The Sandstone Team Building Blog

Although some clients like us to help them find suitable venues for our team building options (and we are always happy to do so), most prefer to make the arrangements themselves. Indeed, many commit to a venue before looking for a team building supplier. This can be problematical.

Clients who make direct bookings - especially those who book before involving us - are often reliant on the advice of the venue’s representatives about what rooms are suitable for their group. Yet venue representatives are unlikely to understand the requirements for running specialist team events such as ours - and, of course, their interest is more around making sure the logistics that is part of their offering, such as refreshment and lunch breaks, are timely and well received.

Activities such as Cube, Memory Lane, Romanbar and Wild West all benefit from about three times the amount of space that venue folk think is suitable. It allows the participants a base to call home for the duration and the space to tackle the variety of fun elements that each of those team activities offer. Without that “extra space”, we need to get creative to deliver to our own high standards.

A recent event we ran in the South East of England for a new public sector client is a case in point. They had booked with an alternative team building supplier, who then let them down with just a couple of days to go to their event. We find it surprising just how often this seems to happen and we are always pleased and usually able to help in such circumstances. The practical upshot was that the venue was already booked and we had to work with what they had. Which, to say the least, wasn’t quite as large as we would have preferred for their chosen activity - Wild West. If I had to choose a word to describe it, “tiny” would come high on the list.

First and foremost, we got there the previous evening to see for ourselves the challenge and set about planning our use of the space. And we got creative and indulged in a little light negotiation with the venue people. When we had finished laying out the room, our contacts at the venue were, to use their word, “amazed” at what we had done with the room. They had never seen it organised the way we laid it out - and, for that matter, dressed up in the way we had done! Well, it was a Wild West event and we always enjoy making people feel they have stepped back in time and across the world when they walk into the room. If we’d had to, our innovative layout of the room would have allowed us to do everything within it, albeit with some re-arrangements during the course of the day. In the event, though, the venue staff were good enough to understand our challenge and helped us out by making some normally public space available for our sole use.

Don’t get me wrong, we’d much prefer that the space we have aligns nicely with the guidelines we give to all clients ahead of an event. But we recognise that this is not always possible and, deep down, we secretly enjoy rising to such challenges. Well, we do encourage clients to rise to our challenging activities - it would be churlish for us not to do so to real life ones…

Alan