Last week, the netlogx interns got a special treat to end our Thursday. The interns, along with Diane, went to The Escape Room Indy to attempt a jailbreak (literally). Although Diane was the only one who had done an escape room before, we were confident that we would escape. None of us knew what would be in store for the next hour of our lives!
The room that we signed up for was a jail cell, which featured a bunk bed and a toilet from a real women’s prison. The six of us were locked in and ready to solve a series of clues that would lead to our escape. If you’ve never done an escape room before, it would be helpful to know that there is a time limit of one hour, adding pressure to the group. Although we won’t go into details of the jailbreak (trust us – you want to try this escape room!), we will share some of the lessons that we learned.
As we began to reflect on our experience, we realized that this excursion incorporated many of the operating principles of netlogx, and team work was only the beginning. Perhaps the operating principle that was most crucial in this experience would be communication. The thought of making this jailbreak alone is daunting, so having a strong team with effective communication skills was critical. Initiative also played a key role; each of us took initiative at one point in this experience, and this ultimately led to our success. It is important to remember that everyone has their own way of thinking, and this allowed us to each take initiative when a clue or obstacle aligned with our personal problem-solving tactics. This process also involved recognition and empowerment as we congratulated and thanked each other each time that a clue was solved. Because of this, our confidence grew as time went on. While this activity was entertaining, it was also a high stress situation, and we find it comforting that the netlogx team truly lives out these operating principles even while under pressure.
In addition to exemplifying netlogx’ operating principles, we learned how each other operates based on our Core Values Index™ score. The banker side of Parker showed, as he checked, double-checked, and triple-checked our math. Jacob’s innovator attributes came out, as he showed compassion for each of the tasks at hand. He took each clue, assessed what it could mean, and went from there. Sandy, the merchant, preferred talking through each of the steps, including all of us in her thought process. Abbey is a builder, and her strategy was to act based on instinct, which created results for us as a team. Diane and Erin are innovators and found that they thought things over in their heads before sharing them with the group. Their analysis of each clue allowed us to tackle every task.
Your curiosity is probably killing you by now: did we escape the room? We successfully broke out of jail with 18 minutes left to spare in our hour, making us the record holders for escaping this room…well, the record holders for this week (and only one other team had played this week). This experience allowed us to learn valuable teambuilding skills, as well as earn some serious bragging rights!
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