What would you do if you were placed in a room with just paper, pen and a pair of scissors and told to build a carnival game from scratch?
That was the scenario that 120 employees of NCS found themselves faced with at a recent event organised by the ISS Service Innovation Practice team. What they discovered is that you get a whole lot of fun, a bunch of creative ideas and team bonding. They also learnt that they can achieve a lot more than they think they could when they put their mind to a task.
This exercise was part of an annual team building exercise designed by ISS for two business units within NCS: The NCS Portal City and Catalyst Group.
NCS is an IT and communications engineering solutions provider with presence in 11 countries. The two business units have been running the event since 2006.
The units had engaged the ISS Service Innovation Practice team to run the team building event for their staff. Their requirement: The event had to be fun and allow the participants to pick up basic innovation skills.
Adapting from its Extreme Innovator workshop, the ISS Service Innovation Practice team got the group to work on a challenging assignment: Staff were divided into eight teams and each team had to come up with a game idea for a carnival stall and operate it. The teams were put through a five-stage process of team formation, gathering resources, generating ideas and building and running their stall – essentially, the innovation cycle from beginning to end.
Held late last year, the workshop was a big hit with the participants.
Said Application Consultant Andy Yao, “I enjoyed it so much. It was interesting and fun. It was beneficial to relationship development between colleagues as well as self development.”
Ng See Sing, Head, Portal City & Catalyst Group, Business Application Services agreed. “The learning experience was both intellectually enriching and fun. It brought out the creativity in everyone and got us playing, learning and working as a team.”
Summed up Wilson Chua, Associate Director for Business Application Services at Catalyst “We invited ISS to help us on this because a few of us attended the Extreme Innovator workshop and liked the concept and approach. Thanks to ISS for taking up the challenge to customise it for team building. It achieved our objective of the team having fun too.”
Laughter is heard often at the NCS’ team building event conducted by the ISS Service Innovation Practice team.
What do you know! The group finds brainstorming to be a whole lot of fun.
Game on! And let the bonding begin.
ISS has launched a new Digital Innovation & Design course. Led by an accomplished team of innovators, strategists and scholars in ISS, the three-day course will introduce participants comprehensively to the innovation process, including facets such as design thinking, co-creation and idea generation. The first class will begin 25 March 2013. Please visit our website for more information. Or contact Wong Swee Lee at 6516 2020 or email her at sweelee@nus.edu.sg.