Denver Team Building | CBST Adventures

The art of striving – and how a team building event can help rediscover it

The best of the best in any field all have one thing in common: focus. While we worry about results, the distinguished focus on their effort. At our team-building events in Denver, we facilitate the art of striving and shifting the focus from results to efforts. In the office, we can’t appreciate the growth that comes from making every effort. We’re blinded by the results, whether good or bad. It is only in hindsight that we are able to see the steps that create success. When we look back we recognize the long days, the team-building events we attended, and the keynote speeches we watched; we see and appreciate our efforts. When we strive, we push our limits higher. We become capable of more.

Ultramarathon runner and former Navy Seal David Goggins learned this at the crux of his life. Goggins was on a series of quits. He had quit USAF Pararescue (PJ) school in the middle of training, he quit eating healthy, he quit working out, and in a few short months he had ballooned up to 300 pounds. He was depressed with his low-paying job and lonely life. His dreams of becoming a Navy Seal seemed impossible. Goggins decided one day to turn it all around. That day he set out on a 5-mile run. He got a quarter mile in and turned around. He walked home, sat on his couch and cried himself to sleep. It would not be that easy. So Goggins got rid of any expectations of results and focused on what he could control, his discipline to strive. Goggins went on to graduate Army Ranger School as a “Top Honor Man” and is the only man in history to complete Navy SEAL training, Army Ranger School, and USAF Tactical Air Control School. Then he became a competitive ultra-distance athlete, with 10 first place trophies and 21 podium finishes, and he beat the World Pull-Up Record with a total of 4,030 pull-ups in 17 hours. We can admire his results, but he knows it’s his mastery of the art of striving that got him these outcomes.

So how can we cultivate this focus in the workplace, where it is always a race? CBST Adventures' team-building events in Denver create the space to achieve this. We remove all the stress of the office and allow teams and individuals to focus on efforts. During these team-building events, many teams achieve hindsight on past projects for the first time. They draw parallels to the efforts that were blocked from sight by the numbers. For the first time, they are able to see what truly went right or wrong. By removing the risk of failure, we remove the impediments to seeing clearly. Let us at CBST Adventures facilitate this experience for you. At our team-building events, teams learn that they are capable of more and they practice how to get there together.

World Leader in Cloud-Based Software Celebrates Another Successful Year.

This autumn we had the good fortune to host Workday, the leader in Cloud Based Human Capital Management, and help them to celebrate another great year. What is most exciting about hosting Workday is that they put a large focus on company culture and developing a sense of fun for their employees and customers.

Since the inception of Workday, Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri have focused on building the best company culture and they exemplify that in their Core Values. This team, from the Boulder office, certainly exemplified those values in everything they did.

We hope you can feel the camaraderie of the team and understand what makes Workday the leader in company culture. If you’d like to instill that kind of passion in your culture, please do reach out to us and we’d love to help you energize a world-class culture of success.

Amway and Equipo Vision Have ‘Most Fun Ever’ Team Building with CBST Adventures

Global Health, Beauty, and Cleaning Products Corporation, Amway, had its US Spanish speaking division and Spanish speaking adventure company Equipo Vision work with CBST Adventures for an incredibly fun-filled team building event with over 200 employees in the beautiful mountain setting of Vail, Colorado.

As you can tell from the video, the energy, excitement, and team-bonding were on full display at this event with many participants saying it was the ‘most fun ever’ experienced by their company for a team building event.

This was CBST Adventure’s first non-native language speaking event and one of the largest groups we’ve ever worked with. As you can tell from the video, the experience was pretty enjoyable for the Spanish speaking Amway team.

CBST Adventures’ CEO Offers Employee Engagement Strategies in Colorado Meetings and Events Magazine

CBST Adventures’ CEO Jay Irwin recently wrote an article for Colorado Meetings and Events magazine. Jay’s article is titled ‘3 Keys to Better Engaging Your Employees’ and Jay discusses some unique strategies to help address low engagement rates faced by employers today.

The digital version of Colorado Meetings and Events magazine can be found HERE. Jay’s article is on page 22 of the magazine.

Boulder Technology Company Team Builds in the City

You may think that CBST Adventures only offers team building and leadership development activities in the majestic outdoors of the Rocky Mountains. Truth be told, many of our activities can be in downtown or urban areas as well. A few weeks ago, we worked with Cognizant, a global business and technology services company. Cognizant has an office in Boulder, Colorado and they asked if our team could come to their location. We said, ‘No problem!’

Given Cognizant’s location in downtown Boulder, we decided to make use of the always enjoyable Pearl Street Mall in the heart of downtown Boulder for our activity. Enter our GPS Quest activity. For this experience, we broke the group into four teams and each team was given a GPS to complete a city-based scavenger hunt. Don’t worry – we provided clues and incorporated elements of known games such as Scrabble into this experience. The teams loved the activity and had an absolute blast!

One thing we noticed was even though the Cognizant group was right in their backyard in Boulder, they still were able to totally immerse themselves in the team building activity. If you’ve ever attended a CBST Adventures’ event, you know a hallmark of our activities are teams having FUN, lots of laughs, and generally everyone just enjoying themselves. Cognizant checked all three boxes as well, and interestingly enough, the more effort the teams put into the activities, the more fun they had. That’s because our challenges are specifically designed to be silly and goofy, for the most part. So if teams commit themselves to the activities, we guarantee they’ll have a good time!

If you’d like to learn more about our urban/city team building activities, feel free to reach out to us! We’d be happy to come to your office location to help create a special event.

CBST Adventures Stands in Solidarity with Hurricane Harvey Victims

In his latest video blog, CBST Adventures’ CEO Jay Irwin talks about his decision to ‘stand in solidarity’ with the victims with Hurricane Harvey by making small contributions.

Below is a link to the JJ Watt Foundation fund for Hurricane Harvey victims and a list of needs for victims from one of Jay’s friends living in Houston.

https://www.youcaring.com/victimsofhurricaneharvey-915053

‘Easiest is to make a cash contribution. As folks have donated, we are going out and acquiring what is needed. We then drive down immediately and put it in the hands of the people that need it. Fans, diapers. Garbage bags, personal hygiene products, first aid kits, batteries, reciprocating saws, work Gloves, food, etc.

Second way, some friends are collecting donations of the items needed and trucking them down. Just got off the phone with one in Salt Lake City. They collecting donations and filling their trucks and planning to come down on Monday or Tuesday. This is helpful because we are having shortages of a lot of the items locally.

A third idea, is gift cards. A lot of people have been sending gift cards from $10 and up. Many people did not have insurance and are devastated. You would be shocked at the impact of a $10 gift card from somebody they don’t know.

Another idea, contribute to JJ Watts Foundation. He is putting the money he is receiving to great work.’

Global Food Corporation and CBST Adventures Donate $13K to Youth Outdoor Program

We’re excited to announce that at our Community Camper team build event in Keystone, Colorado, Cargil, a global food provider corporation, donated $13,000 worth of outdoor camping gear to Keystone Science School, an outdoor-driven science program for youth!

This is an incredible act of generosity and social impact that we feel fortunate to have helped make happen with Cargil. To learn more about the event and Cargil’s contribution, check out the video here!

ARTICLE SHARE: Harvard Business School Discusses How Changing Culture Requires a Movement

In this latest edition of CBST Adventures’ article share, we are sharing a recent article from the Harvard Business School discussing culture change. The article follows a case study of Dr. Reddy’s, a 33-year-old global pharmaceutical company.

Dr. Reddy’s CEO, G.V. Prasad, shares his first-hand account of how he brought about culture change in his company through partnering with innovation consultancy IDEO. Through this experience, Dr. Reddy’s learned to change the culture by creating an organic movement rooted in behavior and action and initiated by company executives and leaders.

This article is an absolutely fascinating read and has numerous implications for leadership development and team building. We couldn’t help but share it with the CBST Adventures community and we hope you enjoy it!

https://hbr.org/2017/06/changing-company-culture-requires-a-movement-not-a-mandate?utm_campaign=hbr&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

This San Francisco Marketing Agency Just Wants to ‘Have Fun’ at Their Team Build

Fun – an oft forgotten idea in business. Believe or not, but the concept of ‘fun’ holds a lot of value and implications for business. While many executives and business leaders are focused on improving the productivity and efficiency of their teams and staff, employees having fun can actually be one of the most powerful forces in business today.

In may not come as a surprise that ‘fun’ stimulates creativity; however, it may come as a surprise that such fun and creativity can help employees better problem solve and develop creative solutions. Fun also is a great stress reliever for employees, and in turn, helps them better enjoy their work and also be less likely to leave a company. And wouldn’t you know it? Fun can benefit productivity as well. Where some may see fun coming at the expense of productivity, fun can actually boost productivity as people are found to produce higher volumes of work and a higher quality of work when they are enjoying their job. So as you can see, the idea of fun is really important in today’s work environment. As a result, we encourage and help companies we work with to have fun, whether making fun just a part of a team build activity or making fun the main objective for an entire team build activity.

For Metric Theory, a data driven marketing company based out of San Francisco, having fun was the top priority for their company event in Winter Park, Colorado. We were more than happy to oblige and decided to put the group of 80 people through our super enjoyable Amazing Race experience. This activity is inspired by the famous TV show, as we break people into teams and each team has to complete several different challenges in competition with each other.

On this day’s event, teams first participated in a Tumble Bubble kickoff, where individuals climbed into large inflatable bubbles and raced against each other. Next, teams were sent off with GPS devices to complete GPS-based challenges that involved using a GPS with provided clues to find objects in the shortest amount of time. This activity requires a lot of problem-solving and team communication. Next, teams completed a maze competition where each team had two members work through a maze, in which they had to find pictures and playing cards in a certain amount of time. Once individuals returned from the maze, teams had to make up a goofy sentence from the cards and pictures that they had pulled out of the maze. This activity really got teams going as they had a lot of fun with creativity required for this challenge.

Even though the day’s focus was ‘fun,’ another word seemed to be the theme for the day: communication. Our activities require teams to interact and collaborate with each in new and different ways. As a result, Metric Theory found their group challenged and stretched when it came to communicating in teams (and even openly admitted to this during the event). Yet, throughout the experience, we could see their communication skills improving from one activity to the next. And that’s what really matters – growth. What’s was pretty cool is Metric Theory was mainly concerned with having fun for the day and ended up growing as a team in the process. It’s these types of experiences that we aspire to create every time we work with a company.

So whether you’re interested in just having some fun and maybe growing along the way or want a more structured team building or leadership development experience, reach out to us. We’d love to learn more about your company’s needs.

CBST Adventures Featured in Boulder’s Daily Camera Newspaper

CBST Adventures and CEO Jay Irwin were recently featured in an article in the Daily Camera newspaper.

The article focuses on an interview with Jay and discusses how CBST Adventures is changing the landscape of leadership development and team building for companies in the Rocky Mountain region and beyond.

Be sure to check out the Daily Camera article here!