Thinking Yourself Outside of the Box. Promoting Problem Solving Through Escapology…

Any task can be learned through repetition. You can take a team of people and ask them to dogmatically follow a procedure and they will get good at it, but what happens when the tasks are varied? When almost any problem can arise at any time? How do you prepare people for that and encourage and nurture those sorts of thought processes?

The Idea

Developing that ‘intangible’ aspect of the role, the one that is difficult to measure quantitatively, and without in-depth psychological testing, can be a challenge. It can be tempting to ignore things that can’t be measured because they are inconvenient, or to attempt to measure other things, hoping that you’ll somehow find a magic formula for measuring personality traits and thought processes.

But I like a challenge.

I wanted to promote working smarter, thinking outside the box, blue sky thinking and all the other wonderful business phrases that get thrown around. The difference being that I wanted to do it for real, not because it sounded good in a meeting.

What was needed was an activity that was fun, a diversion at least from the daily grind, but at the same time reinforced notions of teamwork and, particularly relevant to Support Consultants, promoted strong, creative problem-solving skills. Primarily I needed to get them out of the office and actually doing something.

With this in mind I conducted an experiment of sorts, and I thought that I would share my findings with you all…

The Experiment

I sent out an email asking for brave volunteers, without any mention of what I needed them for. The reason I took this approach is that I wanted this to be a surprise, to deny the opportunity for preparation or discussion, because this is pretty much how a day would play out. Problems come in, and there is often no warning, no time to prepare adequately for the specifics of the issue.

I decided that the best way to foster creative problem solving skills would be to have the volunteers locked up in a room, blindfolded and given 45 minutes to work together on an escape plan. A well-developed sense of conscience, human rights legislation and a lack of availability prevented me from adding sharks into the mix.

So, Antonia Martin, Sarah Moore, Laura Naylor and Emily Crowdle were the four plucky volunteers and were kept deliciously in the dark for a week, unaware that they would be attending the Sheffield Escape Game (though there is a strong possibility that they managed to work it out beforehand!). They were to be sent into the Placebo room, where they would need to communicate effectively and rack their brains to overcome challenging puzzles, before returning to work to share shameful tales of defeat, or regale us with tales of triumph.

Outcomes

As I personally didn’t take part in this, I can only offer the feedback of the participants as evidence of the efficacy of this venture, and here is what they had to say:

Laura

“We had fun and the puzzles required critical thinking similar to the role, we could see the issues (lockboxes) and had to take whatever resources we had to resolve them through practical action.

It may go without saying but our weakest points were when we weren’t listening to one another, as there were a few moments one of us would make the right call for it to be drowned out by each focusing on their own task which cost us time and the same can happen in an investigation. Tunnel vision is nobody’s friend.

We didn’t pressure one another and tried to take up a role each to share responsibility and for the most part did quite well.

What I took away from this is that we can never do too much to make sure we continually try to communicate as well as we can and try to use our traits to our advantage rather than our detriment. There were elements of the exercise we couldn’t control, like the quality of some of the puzzles which were real time sappers, but we would have gotten further if we organised better and communicated more.”

Sarah

“As cliché as it sounds, I felt we really did work as a team. Each trying out different things to try and find more clues, for example one of us would be trying something but then someone would say ‘how about you do it this way’. And when we did find clues/keys etc. we would let each other know – it is definitely good from a communication perspective. As you have to communicate in order to progress through the room/rooms. In the second room, we partnered off a bit more and tried to do two separate things in order to speed it up a bit. Antonia and Emily figured out one element, whilst Laura and myself had a go at something else. Never letting any one person struggle with something on their own (which I feel fits into this role well).

From a problem solving point of view, I think it was useful as I know for myself it showed my strengths and weaknesses (for example maths).

It was definitely fun and I think it is something that small groups from the team could do as you do have to work as a team and figure out who is best for what task.”

Antonia

“There was discussion at the start over if we should appoint a ‘leader’ in case we can’t make a decision, and we decided against it.

I think we worked really well as a team and we seemed to naturally find our own roles and talk to each other about what we’d found or what we thought happened next.

I thought we were great at exploring our options in terms of problem solving, and if we knew a certain thing wasn’t working we would quickly try another way until we worked it out. We all took direction from each other and everyone contributed equally, which honestly surprised me.

It was incredibly fun and I would be really intrigued to do it again with people I maybe didn’t know so well.

It absolutely relates to our role with regards to problem solving. You realise you’re spending too much time on a particular thing and it’s getting you nowhere so you have to make the decision to give up, try something else, or work at it from a different angle. Patience and keeping a level head is paramount, there is the tendency to rush and panic with the time ticking down and I can imagine those without these skills would really struggle.

It also relates to a discussion I had the week before about ‘sitting on’ information. You had to announce everything you found and share all the knowledge of the room so that the group could collectively come to the right answer. At times I did wish I could try it by myself but I knew ultimately the group were stronger than just one person.

It was frustrating at times when we were talking over each other and missing key information but on the other hand it would be impossible to complete alone. Moral of the story: TALK TO EACH OTHER.”

Emily

“I have really enjoyed our experience at the Great Escape Sheffield; it was a good opportunity to work as a team but in different setting to work.

Looking back at the experience we all worked well with one another either as a four or splitting up into pairs for different parts. On reflection we could have handled the task differently; as a team we should have asked for help earlier on to proceed to other rooms which required more time.

Personally for me as this task was timed I think that it hindered my ability to focus, I became consumed with rushing the task rather than taking a bit more time to think. I do believe that this relates to my role in support; sometimes when it is busy and calls are filling up my queue I can be distracted with the amount of work which needs to be done. If time is taken to think about what I need to, I’m more likely to be focused on completing tasks.”

Above: The ladies didn’t actually manage to escape, but it was still a positive experience

Review of Findings

One of the main themes in the feedback was communication, and it’s good to see people appreciating the true value of this. It is often taken for granted, but effective channels of communication are invaluable. It is also interesting to see comments linking back to real world scenarios, which shows that this exercise engaged people in a way that allowed them to reflect on, and relate it to their role.

There is also evidence that this encouraged some thoughts on team dynamic, and each of the participants seems at some point to have considered the roles of each individual and the best use of the available resources.

Lastly, it does seem like everyone had fun, and this is very important. If I have managed to organise a useful development exercise, then I need it to be fun. Work shouldn’t be all staring at screens and sitting in silence. We spend too much time there for that.

Conclusions

Though the ‘results’ are qualitative and anecdotal, this was about people, inspiring, challenging and motivating them, at the same time as trying to equip them for their roles in a light-hearted way. Figures and statistics aren’t always the best measures of how much of an impact you have made. If I were to repeat this, I might consider the corporate offering, which also features some psychological analysis and see how much value this adds, if any.

Everyone loves accreditation or professionally run courses that look good on a CV. This was not meant to be a replacement for either of those, as they are still vital for staff development in my opinion. I wanted a lighter touch engaged the mind, and encouraged teamwork and practical problem solving. It was a relatively cheap venture, and if nothing else served as a slight break from the rigors of the working day and gave the participants something to talk about.

So there you have it. Mock or trivialise if you wish, but I would ask all managers to consider what things they could do that may seem a little ‘off the beaten track’. I would remind them how important it is to identify the behaviours that lead to success and then think what sort of activities will help to cultivate them, and that could also inject a little fun into proceedings at the same time. As long as people are being invested in, and are gaining benefits then the short amount of time spent on such ventures are well worth it.

The important thing for me is that I was prepared to put my money where my mouth is, and tried something a bit different, and nothing caught fire and some people had some fun and thought a bit about themselves. I’ll take that one as a win!