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September 2008
Dr. Clue Teambuilding Newsletter, Volume VI, Issue 2
The Dr. Clue Newsletter is sent only to subscribers. We do not share names with anyone else. To receive your free subscription or to unsubscribe, email to drclue@drclue.com Dr. Clue: Solving the Puzzles of Teamwork
 Welcome again to the Dr. Clue Teambuilding Newsletter! And here we are again in September, looking straight ahead at autumn: the start of the school year, the end of baseball season and the beginning of football season, and an important election just around the corner. At Dr. Clue, we've been splitting our time between enjoying the excellent treasure hunt weather, developing exciting new programs (see "Dr. Clue News", below), visiting schools (see "Dr. Clue Goes To School"), and hiring new personnel. (Big welcomes to Kelsea Shanley, our new office manager, and new facilitators Todd Cowdery and Caroline Bolas.) In this quarter's newsletter, look for an icebreaker that will help your team assess its skills, an article sure to Boggle your mind, a puzzle that will take you places, and another visit from our fine, featherless Dr. Clue mascot. Enjoy! Dave Blum
A few years back (see the May 2003 Dr. Clue Teambuilding newsletter), I shared one of my favorite icebreakers: the Continuum Exercise. The purpose of the exercise is to assess the intellectual and personality make-up of your team while simultaneously breaking the ice and raising the group's energy level. I've had a few new insights arise for me over the years, so I thought I'd share with you the updated version.
Set Up: None Process:Start by having people line up in a column, with the first person in line fairly close to you and the last person in line at least 20 feet back. The distances are not that important, nor is the position in line where people are initially standing; the key is that people are standing in line, facing you, and that they have enough room to move around. Make sure to choose a spatial limit for the back boundary - perhaps a wall or a marker. Instruct people that they are now standing in a very flexible continuum, with one extreme being the front of the line (near the instructor) and the other extreme the designated back boundary. You will now be asking them some questions about their skills, abilities and knowledge; their job is to move to the place in the continuum that best expresses their answer to each question. The questions can cover a variety of topics, including skills, knowledge, and personality style. For example, a skill question might be: "If you consider yourself highly proficient at Internet research, move to the front of the line. If not, move to the back of the line." A knowledge question might be: "If you see yourself as an expert at movie trivia, move to the front of the line; if not, move to the back." And a personality-style question might be, "If you imagine yourself an introvert (defined as someone who recharges their energy during their quiet time, alone) move to the front of the line; if you think you're an extrovert (defined as someone who recharges by being around people, socializing) move to the end of the line." For all questions, if people feel they are somewhere in between the two extremes, allow them to move to the exact place in line that best expresses their position along the continuum of the question. Continue the exercise with a variety of questions, both work and non-work related, such as:
Discussion Questions: What might make you hesitant about moving away from a middle position? What are the personal implications of declaring an extreme position, either positive or negative? How were you surprised by other people's self-assessments? Were people surprised at your own self-assessments? What might this suggest about the way you present yourself in the office or at home? The Point: This exercise is a very fun, active way to have groups notice their diverse body of knowledge, abilities and personality. Often, with new skills unearthed, teams can better delegate tasks and assignments. Participants tend to be surprised at the hidden talents of their office mates. Moreover, they frequently discover that their colleagues' self-definitions and self-perceptions are different from our expectations (e.g., a coworker with a seemingly outgoing personality describes herself as an introvert). From a management perspective, you might pay attention how much people are moving (or not moving) around during the activity. A team with very little movement might signify too much homogeneity or redundancy. Or it might point to a group of people afraid to stand up and be noticed. The Continuum Exercise is also a helpful springboard for discussing the need for team diversity and the concomitant necessity in diverse groups for superior communication. Click here to find our backlog of terrific icebreakers.
Dr. Clue is the premier designer of corporate teambuilding treasure hunts, worldwide. We begin with the cool museum or neighborhood of your choice, convenient to your office or conference locale. We then bring the area alive by scouting out its hidden treasures; its statues, plaques, murals, and monuments. To reach each secret location, you and your team will need to solve our challenging, Da Vinci Code-like set of puzzles, codes and ciphers. Along the trail, we'll coach you on the steps successful business teams take in working towards high-performance levels.
 My wife, Jen, and I are "game" players, and I mean that in the best sense of the word. We love doing Merl Reagle's crossword puzzle together every Sunday. We thrive on Pictionary™, Trivial Pursuit™ and Fluxx™. And having friends over for dinner and games is easily our favorite social occasion. But for sheer pleasure, the game that stands alone for Jen and I, as both recreation AND "teambuilding activity", is a modest little set of letter cubes called Boggle™. Created in 1972 by Alan Turoff and trademarked by Parker Brothers and Hasbro, Boggle™ is deceptively simple in concept. You start by shaking a tray of sixteen cubical dice, with a letter printed on each of their six sides. The dice fall into a four-by-four tray grid. Once the pieces are settled, you start a three-minute timer and players begin searching for words. Words may only be constructed from sequential letters, adjacent to each other in any direction - horizontally, vertically and diagonally. The words may twist all over the place as long as the letters are sequentially adjacent. By rule, words must be a minimum of three letters (although from early on, Jen and I instituted a 4-letter minimum to increase the challenge). Each player records the words they see, on their own sheet of paper. When the timer stops, the players take turns reading off the words that they found. If a word is duplicated on another player's list, the word is removed from all lists. When the lists have been compared and duplicated words eliminated, the remaining words are assigned a score based on word length. For example, 3- and 4-letter words are worth one point; 5-letter words are worth two points; 6-letter words are worth three points, and so on. The real scoring jackpot is for words of 8 letters or more, worth a whopping 11 points. Traditionally, the winner is the player with the highest total score. Boggle™ appeals to my wife and me for many reasons: the fast-paced action, the word play, the flexing of our esoteric vocabularies, etc. But like many games with "winners" and "losers", the potential, while playing Boggle™, for animosity and hurt feelings is extremely high. After all, the "winner" of a game like this, by definition, has had a successful experience; the "loser" has been unsuccessful. As you might imagine, no one likes to feel like a failure. And human nature being what it is, it's only a hop, skip and jump before things start getting personal. "I am the winner and you are the loser" can so easily morph into "I am a WINNER and you, my dear, are a LOSER." Not the best language for building a team, let alone a marriage! Clearly Jen and I needed to come up with a different approach, one that would NOT have us pulling for the other person to fail, not having us resent our "opponent's" best words and highest scores. So what to do? The solution was so simple, and yet it changed everything. Rather than focusing on who had scored the highest, we decided to put our two scores together and play as a team. For example, if I had just scored 25 points for my words and my wife had scored 20, our combined points would earn us a total of 45 for the round. In subsequent rounds, we would then attempt to top our collective score of 45. Imagine the difference in mindset. Before, Jen and I had rooted for the other person to fail, to have a bad round, to miss all the longer words that we were coveting on our own list. Now, we were delighted at our partner's success. That 8-letter word on Jen's list meant 11 points for our team! If I had a poor round, I was confident that my partner would spot the words I had missed, achieve a high score, and salvage the round for us. Moreover, as time went by, we started to set benchmarks for ourselves: all-time highs to shoot for. (Our current "Dave & Jen world's record" is a monumental 110 points). So how might this cooperative approach apply to teambuilding in the workplace? What a change it would make if organizations re-evaluated the way they structure compensation. By removing the competitive atmosphere and awarding bonuses for the attainment of collective goals, might we not create a more convivial team environment in our offices, one in which people applaud (rather than resent) the success of high-performers, and lift others up when they're falling behind? That would be quite a change, indeed, in the corporate "arena". A Mind-Boggling™ one, in fact.
What does a teambuilding treasure hunt look, feel and sound like?
Last month's Puzzle Challenge was submitted by 10-year-old Ben Siegel of San Francisco, CA. Ben's clue led to the location of his father's auto mechanic shop: San Francisco Auto Repair Center, 611 Florida St. Congratulations to our Honor Roll of puzzle solvers:--Jan Frizzell --Travis Burr --Holly Palma For this month's puzzle, solve the following clue and then follow where it leads you: "OTERLEOEAELCTEIAHRZNAFOPITTHBTOFRATW
NHDCUHMPGCIKHFNLOIOTLOTRNATEOTMOPRTO ...of the puzzle." As always, we'll put the names of all clue solvers in a hat and draw three for a choice of Dr. Clue-brand items (hats, shirts and mouse pads)! Email your answers to drclue@drclue.com to take part in the drawing. Our three winners will appear in next issue's Dr. Clue Honor Roll.
 Last month, many of you took part in our contest to name the Dr. Clue rubber chicken mascot. Although ALL your submissions were fun, inspired, and frequently hilarious, in the end there could only be one winner, namely: *****ELLIOT NEST, CHIEF INSPECTOR*****Congratulations to Michael Perez, whose winning submission earned him his choice of Dr. Clue-brand swag (t-shirts, magic 8-balls, baseball caps, etc.!!!) For this edition of the Dr. Clue newsletter, we invite you to caption this photo of our friendly inspector, Elliot, as he lifts off over Manhattan. Send all entries to: Once we have your entries, we'll submit them out to you, by email, for a big vote. Entries are due by September 25th! Click here to see some sample treasure hunt clues.
Wondering how a typical treasure hunt CLUE works? We've got TWO sample clues up on our website!
Dr. Clue offers over 100 ready-to-go treasure hunt locations, across the country and around the world. Since our last newsletter, we've added yet another fantastic venue: * New York: Flatiron District/Gramercy Park--historic buildings, two great parks, the birthplace of Teddy Roosevelt, and much more. As always, if you keep requesting the hunt locations, we'll keep creating them! Some hunt highlights from the last few months include: -- Northeast: Acambis along the Boston Freedom Trail; MetLife in New York's Central Park; Marywood University in New York's Greenwich Village; Queens College orientation, Queens College, NY; Baruch College orientation, Baruch College, NY --South: Duracell and the US Treasury Department in Charleston, SC; Blue Cross/Blue Shield at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, NC; The Cannon School in Downtown Charlotte, NC --Midwest: Fatwallet.com in the Chicago Loop --West: Autodesk and Bayer in Fisherman's Wharf, SF; Lockheed Martin at Stanford University Campus, Palo Alto; IPC in Las Vegas, NV **And in mid-fall, look for two BRAND NEW Dr. Clue programs: *The Dr. Clue Virtual Treasure Hunt: Designed for virtual teams that meet mostly in cyberspace, our newest treasure hunt program takes place entirely online. Decipher clues and puzzles with your virtual teammates, brainstorm together using email, IM, and chat rooms, solve problems, make decisions, leverage team skills and knowledge -- all without leaving your own offices. Whether your teams are stationed around the state or across the globe, this is the fun, creative, cost-effective teambuilding program you've been waiting for, offering specific communication tools for teams that work together virtually. *Team Efficiency Workshop: Designed as a follow-up to your Dr. Clue treasure hunt, our latest teambuilding creation also works as a stand-alone workshop. PUZZLES (but of course, we are Dr. CLUE after all!), games, discussion and activities You'll practice critical skills for boosting your team's efficiency, time management and decision-making abilities. And best of all, in this world of $4-per-gallon gasoline, there's NO travel involved! We'll come directly to your office! If you've enjoyed working with us in the past, why not spend a few more hours of fun and learning with Dr. Clue? Give us a call for more details: 1-888-88-DRCLUE.
Our clients, from Oracle to Yahoo, Price Waterhouse Coopers, Apple, and Wells Fargo all agree that Dr. Clue is cutting-edge teambuilding with a twist. 
ImageWondering where to find the next generation of treasure hunt writers? How about Jodi Wagner's 8th grade class in San Francisco's Tenderloin District! On August 27th, Dr. Clue's President, Dave Blum, took 15 of Ms. Wagner's De Marillac Academy students on their first-ever treasure hunt, in San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf. The students had a ball as they practiced problem-solving, time management, decision-making, and teambuilding. The next day, Dave visited Ms. Wagner's class at their school in the Tenderloin and instructed the students on the basics of treasure hunt construction -- puzzle writing, clues, codes, trivia, location scouting, etc. -- a full "clue clinic". The students' mission: to scout 30 clue locations (2 clues per person) in their community and then, in one week, to write the same number of puzzle-based clues. Mission accomplished! Their clues were fantastic (and everyone turned in their homework on time!). Said Ms. Wagner: Thank you so much for all of the time and energy you put into working with my students! This experience was so incredibly valuable, not only for the teambuilding but also the development of their critical thinking skills! I really appreciate it! I look forward to seeing how this influences them in the future!" Interested in having Dr. Clue visit your children's class? Let us know at drclue@drclue.com.To learn more about the De Marillac academy, click here.
Please let us know how we can improve this newsletter!! We welcome puzzles, icebreakers, real-life teambuilding success stories -- anything you'd like to contribute. Dr. Clue's E-BOOK, "Solving the Puzzles of Teamwork," is ready for download...and it's free! A compilation of past newsletter articles, it offers great essays about teamwork, roles & relationships, communication, motivation, leadership, and much more. Download it right to your screen by clicking here and choosing the e-book option. Enjoy! And remember: If you liked this newsletter, please forward it to a friend or a colleague. Information is meant to be shared! Watch for the next edition of the Dr. Clue Teambuilding Newsletter in late summer
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Dr. Clue Treasure Hunts
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