Coalescing many different ideas, colours and techniques to create a true masterpiece is akin to building a good team. Diverse behavioural and thinking styles must be understood and well-timed to enable team-based approaches to planning and execution.
In the spirit of this analogy, our Picture Perfect team challenge activity uses a tailored format that mirrors real world complexities and puts teams to the test.
It’s not about technical painting skill, but rather team behaviours, cross-functional communication and collaboration.
We recently had a great opportunity in Melbourne to work with a top team from Sony who engaged immediately with the challenge and devised some of the best approaches to overcoming it that we have ever seen.
Teams initially work independently, and if certain pitfalls are not avoided, teams can stovepipe and fail to share crucial information for the total project to be a success. In this case teams quickly identified the need to share, collaborate and create efficient systems to break the challenge down and execute the optimal solution.
With a willingness to share and communicate a good team can ensure that the “bigger picture” objective remains in sight, and keeps in mind that our individual team canvasses are but one component of the total masterpiece. How well this is kept in mind during the task will determine the quality of the end result.
Just like any real world project (but in a time compressed environment), positive leadership and teaming behaviours are essential to work through initial information overload and put the pieces together in this activity.
Far from being just a simplistic team building activity, this is a sophisticated business game that uses painting as a medium for cross-functional behavior to be explored.
This Sony team are certainly one of those that can see the bigger picture, and now be justifiable proud of a unique masterpiece that can take pride of place on their office wall.
