Game on! This was the theme of a large natural food company’s annual meeting in Beaver Creek. While the meeting rooms were decked out with board games and large white paper with markers and crayons galore, when CBST Adventures arrived on the scene, we decided to take things outside for some fresh air and fun.
Keeping in the ‘gaming’ spirit we kicked off our event with a ‘Hoppy Horses Relay.’ Never heard of it? We hadn’t either before this event. This is a new activity that CBST Adventures developed where teams raced on inflatable mini-horses and handed off a ‘Happy the Cow’ stuff animal. Sounds pretty ridiculous, right? It was, but make no mistake, the participating teams loved it! You can imagine how funny it would be watching your co-workers trying to move an inflatable horse back and forth as quickly as they can. And that’s our goal – to create these type of memorable experiences, as we find that people have the greatest fun and enjoy themselves the most when silliness and laughter is involved.
Next, we shuttled the team up to the Beaver Creek Village where they took part of our famous GPS course and took some ‘Eye Spy’ photos. With this game, teams used GPS units, maps and cameras to navigate the area in search of hidden clues, play trivia and take numerous photo ops (hence, the ‘Eye Spy’). Each task on the course is weighted based on difficulty so teams have to devise a plan of attack based on their vision for success and the dynamics of their group. A bonus challenge for this particularly activity was what we at CBST Adventures call ‘Happy Hunting!’ in which the teams searched for Happy the Cow (one of our guides in a cow onesie), who was walking around the Beaver Creek village. Once they found Happy, the teams had to take a photo as proof they caught him. Once again, a pretty funny visual, but one that required some real problem solving and critical thinking, nonetheless.
The teambuilding event ended with fun being had all around as everyone stuck around afterwards for happy hour at the 8100 Bar at the base of the mountain. This is an ideal event in our book, where teams have a ton of fun through laughter, goofiness, and being playful; yet, at the same time, teams are put into challenging situations and dynamics where they have to collaborate, problem solve, and think strategically about how to be successful. In our opinion, there are a lot parallels in such activities with the workplace. While we assume there’s not too many outdoor guides running around in a cow onesie at your office, we’d like to believe that the teamwork and communication skills needed to find Happy are similar to running a great campaign, having a successful product launch, or hitting a major milestone at your company.
If you think any of the above sounds interesting, we’d love to share more about this event and others. Please reach out to us at our website or by calling 970-668-8900.
