Team building might not be very high on a startup’s to-do list with all the demands that come with growing a new company – getting customers, fundraising, and hiring employees, just to name a few. Yet, more and more startups and emerging companies are realizing the value in investing in their employees and teams through team building activities. This was the case for the fast-growing startup, Birdeye, an online user-review tracking platform. Sometimes companies come to us because they have a particular challenge they want to address – trust, teamwork, communication. With Birdeye, it was simply that they are growing so quickly that they want to make sure their employees felt valued, cared about, and connected.
Birdeye has offices in multiple locations including California, Arizona, and Colorado, which meant many members of their startup team had not met yet. So we brought together approximately 40 people and ran a laid back but very fun team build event. As we were in the heart of sprawling downtown Denver, we thought it would be fun to do our Urban Orienteering Team Tracking event. This is a GPS -based activity where teams compete against each other with a GPS-enabled tablet and they must capture ‘Eye Spy’ photos while also play Cherry Picking (finding hidden objects) and Disc Golf games around the city. It’s a super fun time as it leverages technology through GPS and tablets while also encouraging teams to use problem solving, communication, and creative thinking to try to win the event.
To encourage the teams to get to know one another, we kicked off at the Wynkoop Brewery for some drinks and billiard games and we later learned that teams visited bars during the game (not necessarily part of the game but we fully support it in the spirit of team building!). At the end of the day, folks had a blast and the best part is nothing was forced on them. Yes, we put the group through a team build, but as you can tell, it was fairly casual and very open to teams having fun with it, whether through stopping at bars along the way or simply taking additional time to connect with their colleagues.
This type event really reflects our view on teambuilding in that you don’t have to have an overly structured and disciplined event for people to interact, connect, and grow as a team. While we certainly can run events as structured or loose as our clients like, our goal is that people walk away from a memorable experience that was fun, engaging, and transformative. If this sounds like something your company might be interested in, give us a shout! We’d love to learn more about your company and how we can create a lasting experience for your teams. Feel free to reach out to us here.
