How does a Team Building Company do their own Team Building?

Something really cool happened in our office last week: We made a new game. Well, more specifically, AJ and Ali teamed up to make a new game. It was delightful! 

Ever since our team completed the MetLife Digital Accelerator, Powered by Techstars, we’ve been doing this thing called “Team Time” twice a month on Fridays from 3-5. The idea is: we get our work done early and do something recreational and fun together. The product we make, The Outbreak, is a health challenge, but it has a very strong secondary benefit as a team building challenge as well. I mean, once you survive an 6-week zombie outbreak alongside Frank in Accounting, the two of you will have an easier time working together because of that shared experience. It’s awesome, Frank approves your expense reports right away now. But I digress…

Team Time has been pretty successful so far. It was inspired by our time with MetLife and Techstars where we all lived out of an apartment together and spent 3-months away from Atlanta building out some new tech to pilot in one of MetLife’s service areas. So, during that time we had a number of shared downtime activities and we all kind of went back to a “college roommate” mindset for a couple of months. 

These days we take turns organizing Team Time. I did a session where we played games I learned internationally: Truco (from Brazil), Maexchen (from Germany). We play our share of Jack Box. I ran a D&D game once. Sometimes Jeff has us clean. 

So last week on Thursday morning AJ said that he and Ali had a plan for team time. That they would take it over. Super, I thought. That’s kinda the plan: We all take turns organizing a group activity. In doing so, we learn more about each other and socialize a little bit. 

They invented a game called Guessing to Know You. It’s a great example of how a group of game makers think about how they want to solve a problem, or in this case, create a team building activity. I often speak on the key properties that “gamified” programs need to have if they’re going to actually be useful in terms of engaging participants. Guessing to Know you has a strong flywheel, which is what we call a repeatable action that is a core game mechanic. It had a great, and I mean Apples to Apples level great, social component.  It includes a wagering element for additional tension and uncertainty and some strategy around guessing order. It’s a solid little social game. Probably not just good for team building, but also parties.

The way it works is there’s a general question that everyone is asked, like “What was your favorite toy as a kid?” You write down your answer, shuffle them up and hand them out. Then, in order, you state the answer on your sheet of paper to the person on your left. They try to guess whose answer it is. If they get it right, they get the answer card, and that card becomes a point. If they get it wrong, that answer gets discarded and play continues in a clockwise fashion. 

Some rounds were laugh-out-loud funny. Some were more thoughtful. Some rounds were very "surface level," but others, like, "What is your favorite city that you've traveled to?" prompted us to dive into the stories behind the answers. With every round we learned something about each other (and each others' perceptions of ourselves).

Really good games have simple, repeatable mechanics with uncertain outcomes. This one is no exception. So in the spirit of giving first and being a good samaritan to our business community, we’re sharing the basic rules with all of our friends and followers here on social media. If you’re a leader and have a team offsite, I highly recommend this game as an ice breaker.

Mike