Build the Bridge

30 min | Team | Challenge Cooperation & Networking Coping with uncertainty, ambiguity and risk

The Challenge

The participants need to build the best possible bridge (without exactly knowing what the best means).

This exercise aims to help participants understand what it is like to create something together with a common goal. Trainees are asked to think, collaborate and “build” something with the ultimate goal of paralleling this construction with the foundations they will have to lay to implement a business plan.

List of required equipment

30 lego pieces per team
One object to stand on the bridge (ie. a book, an apple, etc.)

What can students learn from this?

To cooperate
To be able to anticipate risk and copy with ambiguity

How can I do this in class?

The trainees are divided into groups of 4-5 people.
Each group is given 30 pieces of lego bricks
Teacher asks each group to build with the bricks a functional bridge as large and as durable as possible (they have on the desk an object to put on the bridge once it is done. It is displayed in the area but not mentioned to the trainees)
Teams are given 10 minutes to discuss construction, agree on the members of each group, and build the bridge by testing whether it can withstand the weight of the object without collapsing.
When the time is up, a representative of each group briefly describes the reasoning behind the construction of the bridge .
In continuance the teacher puts the object on the bridge to see if it stands and when the students ask why the didn’t know about this the teacher responds that there are always facts that are not specifically described but we have to keep our eyes open
Finally the teacher asks of the students to describe their teamwork experience

Reflection tips

Once the exercise is over the teacher may proceed with asking the questions below, ot other that they might think are more applicable to the situation, in order for the students to reflect upon the exercise and let the learning “sink in”.

Did they feel uncomfortable not knowing more details?
How did they cope with that as a team?
Who was the leader of the team ? Were they the same from the beginning or they changed?
Who had the base ideas?
Who made things done ?
How was the cooperation among the team members?
What went wrong?
What went right?
Did they consider ambiguous information to be a barrier?
Did they think that their mission was complete?