Post-quarantine Lords and Cabbages: team bonding and strategic mindset reset

The quarantine changed every one of us. And what is the best way to re-acquaint yourself with your own company while addressing business challenges and dealing with uncertainties? Of course, it's Lords and Cabbages business game!

We organized a spectacular post-isolation meeting for bankers to practice strategic thinking and successful interactions in an ever-changing world.

Mission. Deliver a smart team-building session based on the Lords and Cabbages game for bank employees. The main task is to promote and develop team-bonding along with important professional skills.

Background. Just like the rest of the country, a domestic bank targeting large corporate clients has faced a real-life pandemic challenge over the past six months. No wonder the team grasped the first chance it got to get together and enhance important skills to better fit the new reality.

The clear tasks put before us by the company leaders included team bonding, improvement of tactical and strategic thinking, cross-functional cooperation, creative decision-making, and stress management - all to better handle the pitfalls of the increasingly competitive business world.

The ultimate challenge faced by our team was to emulate an uncertain environment to practice the following competencies:

• Strategic Thinking.
• Proactivity.
• Cross Functionality.

The bank's key shareholder expressed his desire to participate in the event to blend in with the team and get an inside view on intra-team processes after the forced isolation.

Solution: Deliver the Lords and Cabbages business game session with maximum level of engagement to get the team in a prolonged positive mood.

Certain modifications introduced to the game to suit the customer's needs made it rather innovative, especially when compared to the classic version.

First of all, each participant was assigned a specific role: Tsar, Boyar, Lord, Merchant, or Peasant. Everyone's goal is to become the highest achiever in his class, except the Tsar. His activity must be primarily focused on meeting the state's objectives for survival given in the form of specific, measurable target indicators.

The game also featured an intermediate facilitation session to adjust the game's course and explore areas for improvement.

Upon completion of the game, the participants and the host had a short debriefing to discuss the results and congratulate the winners.

The event fostered the development of the participants' important competencies: negotiation skills, commitment to results, as well as effective decision-making and problem-solving. The most pronounced positive aspect of the game, however, was an opportunity for the participants to build horizontal bonds, to get to know one another better after isolation, and to recharge their batteries for the upcoming season.