Food for Thought: Iron Chef Event-Style

Tue, Apr 28 2015 08:51 | Anecdotes, Best Practices, Case Studies, Event on a Budget, Team Activities | Permalink

We hear it time and again from clients: "We've slashed the budget, how can you help?"

It seems that budgets are continually dropping, and creative solutions are ever-needed to do more with less.

In one instance we came up with an innovative way to help with the client's food budget. Now, we aren't typically involved in things like food and lodging and such, but in this case we integrated our solution into the event design; making it part of an ongoing competition.

Wilson's Leather had been meeting for two days when they came to their evening event: a ranch cookout. Catering was expensive, dining out before the event was a logistical nightmare, and there just didn't seem to be any good, original options for the next-to-last night.

The attendees had spent the general sessions and breakouts divided into teams; competing against each other in a series of challenges, activities, and awarded participation interspersed throughout the days.

We saw a great opportunity to both be mindful of the food budget and contribute to the ongoing competition.

Thus we staged:

Wilsons' Iron Chef.

We purchased a broad range of food supplies, rented grills, and had the teams cook their own dinners...for points.

We hired supervisory culinary students to both give teams a short course on food safety AND to supervise and intervene (in case of a safety violation or imminent inedibility).

Teams were given a set amount of time to divide up responsibilities, which included:
Menu planning
Prepping/assisting
Head cook
Auxiliary cook
Marketing materials
Presentation/pitch

The VP of Sales was designated judge--complete with Iron Chef hat and persona.

As the teams completed cooking, they brought a judge's dish up for tasting. They presented it in a creative way and received a score. After all dishes were scored, dinner proceeded as a potluck (each of the teams were responsible for producing both a tasting dish and a certain amount of all components of their meal).

The scores for Iron Chef were then added to their teams' running totals.

The teams left well-fed and with the pride of accomplishment. It was both fun AND tasty.

Live Spark

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Beyond Bike-Building: Making Team Building Better

Fri, Jun 8 2012 03:07 | Audience Engagement, Best Practices, Team Activities, Teambuilding, Worst Practices | Permalink

It seems like, these days, everyone is doing a charity bike building team-building (or team-bonding, depending on how much vernacular you want to employ) component in their events. Heck, the recent scandalous G.S.A. event featured a $75,000 bike-building portion (which worked out to be $3k a bike...those must have been some very nice bikes).

Watching trends in team building is interesting to event professionals. Multi-day meetings have traditionally reserved an afternoon "outing" so the audience could have some non-event "reward" time. This could be a golf tournament, a spa afternoon, some deep-sea fishing...whatever. This was well-intentioned; the audiences were faced with hours of intense workshops or general session content, and in a meeting generally devoid of one-to-one content, interaction and networking (that didn't revolve around the bar) was needed.

However, this type of team building was seen as lacking a true business purpose, and as belts tightened it became more and more frowned upon. Meeting planners were faced with a dilemma: give the audience a chance to relieve stress and network--but with a business purpose. Team Building was born.

And then came ropes courses, build-a-bikes, scavenger hunts... you get the idea. It reflects an unfortunate team building trend--that it's something that is plugged into a meeting as an a-la carte element instead of something consistent with the whole. Not that the charity purpose is bad (it is absolutely not, and could definitely be part of a company's ongoing mission) it's just that people are not utilizing the full potential of team building.

A well-designed meeting has team building, sure, but it uses it in a different way:

Team building is integrated with the theme and content of the event. Is a major component of your event a new product? Sales training? The goals for the next year? You can--and should--use these as jumping-off points in designing team building activities. Use team building to build upon skills. That's not saying it can't be a bit lighter on the learning and heavier on the fun, but integrating team building with content produces a powerful punch.

Team building is not a 3-hour single event. Team building integrated throughout the event (i.e. putting the audience on teams and having multiple team challenges throughout the meeting days) can be much stronger both in team building and in overall audience engagement. You can still have the three-hour team building block, but it can be supplemented by other team building activities. Your whole event has the potential to build up your team--grab and use that potential.

Team building has meaning. You don't want your audience to walk away going, "That was fun, but so what?" or worse, "That was pointless, I wonder how much that cost?" Team building is an amazing opportunity to give your audience members a gift; of creative opportunity, of peer learning, etc. It should be relevant to them. The new wave of team building tends to be slightly more inclusive than the divisive "golf outing" wave, but hardly any of the messaging lasts beyond the event. I've never spoken to anyone who reminisces fondly with colleagues: do you remember that bike-building we did?

To be clear, we think that team building can have an impact and be a necessary, positive thing. It's a chance to bring people together, to forge bonds, to strengthen the organization through interpersonal relationships. But it shouldn't be a throw-away.

Live Spark

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Case Study: Custom Game Production "A Fistful of Dollars"

Mon, Oct 24 2011 01:00 | Audience Response Systems, Case Studies, Game Shows, Team Activities | Permalink

Company: Toyota (Financial Division)

Event: Sales Team Reward Breakfast

Custom Audience-Response Game: A Fistful of Dollars – Three different game plays

Graphics, Programming, Scripting and Game-play: Designed by Live Spark

Situation: Toyota wanted a way to engage and entertain their top sales reps while at the same time testing their company knowledge and giving them the opportunity to earn some big rewards with that knowledge. This was a great teambuilding event in the morning; it gave the audience a chance to compete on teams and individually and allowed them important, low-stress face-time with top executives.

Toyota had already used a game show the previous two years—both times utilizing either our sister company--LearningWare's--software (Gameshow Pro) or custom software programmed for their event by Live Spark. They wanted something to fit their Clint Eastwood “Western” theme and that would add variety from previous years’ play.

Solution: A custom Fistful of Dollars game show with three completely unique varieties of game play. The audience still played along using audience-response keypads, but there were a few variations:

Target Practice: In this game play variation, we asked extremely difficult multiple choice questions. The audience members, consequently, had three opportunities to get a question right.

The question was be asked the first time, and the audience saw what percentage of their team responded correctly. They did not know whether they—individually—answered correctly. They then got a chance to answer again—and they could either change their answer or stick with it. Again, the percentage of correct answers was be shown. They got one final chance to answer the question, and only their third response counted as correct or incorrect.

Do You Feel Lucky Punk?: (Wager Round) In this game variation, we utilized a team leader—someone with guts, daring, and willingness to take the glory or the fall.

Everyone on the team was shown a question. Before the audience votes, the team leader decided whether he/she thinks that 75% of the team will know the answer or not. If he/she is confident, then they’ll bet high. If not, they’ll bet low.

No guts, no glory. The team leader wrote down or verbally submitted their wager. The question then played out as a typical audience-response question.

Six-Shooter: (Speed Round/Final Round) Teams were asked a group of 6 questions—rapid-fire-style. They were NOT shown the team results of their answers until after the questions are done, at which point the team scores rose (and failed to rise as much as they should) dramatically, determining the final winner.

Results: The game show was entertaining, challenging, tough, competitive and held a level of novelty—being different than the year before. The audience was engaged with each other and management for the entire morning.

Live Spark

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Case Study: Amazing Team Building for Onyx

Mon, Oct 24 2011 01:37 | Audience Response Systems, Best Practices, Brain-based Learning, Case Studies, Team Activities, Teambuilding | Permalink

Company: Onyx Pharmaceuticals

Event: 2011 "Living Onyx" National Sales Team Meeting

Produced:

• An innovative game for introducing new executives

• An audience-response knowledge-check game

• An amazing teambuilding event that truly had an impact

Team: Live Spark Internal; Dan Yaman, Kristina Gooding, Missy Covington

Situation Overview: Onyx had three needs:

1. They knew they wanted to use an audience-response game during their event to engage the audience and review material. We had produced a similar game for them the year before with great results.

2. They wanted an engaging, entertaining way to introduce their new executives that both allowed them to give a bit of their vision for the company and also show off some of their personalities.

3. They wanted a team building event that kept people engaged, utilized the location of Marina Del Rey, CA, and that wasn't just another bike building or scavenger hunt.

Their audience was a young-but-experienced sales team who tended to have a rather cynical view of activities designed to elicit their participation--whether in-session or in a team building setting. Our challenge was to come up with creative solutions that were not only unique (never seen before) but that also had a deeper, relevant message.

Solution 1: Audience Response Game

In the pharmaceutical industry, it is critically important that everyone learn and retain certain compliance, pharmaceutical and policy information. You can test everyone to see what they know and don't know--or you can play an interactive, competitive audience response game that both illuminates the gaps and rewards participants for active listening.

We custom-designed a game utilizing Onyx's theme graphics, brand and color scheme to create an engaging audience-response activity within the event.

Each audience member had a keypad--so everyone got to play along. People were put onto teams by region, and the competition was fierce. As the percentage of the team that answered correctly was revealed and the scores rose (or failed to rise), the room erupted into cheering (or groans of disappointment).

Solution 1 Result: Because the audience knew they were going to be engaging in a competitive game activity around the presentation content, we saw an increase in focus during the presentation and VERY high rates of information retention.

Solution 2: Getting to Know You Game Show

There were three brand-new executives being introduced at this event. Onyx wanted a way to break the ice--to stimulate conversation in the networking portions of the event--and to reveal some of the executives' vision for the company.

We designed a customized game show that was part "To Tell the Truth", part "Dating Game" and all competitive, interactive fun. We sent out a questionnaire to the executives beforehand to elicit information on their hobbies, personal heroes, backgrounds, families, etc. The game had multiple rounds:

The first executive was brought onstage and the audience was asked a question about that executive. (I.e. On his day off, you're most likely to find [John Doe]: A. On a golf course, B. Surfing in the ocean, C. Drag racing, or D. Playing competitive backgammon). The audience (in their team designations) voted on which answer they felt was correct (using audience-response keypads). The answer was revealed, and the executive in question used that as a jumping-off point to elaborate and go into a 3-minute pitch on his vision. After he was done, the team tallies were revealed and the next executive was brought up to repeat game play.

After the vision statement round, a series of questions were asked in which the audience had to assign certain characteristics, hobbies, goals, etc. to particular executives on stage. (I.e. Which of the following says that his personal hero is Sir Richard Branson? A. Steve, B. Joe, C. John.) The audience voted and the team tallies were compiled for a fast-paced round of about 10 questions.

For the final round, the audience made a bet on a physical challenge: Which executive was most likely to putt a golf ball closest to the hole? The audience considered and entered in their bets. The bets were revealed--who did the audience think would be most successful? The executives then tried for a putt. Once the closest to the goal was determined, points were awarded to the audience with the correct bet.

Solution 2 Result: The audience got a much better handle on the personalities of their new leadership, were able to have a little fun and establish some early rapport with the new executives, and were able to participate in a way that is usually not available when vision statements are being given.

The audience had very favorable feedback on the activity:

"Creative and engaging introduction to the team..."
"Great way to know more about where we're heading!"

"Nice way to 'get to know' some of our new team members..."

Solution 3: Persuade Me Team Building Challenge

We wanted a team building activity that went so far beyond bar-side networking, build-a-boat or scavenger hunt activities. This experienced group had been-there-done-that and didn't seem to think that team building could be an impactful experience in any way, shape or form. They also wanted to figure out some way to utilize their sales skills: to mimic the rapport-building that they, as reps, had to exhibit on a day-to-day basis with doctors in their field.

Then came the Persuade Me challenge; a team building event unlike any other. It was an activity that challenged their sales skills; their ability to quickly establish rapport, uncover information and maintain a positive relationship—all with a stranger.

Logistics: Teams were given three flip-cameras each and bussed over to Venice Beach, CA, where they had 45 minutes to complete their activity. They were then bussed back and prepared for their presentation.

Objective: They must persuade a stranger to share their human interest story with them. Their challenge is to interview a stranger and capture the interview on video; creating a moment of trust to come up with a deep interaction that is engaging, heartfelt and emotional.

This human interest moment can be a wide variety of things—at the discretion of the team--but should be something that one wouldn’t normally share with a stranger.

The Teams Delivered:

· ONE clip—up to and no more than 90 seconds.

· Given that each team had three cameras/crews to shoot, they had an abundance of clips to select from. Part of the challenge was figuring out a strategy to locate the most compelling clip.

The final clip was the best representation of the team’s interaction. It could be:

Humorous Heartfelt Moving Deeply Personal, Etc.

· Each team delivered a final presentation (4 minutes) including the clip. They also described their experience, for instance:

- Setting up the video clip (What are we about to see/hear? What’s the story? Why is the clip compelling? Etc.)

- Describing the experience of your interaction

- Describing their strategy

- Illuminating challenges and insights (What did or didn’t they expect? What made them successful?)

- Describing what the team got out of this interaction

- Etc.

The teams were then scored on both their clips and their presentation by a panel of judges.

Solution 3 Result: Teams produced some amazing, truly moving clips. They were able to quickly get into rapport with strangers on Venice Beach and capture wonderful human moments of humor, sadness, forgiveness, regret, optimism, etc.

The audience said, of the activity:

"Taught me a lesson about judging people...also about collaboration amongst co-workers."

"Liked it...it was different and surprising!"

"Loved the teambuilding!! It was surprising. Really helped us use our skill sets to get people to open up! Key in sales!"

"Team building was fun and collaborative. Infused meaning into my work and added humility to my belief system."

"...an eye-opening experience"

"Loved it!"

"Outside the box!"

"Leveraged our strengths as sales people. Didn't know what to think at first, but it was fun!"

"Loved it! Helped us to focus on rapport--which I think we forget sometimes..."

And many more similar comments. It was definitely a hit.

Live Spark

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Millennials and Team Competition

Thu, Jul 2 2009 02:32 | Event Tips, Millennials, Team Activities | Permalink

Often times in the strategic re-design of an event, we'll break the audience out into teams. This creates accountability during the meeting, engages participants, and allows for smaller breakouts and peer interaction.

Team interaction transcends generational boundaries, but we're finding that it's particularly good for the Millennial generation. (And if you want to start a hot debate in your workplace, start talking Millennial--those born after 1982--entering the workforce.)

But wait! We've spoken before about how Millennials are not the only generational group that needs to be engaged. Generations shouldn't matter--everyone needs to interact!

This is still true, but recent research has discovered something particularly unique to Millennials:

The love to collaborate.

Positive or negative, collaboration is the lifeblood of the Millennial generation. They grew up working in teams and getting constant feedback from teachers, parents and peers.

So at your next event, instead of sitting everyone down theater-style, put them in rounds and get them to start collaborating. Not only is it good interaction for everyone, but the Millennials in particular will thank you for it.

Live Spark

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