A hugely successful and ‘cool’ tech company gets acquired by a monstrously successful, and *ahem* ‘less cool’ company. The shareholders are stoked. The media’s blowing up! But the integration of 2 strong cultures can be pretty bumpy. Who you gonna call? The Go Game, of course!
This is exactly the scenario we encountered with 2 newly-integrated companies in the fall of 2013. It wasn’t exactly Thunderdome yet, but there were real concerns about how the cultures were going to mesh. So before it became too entrenched, we met with the client and devised a great company-wide Go Game experience that would delight and unify these 2 über-talented teams.
Our hilarious gamerunners, Jade and Justin, took the mic and broke the teams up on the spot, using our scientific ‘randomizer’ so that everyone can see that the teams were spontaneously created. This was an important tone-setter, and the skepticism-level of both sides immediately was replaced with a competitive fervor that would soon bond these newly minted teams in pure cast iron!
By mixing the teams in this way, and ensuring that they did a lot of ‘head-to-head’ challenges with other teams, everyone got to interact with one another. As frenzied ‘compliment-duels’, text messaging speed rounds, arm-wrestling began, cries of ‘Waaaaaaaaahhhooooooo!!!’ peeled through the stately pines of the industrial park. It was working!
After a few hours of quality Go Gaming, everyone gathered at the theatre to watch the creative photo and video missions. One of the most popular and certainly the most entertaining creative challenge had teams act out their deepest fears about their culture changing. The language of the mission was clearly humorous, and teams took this challenge right where it needed to go. Videos of gulag-like cube farms were out-done by videos of tragically hip ‘kids’ riding their scooters to meetings. The comic value of these creative works blew the top off the tension that had been mounting. Everyone was able to laugh at themselves, while appreciating and respecting the history of both tribes.
After The Go Game, the client was effusive in her praise for our team. She’d received countless ‘thank yous’ and ‘best evers’ in the weeks following The Go Game. The gallery of photos and videos was viewed thousands of times. And the share price doubled in one month. That’s actually not true. But no one, in the history of The Go Game, will ever top their video version of ‘Office Tetris,’ and we’re hard pressed to think of a more awesome way to spend an afternoon!
