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.
