How Not to Sol­ve a Puz­zle, and Still Win as a Team

This post is about team­work.
And also about try­ing to start a fire in the midd­le of the night with not­hing but a fire stick.

Last weekend, the Plas­mi­on team es­caped to a moun­tain ca­bin, and what hap­pen­ed the­re had very litt­le to do with dead­lines – at least not work-re­la­ted ones – and a lot to do with con­nec­tion.

Have you ever tried ma­king fire in the midd­le of the night with not­hing but a fire stick and ma­te­ri­als gathe­red from a com­ple­te­ly sno­wed-in fo­rest? If not, con­sider yours­elf lu­cky 😉 But let’s start at the be­gin­ning.

To make the weekend a real team ef­fort (and not the he­roic strugg­le of one poor or­ga­ni­zing soul), we split into working groups. Each group was re­spon­si­ble for one key part of the weekend: food & sup­pli­es, car­pools, en­ter­tain­ment, clea­ning, and over­all or­ga­niza­ti­on. By the end of the weekend, one could con­fi­dent­ly say: we work pret­ty fo­cu­sed, sharp, and ex­tre­me­ly smooth­ly when ever­yo­ne tru­ly owns their task.

And then the­re was the en­ter­tain­ment group. They made sure this weekend would have a las­ting im­pact.

Their mas­ter plan: a com­ple­te­ly black jig­saw puz­zle with 736 pie­ces, to be sol­ved in 24 hours. The re­ward? One month of free sweets for ever­yo­ne. The catch? If we fai­led, we’d have to make a fire using only a fire stick and wood coll­ec­ted from the fo­rest.

As you may guess: we did not make it.

So the­re we were: cold, ti­red, slight­ly frus­tra­ted, and stan­ding out­side in the midd­le of the night. As in­di­vi­du­als, most of us would have fro­zen. But as a team, we sur­vi­ved, be­cau­se at least th­ree peo­p­le ma­na­ged to get a small fire go­ing. Ho­nest­ly, what bet­ter ta­kea­way could you ask for from a team weekend?

Lucki­ly, the weekend wasn’t all puz­zle-in­du­ced stress (be­cau­se, ho­nest­ly, that part was more stressful than fun 😉). We took a gon­do­la up the moun­tain and en­joy­ed a fast, slight­ly sca­ry twen­ty-mi­nu­te ride back down on sled­ges (no in­ju­ries – im­portant de­tail). We hik­ed th­rough a spark­ly white win­ter land­scape and even stumb­led upon a dog sled race. And th­roug­hout the weekend, we were spoi­led with de­li­cious me­als pre­pared by the food group.

Thank you, Plas­mi­on team, for all the ef­fort, care, and en­er­gy you put into this weekend. It brought us clo­ser tog­e­ther and re­min­ded us all that team­work doesn’t show in mee­tings or slide decks. It shows when your hands are cold, the fire won’t start, and you still fi­gu­re it out tog­e­ther.

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