction and confusion within the team. We describe how this can happen and useful strategies to both take advantage of the strengths and minimize the unpleasantness that can occur, especially in times of stress. We typically provide this program in two ways. The short and very general description of styles uses a survey instrument called the Personal Profile Preview. We can do this presentation in about 90 minutes at an additional cost of fifteen dollars per participant. The full version of the DiSC personal profile includes a more reliable and informative survey and booklet. This version requires from two to three hours and costs an additional twenty-five dollars per person for the survey booklet. For even more in-depth personal and team profile analysis we also offer computer generated individual and team profiles that provide analysis on a variety of indicators that can be combined to address management and coaching styles, specific interpersonal dynamics, and role clarification on the team using either the DiSC. For more information on these options see Team Style Analysis under the Collaboration Skills menu.