communication game!
10.05.09
In an attempt to keep ourselves busy as we await for our bridge permissions to come through from the prefecture (which will be soon!!) the Bungy Japan team have been working on our communication skills through a couple of interesting and fun team building games.
Working in an environment with native speakers of 3 different languages (English, Japanese and Russian) really presents many interesting and exciting challenges to effective communication. It requires constant work to ensure that everyone on the team understands not only what people are saying but what they are trying to say - which is a skill in itself even if you speak the same language!!
The first game that we played last Thursday was very effective in highlighting not only the difficulties of communicating effectively on a project under a deadline but also underlined the way that 3 teams of people can look at solving a problem from very different angles… The concept of the game was easy - in half an hour Charles is going to drop all three teams eggs from the 2nd story of the office on to the concrete and using just some paper, scissors, tape, straws, plastic forks and a few other items lying around the office each team of two (1 English speaker and 1 Japanese Speaker) had to design and develop a way to make sure that the egg did not break… with bonus points for style and design.
Each team came up with a completely different angle on how to save the egg and had a lot of fun trying - the game was a great success but unfortunately none of the 3 eggs survived impact.
But we have decided that this will definitely become a regular annual event on the Bungy Japan calendar from now on!