Last week, we helped the sales team of Telnyx end their annual sales meeting with a bang! Telnyx helps its client companies combine their voice, text, video meetings, and other communication platforms into a single entity to make communication more efficient. In their normal duties, they take a mess of different communication platforms and make the system more effective. So, we thought it would be good fun to use this communication challenge as an analogy for their team activity as well.
The Build-A-Bike ® activity ended the multi-day annual sales meeting with a lot of interaction and energy. The group was told ahead of time that they would be “building bikes for charity.” However, they just assumed the activity would require a little manual labor on their part. They had no idea the activity would be fun! In fact, I think they were a little taken back when we didn’t just hand out the bike boxes to the group.
(What fun would that be?)
They Had Fun Giving Back to Their Austin Community!
The group was really competitive. So, we started with an activity that we called a contest. We even gave the winning team a “headstart” on the activity. All of the sudden, the cautiousness evaporated. Each team wanted to win! However, about 15 minutes after the team received the headstart, they realized the secret. The activity wasn’t a competition at all. Each team had to work with all the other teams to succeed. The activity wasn’t about building a single bike the fastest. Instead, the goal wasn’t completed until every bike was perfect!
We used the activity as a metaphor for what they do as a company. Telnyx’s clients hire them to improve communication. If the phone system is separate from the text platform miscommunication can occur. If both of those systems are separate from social media and the video conferencing system, additional challenges occur. When Telnyx combines these systems into a single platform, communication improves. Efficiency also improves.
The group soon realized that there weren’t eight separate teams in the room. They were a single team focusing on a single goal. Once they realized this, lightbulbs came on all over the room. They finished at lightning speed from that point on.
Thanks so much to Telnyx and the Boys & Girls Club in Austin for helping us build a stronger team and a strong community!