Treasure Hunts mirroring real life

This weekend my friends and I went on treasure hunt that was organized by T-Hunts.com. We had done this before, back in 2003, and our team faired pretty darn well - despite having to run up California (super steep) on an abnormally hot September day in San Francisco.

This year… well… I don’t know what we placed, and I’m not really sure I want to know.

I’ve been thinking about our stunning loss a lot in the last 2 days and the more I think about it, the more it strikes me about the similarities between this event and… well… the challenges of the business world.

-Resources: In business (even at Microsoft), you are always resource constrained, and thus you have to make strategic decisions as to how to use what you do have effectively. Back in 2003, our team had 8 people, this time we had just 5 (one of whom showed up late due to a parking snafu). Most of the winning teams I saw this weekend had close to 7 people.

One of the toughest things to do in business is decide what not to do - and our team simply failed to do that. The game started with 8 clues, and with so few people, our team didn’t optimized - we got sucked into the first clue which most teams didn’t get. In retrospect, we should’ve realized that the fact that it was worth nearly double the points of other clues meant that it would be super hard, and with our limited resources, we should’ve made the tough decision early on of cutting it.

-Time: Well this one is obvious. It’s a treasure hunt, and it’s a race. Time was definitely a resource that we didn’t have a lot of. (In comparison, in the 2003 one, we had time to have smoothies and go the bathroom - this year we barely had time to drink water.)

-Quality: When you’re pressed for time and resources, one of first things to go is quality. Looking back at our notes and work, there was definitely some slippage in quality that made things a bit more confusing. One mistake that was made at the beginning of one clue, in retrospect, was so glaring and obvious that if we had taken the time to straighten out, we would’ve saved a lot of time spent trying to figure out the rest. Thinking back, there was also possibly duplication of effort at certain points. The key learning here is that when times are desperate, stay organized, stay focused - or things will get only worse.

-Partnering: After the game, I read the instructions again, and it turned out that you could’ve collaborated with other teams in your division. Doh! Well, not that it mattered since I didn’t see any other teams doing that in the beginning phase. But still, this is an interesting point that reflects to the real world: if you have a lot of problems to solve, do you spend some of your limited time and limited resources to pursue partnerships with competitors? After all, joining forces may make you stronger and fend off other competitors - but at the same time, it means you are taking on a dependency, which requires management. That’s tough to evaluate - especially if you have no leverage like our team.

-Outsourcing: Everyone talks about outsourcing these days and how it’s a great way to lower costs. We tried this too, with friends on the phone at home. They didn’t have to pay $40 per person, and they could ‘work from home’. Alas, like many real world companies, we didn’t adequately account for the cost of outsourcing. A lot of time was sucked up due to poor communication: cell phones faded out, batteries ran down, camera phones sucked, words were misheard, frustration ran high. Lesson learned: if you outsource some work, it might be best to have them centralized and to have a single point of contact on each end. And to make sure that the outsourced team has clear understanding of the problems and the expected outcomes.

-Morale: We had great success in the last game, and we thought it would carry over. But when we saw that all the other teams leave because they had solve the majority of the clues, our teams morale plummeted. This is akin to being in a small product group, and watching all your competitors take off, while your product languishes. When other teams come to ask you “Yeah we got 7/8 of them so far, how many have you got?” and your answer is “2″. To be frank, I’m not sure how this could’ve been improved. How would you have dealt with it?

Well, while things didn’t go so well, I’m still glad we went. It was good to be humbled, and hopefully my team will stick together and we can utilize the lessons learned to win next time.