Our latest team building activity combines mental agility with collaboration, construction and commercial prowess.
The objective of this exercise can be adapted to suit your group's learning objective
This original team building challenge from Fresh Tracks sees teams compete in a catapult competition. Each team is required to:
- Work out a product-development strategy
- Solve puzzles and clues to acquire component parts
- Manage their intellectual and financial resources
- Negotiate with other teams
- Build and fire their own catapult
Teams also have a budget of gold coins which can be used to purchase catapult parts or to fund construction advice.
A number of options to enhance performance are available to each team, participants must calculate and agree upon the most cost and time-effective method to build their catapult.
Success requires:
- Effective planning
- Collaboration between teams
- Clear communication
- Even input from across the team
- Clear and inspiring leadership
In the past few months this exercise has been used to bond a new group of graduates, illustrate the importance of effective team planning with senior engineers and demonstrate the value of cooperation to a commercial sales team.
Whilst catapults always feature, the objectives of the exercise can be adapted to suit the group’s learning objective, with a greater or lesser emphasis made on factors such as tactics, collaboration, competition and team roles. See it for yourself on YouTube.
