Scavenger Hunt Team Building

What is it?

Part Scavenger Hunt, part adventure race, part learning opportunity, The Ultimate Hunt is designed to challenge and inspire participants.

Small teams will have to use all of their collective skills in problem solving, critical thinking, clear communication, collaboration and teamwork to be successful.

Where can it be run?

The Ultimate Hunt is designed to be run in either urban or wilderness environments. However, we like the urban environment because most participants are familiar with it and it has fantastic, built-in clues to work with.

Who?

The Ultimate Hunt can be run with a small group, but is one of the few team building programs that is better the more people you have.

The Goal

Each team is to score as many points as possible. Some clues are more difficult than others but are worth more points. Also, there are many additional ways to score points — be back to the finish early, travel a long (or short) distance — the variables are almost limitless depending upon your group.

Tools Available

Each participant grabs a backpack at random in the beginning. The backpack has several items – water, map, list of clues, scratch paper, writing utensil and another special tool such as binoculars, GPS unit, compass, length of rope, it could be many different items. These tools will be necessary to figure out some of the clues. Because it is random, each team will have a random set of tools to work with, in the beginning at least.

Each team also receives a digital camera to take photos as proof of figuring out certain clues and also for fun.

Stealing Team Members?

If one team sees another, they are allowed to take one of their tools, but the other team can take a tool in return. Since some of the clues require certain tools (i.e. GPS unit or binoculars), they will want to take tools or items from each other.

However, the tool is attached to the person holding it! So the teams are in fact picking a person to come over to their team with the assumption, based upon some clues, that the person will have the tools and skills necessary to help them.

This is a great variable that gets lots of networking opportunities for people who do not normally work together.

It is also very similar to work — when we take someone from another department, we are assuming that they have the tools and skills to help achieve our goals.

Methods of Travel

Teams can only use public transportation or go on foot.

Length

The length is variable but is best at roughly 4 hours.

Philanthropic Variation

This can all be community based and the ‘reveal’ at the end would be that it was not just a hunt, it was also an opportunity for each person to give back to the community in the form of donations to the people they met that day.

Depending upon the group you would like to support, we design philanthropy into the event.

Example:

For every 1000 points that is scored, we are giving a bicycle to a disadvantaged child from the Boys and Girls and the kids come into the room with no idea why they are there but holding a number that corresponds with one of the teams

Driving Messages with the Philanthropic Variation

1. How much harder would the group have tried had you known what the purpose was?
2. Would the individual teams have collaborated more if they knew the outcome and vision in the beginning?

Which leads us to the point:

3. ‘Although many times it may seem like what you are doing is a little crazy and doesn’t make much sense, have faith that senior management has a plan and is working hard for a purpose.’

You may also want to take a look at Building A Dream, another fantastic philanthropic team building event.