What can I say!? This activity was a massive success. I was slightly worried as I ran it for a group quite a bit larger than it suggests in the brief. I had 8 people in each team and there were 4 teams. In my situation it worked really well and helped us think about how to structure communication between teams as undoubtedly the large number of people placed a strain on what was discussed and how the conversations took place during the sections in which teams were brought back together.

Trainers' Library offer a website that your participants can enter attempts of the safe code into. I had originally intended to use this approach and even purchased a pay as you go broadband stick to assist with this – however, when I got to the venue it was a broadband black spot and I couldn’t connect. In the end this worked in my favour as participants had to write their attempts on a flip chart and it meant they could refer to their previous guesses collectively to help them along.

This is a well thought through activity. It does require a bit of extra kit, but it’s worth the investment.

I use the exercise with a leadership team to discuss the impact of virtual teams. Each team represented a geography. I shorten the times given in the exercise to increase the pressure on the teams. Great fun and learning, resulting in key takeways for every leader, based on goals, process and indivdual behaviours. Highly recommeded and five stars.

I ran this activity as part of a Team Bonding programme with 14 corporate bankers of mixed cultural background. Overall it was a success: energetic, thanks to the need to go to meeting points, usefully frustrating and revealing. Main learning points: information sharing, attention to detail, communication, listening to each other, time management. Duration including debriefing: 2.5 hours with a mix of native and non-native speakers of English.

This particular team was very quick to spot the wrongly delivered letters in their sets – and one of the CEOs immediately blamed me for having made a mistake, which provided a great learning moment!

The greatest challenge was structuring the information sharing. This group tried to find out their names mainly by phone calls: “Are you Alice?” which didn’t help much, and they did not use a flipchart for some structured elimination until their 3rd meeting. Also they did not divide tasks within the teams: everybody went for the codes. When I mentioned this later on, they replied that the brief just said: find the codes. Another learning point.

I did need to help them correct the birth order of the daughters. The entire group got stuck on the paragraph that says Alice is the youngest if only by 4 minutes. Because Esther is mentioned in the next sentence as “so small when she was born”, everyone logically deduces that she and Alice are the twins. I must admit that I agree with the deduction, and I find this paragraph slightly contrived as a red herring. Without help I don’t think they would have solved the problem.

Warnings for the trainer: This activity is challenging for everyone. Take time to familiarise yourself with the material. I created 4 flipchart sheets for the debriefing, on which I indicated, per team, the various vital clues.

Also think carefully about logistics. With 4 different locations it is physically impossible for 1 trainer to monitor all teams, but you do need this for a valuable debriefing. I took an assistant. Also if the teams are unclear on when they will meet up, it can quickly turn chaotic and although that is in itself useful, you still want to at least appear to be in control as a trainer. The brief does not say whether all teams should attend the 5-min meetings. I decided to impose this, with at least 1 delegate from each team. Also I specified that a meeting could not begin until at least 1 delegate per team was present.

TIP: As a prop / souvenir I created the Elixir of Excellent Leadership using small bottles of flood flavouring in alluring colours (raspberry, banana, lemon). I soaked off the label and replaced it with one showing the name of the elixir, date and occasion, participant’s name, our logo and the client’s logo. I placed them in a wooden box and opened this at the end of the debriefing.

I ran the session last week with a group of very technical and clever Offshore Engineering guys working in the oil and gas industry. It was the final exercise after 3 days of training in a variety of interpersonal skills such as time management, communication, influencing, conflict management and assertiveness. We also did the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and this exercise enabled people to work brilliantly to type! The majority of people are quite detail conscious but also introverted. This meant that they spent the first 45 minutes in their groups trying to work out the codes. It took another 15 minutes for them to have their first meeting. (I deliberately left them as I needed them to demonstrate the point that whilst some thinking is good you also need to do some action at some point!) They struggled with the inter group communication due to a few technical issues with the hotel phones but they still weren’t properly prepared or structured for the meeting which turned into a bit of a free for all with lots of conversations on the side and some misleading information given by people who didn’t have all the facts. One group lost the plot completely and said they weren’t going to share – great for some conflict management practice!! They also realised that having meetings earlier would have made a huge difference – a good learning point for their working environment.

So overall it worked very well – they didn’t achieve the task as people made assumptions or gave random responses which threw the other team members – but this really helped in discussing what happens back in the workplace.

Thank you so much for another cracking activity – the amount of information is staggering and you’ve done a fantastic job – there’s no way I could have put this together without hours and hours of work so thank you!