On the 10th anniversary birthday of the CES Department of Continental Engineering Services, part of German automotive giant, Continental, held a global “Beat the Box” team building activity in 9 countries across 11 cities with 1188 participants organised by members of the Catalyst Global team building network. In Beat the Box, each team is presented with a locked aluminum box inside which are a series of locked cases. Teams must open the box and then each case, in turn, by solving a series of puzzles and mysteries. The ultimate goal, however, is for the group to collectively solve a mystery and stop the ticking clock!
For Continental the activity was like a scene from a James Bond movie. Managing Director of Continental Engineering Services GmbH opened the activity inspiring all participants to take part in the activity. He explained their mission. The Homepage of the CES Department had been hacked by James Bond’s arch enemy. The goal was for participants to recover the homepage of the CES Department which had been hacked by James Bond’s ach enemy supervillain, Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Blofield, was threatening to erase the whole company in 90 minutes! To avert this disaster the group must crack the code and recover the home page.
1188 participants in 11 locations across the world - Mexico, Shanghai, Bangalore, Vesprem, Timosoara, Frankfurt, Nürnberg, Regensburg, Ingolstadt, Toulouse, and Auburn Hills - set to work to crack the code. Each team started by working on solving puzzles to open their boxes. In time, however, they soon realized that in their race against the clock, they must collaborate with other teams in order to solve the mystery. Through intelligent creative thinking, team work and collaboration, the code was cracked and the home page recovered!
Participants from Continental said they had great fun and learnt to collaborate with people in other cities that they had never worked with before. It is commonplace in working environments where departments are decentralized across many workplaces for teams to work in silos and often neglect sharing best practice. Management felt that Beat the Box was a fantastic way of utilizing an experiential learning tool to highlight this important issue. It provided a great opportunity for internationally operating departments to “play” together for a common goal. This shared experience will be reflected on long into the future.
Beat the Box, is the brain child of Markus Ruese and Rene Wittek, the founders of Spielgstelter the Catalyst Global partners in Germany. Beat the Box is distributed worldwide, exclusively through the Catalyst Global Network
