Fifteen years ago, in 2009, whilst James Cameron released the ground breaking movie Avatar, we introduced an equally groundbreaking concept: the team-building continuum.

This continuum defined a transitional line between team bonding and team building activities. Where team bonding activities were designed to be more focused on fun and delivering messages and teambuilding activities were designed to still be fun, but be more focused on learning outcomes and changing behaviours . This continuum has defined the strategic direction of Turnaround for the last 15 years and to this day forms our DNA which you can see in our 5 approaches.

Reflecting on 15 Years of the Continuum

So, after 15 years of banging the same drum, Does the continuum stand up to the test of time? What insights can we draw? what amendments or additions would we make to this continuum today? and what’s next?

So first off, whilst we feel that this continuum is just as important now as it was 15 years ago, but there’s definitely a few amendments and modifications that we would like to add.

The Core of the Continuum: Fun vs. Learning Outcomes
The continuum’s baseline—from pure fun on the left to learning outcomes and development on the right—remains as relevant today as it was in 2009. Visualize this progression as a spectrum of impact, where every activity can be plotted.
If you look at the teambuilding products that are currently available in the market, they can all still be mapped somewhere along this continuum.

But to go a little bit deeper into the original model of the continuum, Adding a Paradigm Shift to the Model
today we would change the vertical transitional line from being defined as the difference between team bonding and team building to a point at which a paradigm break or a paradigm shift occurs. So, with our new vertical axis, everything on the left-hand side is generally more fun, focused, but is actually exploring what we already know about a subject. So if we were looking at collaboration on the left side of the continuum, participants would be exploring their current view or perspective of what collaboration looks like to them at that moment in time. But we should not expect them to have any major insights around how they could be doing collaboration differently back in the workplace. But, everything on the right hand side is where some form of paradigm shift is experienced that then acts as a catalyst for the team to see something from a different perspective, think differently about a topic and then be in a position to develop new actions or behaviors. So for collaboration, the paradigm shift could be as simple as teams believing they are working collaboratively but part way through suddenly realising that they are actually in silos and this is impacting their overall performance. It’s essentially the same as the 15 year old continuum but with a paradigm twist.

Adapting to Change in a Rapidly Evolving World

Now this twist might be small, but we think it’s of critical importance. There’s no denying from anybody that the last 15 years has seen more exponential change and growth compared with any previous time in history. If this is the case, as a wise man once said, you can’t solve problems with the same kind of thinking that created them. So, if we need our staff to think, behave and act differently, we have to be doing teambuilding from the right hand side of the continuum otherwise we’re just exploring old paradigms and the status quo will never change.

This has been reflected in the percentages of the different types of teambuilding that we’ve been doing over this period. Back in 2009 just under a half of all of the activities that we were doing would’ve sat on the right hand side of the continuum, today for Turnaround, it’s above 80% and and we expect this trend to continue. We saw a dip in this trend in 2020 as a direct result of COVID-19 where, for the start of the pandemic, there was an increase in activities designed to simply keep people connected rather than focus on behavioural outcomes, which came later in the same year.

What about the different types of activities that have emerged over the last 15 years and how do these map onto this ‘updated’ continuum? Typically true experiential learning programs are a minimum of 3-4 hours., This gives enough time to self-reflect, see patterns and experience a paradigm shift. As event times became tighter, we wouldn’t always have the opportunity for a 3-4 hour event, so we had to get creative. Clients loved the idea of creating paradigm shifts and insights and aha moments, but didn't have the time to go through the full experiential process. So we created a number of shorter activities designed to deliver very specific paradigm shifts, these include Code Crackers, where participants experience being stuck and then feel the creation of new neural pathways when they challenge their assumptions, Detour, where we explore finding the opportunity in change or DomeWorks where teams can experience team performance breakthroughs in under an hour. But, all of these fit on the same continuum.

Then technological advances started to merge with activity design and we started to see a number of teambuilding activities using a digital component that enabled the automation of performance based analytics, an example of this would be our Before Mars activity. These activities were both clever but more importantly provided teams with performance data that enabled deeper debriefs and greater paradigm shifts. But, still on the same continuum!

The Impact of COVID-19 on Team Building

I think the most significant milestone that we saw that has changed the landscape of team building was the COVID-19 outbreak. During this period teambuilding companies were forced to adapt and pivot their models from primarily a face-to-face environment to a virtual environment. This led to numerous new activities being developed and a new era in Digitaldigiatal Platforms being created to enable the facilitation of these activities in an online setting. It built on the data analytics of some earlier games and really infused technology to allow delivery to a global audience all from the comfort of our own offices and bedrooms. But, still on the same continuum.

Whilst Covid and the switch to virtual working and collaboration may have been the most significant milestone, as I write this blog, we’re at the start of the next big wave which is of course AI. At the time of writing this blog there aren’t a huge number of AI infused teambuilding activities available in the market. We are seeing some of the platforms using AI to improve time for content creation, we are seeing some activities where AI is being tested to help teams generate content, but the next generation of AI teambuilding activities is still in its infancy. However, I’m gonna put my neck on the line here a little bit and suggest that any of these activities are still going fit on the same continuum.

So what’s next then? Are we just going to see more and more activities on the same continuum, are we going to see more activities developed that fit on the right hand side of the continuum or is there something else at play?

Let’s just take a moment to reflect on some of the key themes raised in this blog. We are seeing a trend with clients wanting more outcome focused, or paradigm breaking team building. We believe the reason for this is because the way that we do business today is different from how we did it yesterday and clients recognise that activities on the right side of the continuum support this. So it would be reasonable to expect to see more teambuilding activities coming onto the market that fit on the right hand side of the continuum. We have also seen an adoption by the industry in more technology driven solutions, new platforms, blending technology and activity design and an increase in the use of analytics

Just before we get wrap up and set some predictions for 2025, let's set a deeper context for the sandpit we are playing in. The team building activities that we are talking about are specifically designed for the conference teambuilding market. What we mean by this is that you have a group of people together from the same company at a venue, possibly a hotel or conference centre, with some kind of business message being delivered. This could be your end of the year celebration, strategy planning session, values rollout, department offsite or similar.

These offsites are great for bringing people together, building energy, delivering messages and with the right side of the continuum, creating insights and helping people see the new way of doing things. But they are not traditionally used, mainly due to time constraints, to develop the action plans required to drive the change back in the organization and so the transfer of learning was left up to participants and clients to action the change back in the workplace. This has always been one of the hardest challenges for developmental team building companies to solve. We know how to transfer learning, but didn't have enough time.

So with this in mind, I think in 2025 we will see a flurry of AI infused activities on both sides of the continuum, I would expect to see them appear first on the left side and later on the right side. But, these are more of the same, and so all on the same continuum.

BUT my big prediction for 2025 will be around how can team building companies help support the return on investment. We know businesses need to change, businesses know that businesses need to change and the only way to know whether we’ve changed or not is via some form of measurement.

And this is where the opportunity to bridge the gap exists. Team Building companies need a solution to transfer the behavioural change back into the business, without taking additional time on the conference.

The Role of Technology and Analytics

So with the progression in technology, we, and some of our partners, are developing ROI tools that can be ignited at the conference but followed up back in the workplace. This doesnt eat into any of the limited time available on the conference but provides support for embedding actions and delivering the change in behaviour to drive the ROI. These tools will collect actions, create actions, deliver continued learning chunks to reinforce conference messaging, collect analytics, use gamification, deliver client reports all designed to show measurable proof of the change in behaviours back in the workplace. AI is helping us to shape these tools, and bring cost effective solutions to clients. These new tools will allow us to address this gap and deliver meaningful and measurable change to organisations!

1. Experience the Future:
“Discover how our innovative tools and activities can create lasting change for your team. Reach out today to learn more.”
2. Shape the Future Together:
“What’s your vision for team building in 2025? Let’s collaborate to design the future of work and team development.”
3. Join the Paradigm Revolution:
“Ready to break old paradigms and spark new thinking in your team? Contact us to get started.”
4. Learn About ROI Tools:
“Want to ensure team-building insights stick? Ask us about our ROI tools that bridge the gap from conference to workplace.” and as we’ve explored earlier, if we’re doing teambuilding on the left-hand side of the continuum, we’re only exploring old paradigms and ways of thinking and so nothing's going to change, so the obvious solution is to look to the right side rather than looking to break these and generate new ways of thinking, if you look at our five approaches to Team building, you will see that the message creators sit very much on the left-hand side of the continuum whilst the idea shakers sit on the right hand side. Whilst we have always valued the use of team bonding, or message creator activities, every conversation with our clients has always introduced the more thought provoking, or idea shakers, that sit on the right hand side of this continuum, as we feel they create more value for our clients.

Here we are 15 years later, still banging the same drum, but we felt it was the right time to take some time to reflect on this continuum and see what insights we can draw today.

I think the first reflection is that the differentiation between the left side and the right side of the continuum is still very valid. We’re still speaking to companies that don’t necessarily understand the difference between these two sides of the continuum or even know that the right hand side of the continuum exists. The second main insight was to look at the continuum on a deeper timeline tracking back, historically on the left and thinking about what my extend into the future on the right. Let’s start by going back in Time.

Mesopotamia, more commonly known as Iraq these days, is the site of some of the earliest developments of the Neolithic revolution roundabout 10,000 BC. It has been identified as having inspired some of the most important developments in human history, including the invention of the wheel, planting the first cereal crops, development of cursive script, mathematics, astronomy, and even agriculture and today is recognizable as the cradle of some of the world‘s earliest civilizations. Even back then teamwork was important. One of the key roles teams would perform was the managing of irrigation projects. This was done using a simple division of labor approach. Documentation exists, suggesting that these teams would then take part in communal feasts after successful projects were completed.

Move over to Egypt and clearly there must’ve been some teamwork in building the pyramids, back in the day. Workers were rewarded with food, clothing, and simple shelter.

Fast tracking onto the medieval period and we get guilds who are organ groups of merchants, traders, and artisans, which is perhaps one of the first examples of skills based teamwork and the apprentice master learning model. The guild would organizing festive gatherings to celebrate their achievements.

During the industrial revolution which saw the first assembly lines for efficiency and task-focused groups, we started to see the introduction of social clubs and even welfare provisions in some companies.

But it wasn’t until the early 20th century that we see any recorded documentation of improving the efficiency of workflows and labor productivity. This was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering of processes in management.

Taking a look at all of the above examples. We’re seeing some rewards and recognition. We’re seeing some feasts going on and some celebrations, all of which probably mirror to today’s team bonding, but no tangible evidence of developing teams.