Story-Driven Play Builds Stronger Teams. The Clocktower Method

Also it’s fun, so they’ll want to do it again and again.

It might look like playing stupid games, but underneath the surface shimmer shared stories, resilience and creative flow.

Serious play is by far not a new concept. From the icebreakers we’ve all suffered through; to purpose built examples like Playing Lean; and even the process that anchored the name into our collective minds, Lego Serious Play.

The landscape is wide, and so are its purposes. Lego envisioned guided workshops to prompt dialogue and encourage reflection, as well as develop problem-solving skills and use of the imagination. These are guided group sessions where a trained professional helps us to achieve insight and growth. In a different category, we find experiences like Playing Lean. Playing lean is a boardgame that offers learnings and insight into finding and making a product your customers want. By pouring the guiding constraints into the rules and goals, you are invited to discover and experience the lessons within. By the end of it, you’ll have Experienced the pain of over-investing in a feature that the ultimately revealed customer doesn’t actually want. Hearing about a best practice and a pitfall is one thing. Experiencing it, fixing it yourself, sticks with you on a wholly different level. Practicing capitalism on easy mode and without the time and costs. The icebreakers category is many and often just revolves around getting just anything to talk about by the coffee machine in the next break, and making sure that your initial shyness happens in the part of the session that isn’t that important, instead of during the actual meat and potatoes of the meeting. What are your Two Truths and a Lie of the day?

Stories are the PDF files of human information.
~ Rory Sutherland

The fourth category, is the teambuilding. It’s paintballing, it’s cooking together, carting with the young guys team, maybe just eating for that other type of team. Often with a lot of apprehension for teams that really need to get a bit more cohesion. And often with all of the serious play landscape interspersed within, because if there isn’t a workshop in there that feels like learning, can we really afford it to distract us from the hard work that unites us?

The mechanism behind a teambuilding however is not exactly about what you’re doing, but that you’re building a common shared cannon as a group. You’re building the identity of how you all function together, creating safety by growing a framework of behavioral expectations. You now know that Ellen is a bit silent but always listening very interesting once conversation hits some topics; and that Bob is very loud but always deeply caring. You don’t have to wonder about these things anymore, because you know. And you build on this framework in your every day team interaction. Do you really need a separate event for that though? You might just build all of those slowly by just working together, doing what you’re already doing, right? The problem is that the moments you’ll remember will not be the day to day good work, but the shining emotional moments. The great team wins or the bleak dramas that wipe you out or maybe you overcome. And as always, those are great moments of tremendous growth, where you do grow that framework in very deep and meaningful ways. But why wait for the crisis? Why take the slow route, when you can organise growth and consciously create a more functional team.

It began with a hush.

Not the awkward silence of a forced icebreaker, but the kind that settles just before something meaningful happens. Ten of us sat around the table; colleagues, teammates, some almost friends. Leaning in as we learned there had been a death and among us was a killer; a demon and their helper. Somewhere else, a lie waiting to be believed. Most of us just trying to survive, some of us ready to lie for their lives, one whispered accusation at a time.

That’s what we felt, but not how it looked.

The first time wasn’t the Clocktower yet, we were just all on our laptops, some on their phones, and the proverbial table was the ever popular Among Us video game. Among us is an easy and quick shared adventure, as long as your team reasonably has some people of a gaming age. You’re a crew working on a spaceship, and Among Us (see what they did there), is an alien who is not dutifully executing their team tasks. Instead, they look and try to act the same, and whenever they get the chance, they horribly murder one of the crew. But, whenever anyone of the crew wants, they can rush to the canteen and call a crew meeting and a vote, that ultimately leads to ejecting one of the crew out of the airlock. Into the cold and deathly vacuum of space. Hopefully the alien. Though usually not at first, and when the evil player plays their cards right, maybe not at all.

Among us is a wonderful and quick way to grow some of those stories. The conversation starts with “who’s the yellow guy” and “what’s that weird hat”? Devolves into “save my life panic” level discussions. And leaves everyone with a happy feeling of having won or lost; and stories of how we were on to you, or what horrible lie they told to get you ejected.

In the next team meeting with that team; an agile team used to standups and retrospectives, everything just clicked slightly .. faster. Jef’s silence all of a sudden didn’t feel so absent anymore. Because when he was the alien, he affected that same silent presence, sometimes weighing in, and slowly but certainly killing the entire team. Nobody saw him coming because he felt so silent; but we learned the hard way that he was sharply present and weighing his comments for perfect impact. The hard way for this lesson, only meant losing one rather fun game.

You can learn how to facilitate the Among Us teambuilding with our one pager.

The problem with a computer game however, is that it never fully gets real enough. The tempo is geared at the modern day short attention span. The solitary tasks make for short bursts of independent running around that are perfect for getting killed. But the people’s interactions are limited to the negotiations in the mess hall, deciding who to kill. And we can definitely do better.

You wake to find a mauled body under the clocktower

A demon has been unleashed, killing by night and taking on human form by day. Everyone has their own secret to keep and some of us caught glimpses of what happened. Who can we trust with these life saving nuggets of truth? A realization slowly dawns… Just like that, we were no longer at the table. We are fighting for our lives in Ravenswood Bluff.

The next time around, we were all sitting in a big room, looking at a storyteller behind a rather impressive looking eldritch tome. Each one of us got dealt a secret role, some of us learning facts about what’s happening from the man behind the book; and others being invited to poison other players' information or kill one of the group until only evil players remain. We could say anything to anyone, in the group or private conclave. But why would they believe us; and who even to trust?

It’s your team in a safe space under pressure and with a challenging social puzzle to address. Similar to when your main IT product suddenly dies and the team needs to fix it, but without the disastrous cost to your business. And without the prefixed dynamics. Your team-lead might usually be the loudest voice in the room, but in this space, they left their badge by the front door and they’re just another person, looking to do their part. We already knew that Nick, one of the developers, has a loud energy and often says smart things, but often so loudly that it feels like it’s drowning out other voices. On this short term even plane, their voice was still loud, but the assumption of, “it’s probably right” fell away, which allowed the other voices to chime in and the team to develop new ways of talking to each other.

It’s not the work that makes a team; it’s the stories we remember afterwards. And that is where the Clocktower fully shines. We come away with new lessons; but what we really carry home, is that epic story of how there were only 2 townsfolk alive, one of them clearly the demon. And the group being split perfectly between being sure that one or the other is the evil demon, slowly eliminating the villagers. That final discussion, that final decision, and to find out whether they had indeed correctly concluded who the demon was. Elegantly spun by the storyteller, who acts as a guide to the most climactic finale. In this case, the demon played the group to perfection, and survived to kill the final good player. People have told me they dreamt of the twists and turns, of playing the game. It’s a safe adventure that lives on in the hearts and minds. The kind that grows people into teams.

We don’t have a one pager for the clocktower method, but you can find out more at Blood on the Clocktower.com ; or if you’re looking for a storyteller, reach out and we’ll hook you up!

Easy is forgettable; effort ingrains worth.
~ The Value of Friction.

What about Exploding Kittens?

You don’t need slides, trust falls, or elaborate offsites to grow as a team. Sometimes, all it takes is a little time and some drama in a safe space. I don’t like exploding kittens beyond the first haha moment, but it takes all sorts of games. There are many options, and ultimately, whatever works for your team, and with the vision of whoever is facilitating the experience, works. Check out the Space Team phone game if you’re looking for more quick digital moments, or The Resistance boardgame if you’re looking to disconnect.
Just remember to build those shared stories and enjoy watching your teams grow!

Strong teams aren’t built by doing more work together. They’re built by surviving something, together. Even if it’s just a demon under the Clocktower.

If you’e ready to dive deep into your team and build lasting connections, get in touch for a physical or digital session!

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