In April 2016 I set some of my team an impromptu challenge, to test their team working and problem solving skills. The results were largely positive, if not earth-shatteringly so, but good enough for me to try again with a different set of ‘volunteers’ to see if the group dynamic played as significant a part as I thought, and to allow others in the team a chance to show what they can do.

The Notion

As before this exercise was simply to explore the problem solving aspect of the Application Support role, and to promote teamwork, camaraderie, ‘thinking outside the box’ and all that lovely stuff that we ask of our employees but seem to provide little practical guidance on.

This time the volunteers were all male, and this wasn’t by design. This was not an experiment to test the efficacy of the male brain at problem solving. It would be interesting however to compare both groups, and the gender issue cannot be ignored completely. Would a group of guys prove more effective than a group of gals? And if so, what would that actually prove? I’m certain that science has performed much more accurate and intricate experiments in this area so it wouldn’t be a primary consideration.

The ‘Experiment’

In terms of the experiment, little had changed.

As before, I sent out an email asking for brave volunteers, without any mention of what I needed them for. In this case I suspect that most remembered the last experiment and so knew what I was asking, though this in itself didn’t really matter.

The volunteers this time were: Simon Mawer, Ricky Barnard, Adam O’Gorman, Jack O’Shea and Husnaid Javaid.

So more volunteers, and all of them men. And what was interesting about this group is that three of them occupied senior roles within the team, so it would be interesting to see how this played out in a non-work situation.

Once again, the theatre would be The Sheffield Escape Game, and this time the candidates would be tackling the 'Alcatraz' Room, supposedly the hardest. Would the boys be able to work effectively to overcome the challenges set before them, or would they return to the office with their heads hung low, defeated?

Outcomes

As before, as I didn’t take part in the exercise, I am only able offer the feedback of the participants as evidence of how well this venture worked, and here’s what they had to say:

Simon

“Our mission was to escape from jail in 3 parts.

Escape from our cells.

Escape from the block.

Escape from the control room.

Each person was assigned a role:

Adam – timekeeper (5 minutes added).

Ricky – Code keeper (provided with code)

Simon – See into future (allowed to view some visual clues)

Husnaid – Commincations (walkie talkie to ask 1 question)

Jack – Lightkeeper (torch)

The exercise consisted of 3 phases – escape from 3 cells, escape from the block, escape from a control room. From the very beginning the team worked well together.

Where it was necessary for individuals to fulfil specific roles this was done naturally without the need for discussion. If anything needed doing the person available at that point would do it, If they were having trouble or exhausted all their ideas they would move on and suggest someone else try.

There were no egos in the team and no-one attempting to dictate how the team should proceed. All ideas were listened to and I believe everyone played an equal part in the exercise.

There were occasions where a systematic approach may have benefitted us, Instead of working out codes and different individuals (including me) trying them on locks in a random order it may have helped us get the right code in the right lock if this was done in a more ordered fashion.

We also struggled on the final phase. We should have worked better as a team decided to use the walkie talkie to ask for a clue. Ultimately we did this – we just left it a bit too late.

On an individual basis I believe that I worked well as part of the team. The same goes for everyone else. That may sound clichéd but I honestly thought it showed how good everyone is on an individual basis and integrating those individual skills into a team mentality. If there would have been one person there trying to play the leader I think this would have been counter-productive. Everyone just got on with what needed doing.

The role I had as being the person who had access to visual clues before-hand I may not have done so great at - I should have remembered more of what was on the pictures.

From a team building point of view this was good. We were lucky that everyone was pulling in the same direction and everyone seemed to respect each other’s opinions and ideas.

Very few of the problems are likely to be encountered outside of that kind of environment. And lateral thinking is something which is probably intuitive rather than learnt in an exercise like that. So in terms of aiding my current role it may not have been a massive benefit. But I think it was useful in giving bringing the team together and perhaps giving an appreciation of each-others problem solving skills and ability to pull together without any friction.”

Jack

“I thought I worked well when spotting different clues and assisting team members in fulfilling different tasks. Especially the issue regarding finding the numbers for the different code locks. I think we could have improved our planning and looking into each room before taking actions. We did panic and started looking at new clues that were just given to us, without reading the instructions/clues fully.

We worked in a team well, and communicated well when in the first stage of the problem. In the final room I think we got confused by the instructions given and there was slight miscommunication regarding the clues and at one time each person went off and did their own thing. I also think we came to a good quick decision on the question asked and made sure among the group that we all agreed on the answer.

At times we looked at a lot of clues at once and then came to incorrect decisions, especially in the final room. We sometimes rushed into an assumption and did not look at the entire situation for other possible causes, which could have been remedied by reading the clues fully.

I found it very good for team bonding and finding out different strengths of the team. This was a very good problem solving task. Lots of different problems being thrown at us at once which made us have to judge different issues at once.

I would recommend this task. I think it helped with communication among the team members and also helped problem solve a range of different data that was given to us. It was good to see how different people react to the pressure and how I can improve my own techniques for this. I experienced how working as a team can involve looking into a range of different possibilities at once which I think could help in the future. Also I learnt to be more vocal with ideas as these can be tried and tested, and if they do not come to a positive result we can build on them to find a good result.”

Ricky

“I felt I was good to try and group everyone together to look into the problem at hand. At times everyone was wheeling away trying their own things, so was worth at times grouping together to solve some of the problems with the things we had found. I also tried to make sure everyone knew about anything I found. I was the code holder as well, so I used that in the first stage of the escape.

I tried to listen as much as I spoke.

I thought we worked well. Everybody at some stage solved something so everybody’s investigation into the tasks was used so I’d say it was a good team effort, even though we didn’t get out!

In fairness we were on track but the writing on the back of the cards that showed the pass code to get out couldn’t be seen in the dark, when it should have been visible. This is when the staff had to help us. If anything we struggled to get out of the first room after getting out of the cells but Adam managed to solve that puzzle in the end. That’s the only thing we really struggled on.

It was a good laugh, we worked together well. I think everybody enjoyed it. Would have been nice to know what we were doing first though! I’m not sure how it reflects on how to problem solve in our work environment. The only thing I’d say is that it helped with understanding what an issue is and using everybody’s ideas on how to resolve it, sometimes that is required in support. It felt more like a team building exercise than anything else.

I don’t believe I’ve learnt any more than I already knew about my team colleagues. I believe all of them can problem solve. I feel we get on as well as expected which made the task enjoyable. Could imagine it might be less so with people in the room you dislike”

Husnaid

“I think I communicated well with each person in the team, listening to ideas and suggestions. I also didn’t drop the cup of water when passing to Ricky and was good at hunting for clues. I feel that I could have improved on figuring out which info/prop was of use, as some were placed to misdirect!

I think that the team was good at communicating with each other, we let everyone have a say and try their ideas and displayed good teamwork overall.

The exercise was good, as it allowed everyone to be assigned a role, making communication really important. It also made us think outside the box, making use of the right props to hunt for the clues. Solving these sorts of puzzles is exactly what we do in Support, information is provided by the customer and it’s important to use this to help identify the issue, and to resolve it.

I learned that I like working in a team, getting involved in team talks and that I really don’t like prison!”

Adam

“As part of a team building & problem solving exercise we went to Escape Rooms in Sheffield. The aim was to escape from Alcatraz in 50 minutes by solving a series of clues/problems. I felt we worked well as a team. No one person put themselves in charge of the decision making process for the whole exercise which allowed people to contribute a lot of ideas to try and resolve the various tasks we were presented with. There were times where everyone needed to be involved to achieve a result e.g. breaking out of our different cells required two keys for all the locks. In order to get the final key we had to transport water in a beaker from one side of the room to the other. No one person was able to do this by themselves so everyone had to play their part.

As a process I feel it was interesting to see how a team reacts to overcoming a variety of different problems within a limited time frame. In that sense I feel the exercise was a success as it relates to the type of work that we carry out on a day to day basis. From an individual perspective I found the process useful as I have a tendency to step back from group discussions/decision making processes at work. However, in that type of environment I enjoyed putting my opinion across and playing an active role in trying to achieve team goals.

I believe that on a day to day basis Support works really well as a team so this type of exercise is useful in highlighting that ability.”

Above: like the ladies, the gents didn’t manage to escape either, but they do look at home in this picture…

Review of Findings

It was refreshing to receive some very honest feedback about the session, and to see people thinking about how this relates to their role.

Once again, the main theme that featured in almost all the feedback was communication. This is unsurprising as it’s a key element of the challenge and it’s good to see that all involved were able to single this out as key to success.

There’s little evidence that seniority played a part here, or made any significant difference to the activity, with all members of the team participating. And this was even mentioned by some of the participants. It’s good to see that the playing field can be levelled in this way to get to the root of an issue, as ‘pulling rank’ can get in the way of the resolution of issues in the office, and knowing that this openness, and willingness to work together without any ‘ego’ exists is reassuring.

As before, it seems that this encouraged some thoughts on team working, which can never be a bad thing as it shows that people are very self-aware and are drawing parallels between the task and their role. And, as before, it seems that some amount of fun was had, and this is very important!

Conclusions

The main conclusion to be drawn here is that I am recruiting people that can’t escape from small rooms. Neither group were particularly successful in this regard but I this not much of a concern for me. The focus of these exercises has always been to encourage a way of thinking.

The findings fit with the expectations I had based on the last exercise. I did not anticipation huge differences between the two groups, and was already aware of the limitations of the exercise.

It’s apparent from the feedback that all involved had fun, learned some things about themselves, reflected on what made the team work as well as what prevented it from working as well as it might. Above all though, it made people think about how they approach problems, and there seems to have been plenty of insight gained into how this links to the role of application support consultants.

As before, this venture was about people. It concerned itself with stimulating, challenging and encouraging them. As an experiment, I feel it’s been good, though I have to say that longer term, I probably wouldn’t try to make this part of any official programme or curriculum. It has inspired me though to consider how else I can motivate and challenge my team, and I shall continue to try and ‘think outside the box’ and conjure up more creative ways to help develop the team.