If there’s one thing that every team can expect to encounter, regardless of their purpose or goal, it’s unexpected problems. There’s a reason that “creative problem solving skills” has become one of the more common resume phrases. People who can come up with creative ways to solve problems are in demand. But what about helping your team learn how to develop strategies for creative problem solving?

If you’ve looked around here at TourGuide Games, then you probably already know that our collaborative storytelling experiences are excellent methods of culture building, and that our sessions can not only raise morale within your team, but they also lower stress and almost always end up with everyone laughing. While these are all things that we strive for and are very proud of, there’s another aspect of our shared storytelling experiences.

Present a Problem

The games that we use in our collaborative storytelling sessions can often be described as storytelling rpgs or improv storytelling games. While those are accurate labels, it may be more useful to describe our experiences as creative problem solving stories. When you and your team sit down with one of our highly skilled TourGuides, you are strapping in for something that will inspire ideas and new ways of thinking. Through the story that our TourGuide weaves together with your team, you’ll find that a highly creative approach and innovative thinking will often be the key to success.

This is a bare bones explanation of how these kinds of storytelling sessions work: our TourGuide presents a problem and your team has to overcome it, sometimes collectively, sometimes independently, and then the next problem arises. Does that sound familiar? Like, maybe that’s exactly what work, or even life, feels like sometimes? Well then congratulations, our sessions are giving you a practice run at becoming a source of creativity and finding creative solutions to problems.

Create a Solution

Something that’s proven true over and over again is that non-traditional approaches tend to be successful. We want to provide your team with practice and experience with exploring well off of the beaten path of typical solutions. We want them to be adept at looking around them, finding the potentially obscure resources, and deploying them in new and unique ways to overcome obstacles.

Let’s look at something that happened in one of our collaborative storytelling sessions as an example. In one of our more popular offerings, Honey Heist, the participants in the experience take on the roles of bears to pull off a daring heist of, well, honey. These bears all have different roles and abilities, as well as hats (the hats are VERY important), and those are the things that the participants can call upon to create solutions to the problems that are thrown their way.

In one session, our bears were tasked with heisting a very rare, and very well guarded, honey from an idyllic mountain retreat. When a series of failed actions resulted in half the team being stuck in a water feature, the participants put their heads together and came up with a truly brilliant, and frankly hilarious, plan: one of the bears had a special skill that said they were the best at swimming. This bear then put on a one bear synchronized swimming routine so good that the befuddled guards could do little else but pull out their phones and record it. This gave the half of the team not stuck in a fountain an opening to catch the guards unaware, while the two in the fountain who weren’t putting on a show snatched the honey and created an epic escape route through a giant window. Their TourGuide was laughing along with them the entire time they were surfing a pane of glass down a mountain meadow to freedom.

This entire plan came about because the team was able to look beyond the normal options and come up with a creative solution that utilized their available resources and even turned set-backs into a springboard for later, greater successes. It is this kind of thinking that companies need if they are wanting to embrace the success that flows from non-traditional, creative thinking.

If you’d like to see what other skills and experiences we can help your team enjoy, check out the various sessions we offer, or drop us a line to see what we can set up for you. Our amazing TourGuides are ready to give your team an incredible, unforgettable journey.