When a last-minute change left TIME Investments needing to completely rethink a company event for 120 people, Sharky + George had just 36 hours to come up with an alternative. Our answer was to turn central London into one enormous game…
Sometimes the best things happen when the original plan goes wrong.
TIME Investments had organised a company event when a late jump in numbers meant the venue they had booked was suddenly no longer going to work.
With little more than 36 hours to go, they needed another idea – this time for 120 colleagues. They came to Sharky + George…
This happened to be an exceptionally busy period for our events teams, so the challenge fell entirely to our HQ crew.
In the space of a day and a half, they had to create the format, devise the challenges, work out the logistics, assemble the kit, prepare team uniforms and get everything ready to run.
The solution was the RealTIME Adventure Race: an afternoon-long team challenge that turned the streets, squares, parks and pubs around TIME’s offices at 80 Strand into a giant gameboard.
With only 36 hours to make it happen, elaborate transport plans or complicated venue logistics were out. So, in true ingenious S+G style, the constraint became part of the idea: the whole event would happen on foot, with central London itself providing the setting.
Teams would leave TIME’s offices and fan out across the surrounding streets, parks and landmarks, completing challenges as they went.
Some challenges took place at fixed locations around central London, with a Sharky + George judge waiting to put each team through its paces.
Elsewhere, teams could pick off a long list of roaming photo and video challenges in whatever order they liked, including:
Then there was The Fugitive. Somewhere in central London, a mysterious character was hiding in plain sight. Every so often their whereabouts would appear on WhatsApp Live Location, sending teams racing across the game area to track them down, unmask them and get the all-important selfie.
At one point, a particularly enthusiastic pursuit tore straight through the serene surroundings of a landscape art class in St James’s Park.
The challenges became increasingly inventive as the afternoon went on. One sent teams into a pub, where they had to impress a stranger with a party trick.
The result was people doing the worm in front of a packed bar, full-scale Daffy Duck impersonations and one participant attempting to demonstrate that they knew every capital city in the world — all in the hope of charming their way to a few extra points.
Elsewhere, teams attempted to establish a new sporting record by rolling Maltesers down tape measures*.
The race finished with one final opportunity to score points in Victoria Embankment Gardens before everyone returned to TIME’s offices for the results.
The judges counted the scores, the best photos and videos were assembled into a slideshow and the afternoon ended with team and individual awards.
On the surface, the RealTIME Adventure Race involved Maltesers, pub tricks, London landmarks and chasing a fugitive through a park. Underneath all that silliness, though, something useful was happening.
For a few hours, everyone had stepped into a different Space. Normal workplace routines and hierarchies gave way to a set of playful rules and a completely new shared mission.
The challenges created Connection because because everyone had a part to play. Teams had to negotiate, improvise, encourage one another and discover who was unexpectedly brilliant at persuading strangers, lateral thinking, performance or competitive confectionery rolling.
And the combination of a ticking clock, constant challenges and freedom to choose what to tackle next created Flow. People became absorbed in the game and forgot they were taking part in a corporate event at all.
That is when play starts doing its more serious work: people think differently and see different sides of their colleagues. They laugh together, compete together and accumulate shared stories at extraordinary speed.
In other words: Ingenuity, Belonging and Vitality.
And in this instance, it all began because a venue was suddenly too small.
Nigel Ashfield, Founder and Managing Director of TIME Investments, summed up what happened:
“When we found ourselves needing to completely rethink a 120-person company event with little more than 36 hours’ notice, the Sharky + George team were extraordinary.
What could easily have become a disappointing day for our people was transformed into one of the best company events we’ve ever held.
The challenge was brilliantly designed, professionally delivered and struck exactly the right balance of fun, teamwork and friendly competition. More importantly, they created an atmosphere that brought colleagues together in a way we could never have hoped for.”
He also praised the team’s calmness under pressure, describing them as “calm and unflappable” throughout.
Which perhaps gets to the other side of the story.
The RealTIME Adventure Race was spontaneous, unpredictable and gloriously silly for the people taking part. Making it feel that way with 120 people and 36 hours’ notice required something rather different behind the scenes: a lot of planning and a lot of experience, plus a team that knows how to make the extraordinary feel effortless.
Sometimes Plan B turns out to be much more fun than Plan A.
Read more about the serious benefits of play in our free white paper The Transformational Power of Play.
*The winning distance was 5 metres 41 centimetres. Which, as far as we’re concerned, now makes it the benchmark to beat…
