How high can we go?
Marshmallows, prison breaks, the Positive Economist and ‘The Wonder Years’…not the typical things you may associate with a Company Away Day. While potentially important events, these sorts of days are often not the most inspiring occasions. Well not here at Morrows’ HQ. This year we pushed the boundaries for our latest team planning and strategizing day held in The Doyen (The King’s Head in old money) and it certainly more than delivered.
After sharing some important company updates, we set colleagues the Morrows’ Marshmallow Challenge to test their ambition, teamwork and planning. They were tested to see how high they could go in building a freestanding structure only armed with 20 strands of spaghetti, a metre of masking tape, a metre of string, a pair of scissors, a marshmallow and an all-important Morrows’ flag to top it all off. With only 18 minutes on the clock, it is fair to say that the results were mixed and the atmosphere competitive to say the least!
Some towers rose high into the sky only to fall when the heavier than expected marshmallow was plonked on top. A lesson in overreaching, starting in the wrong place or underestimating things perhaps? We did end up with a clear winner which stood the test of time and the weight of both the marshmallow and Morrows’ flag.
We then had the pleasure of having the fabulous Susan Hayes Culleton, The Positive Economist and experienced businesswoman, mentor, event host and speaker join us to lead some very important workshops about our company growth plans and ambitions. Having worked closely with Susan on a range of events over many years, we knew she would get the best out of us. With the help of some clever interactive tools Susan has a great knack of extracting the best from people and is equally adept at summing up and prioritizing thoughts. Her inputs and those she gathered from the teams will now play an important part in our new strategy development.
We finished the morning formalities with a walk down memory lane. Recognising that while we all work at Morrows, we are all individuals who share a common goal, we had our own ‘Wonder Years’ slideshow. Featuring images of all 34 bright eyed and innocent (in some cases not so innocent) looking colleagues in their formative years, we invited them to share stories of what they wanted to be in later life. Perhaps not surprisingly very few if any said they wanted to be communications experts/designers/video producers or event managers! What do kids know anyway.
Fed and watered at The Doyen we then moved venue to test our competitive streak once more as we all took on the challenges at the nearby Prion Island. Working in teams we took on a range of physical, mental and skills challenges across a host of rooms, testing everyone’s abilities and talents to gain points. While it has to be said some of the rooms messed with our brains a little too much, everyone had a great time and even learned something about themselves and their colleagues. We ended up with ‘Slay Queens’ coming out on top closely followed by ‘Crystal Amazeballs’ and then the ‘MC Slammers’. As you can see even choosing team names is a competition in here.
An action-packed day which delivered some useful insights and ideas, helped bring people together, and which was a lot of fun.
