Minefield Rush | Team Activity on Collaboration vs. Silo Thinking

Minefield Rush is a hands-on team activity that exposes silo thinking in real time — and flips “compete against each other” into “collaborate to win,” in a single, physical, unforgettable challenge.

Teams are tied together on a shared “ski” and must cross a field of coloured balls, collect every team’s balls into the right hoops, and avoid a neutral “mine” colour that penalises everyone. They’re told it’s a competition — and instantly assume they’re racing the other teams. The reveal: the only real opponent was the clock, and the fastest finish comes from teams helping teams. Nobody is ever told to compete against the other colours — they infer it, and that inference is the entire learning point.

What your people walk away with

• A felt understanding of the gap between a stated goal and an assumed one — and how fast a group defaults to rivalry under time pressure
• The ability to spot silo behaviour in the moment: hoarding resources, refusing to share with another team
• A shared language for the “yellow ball” — the risks and bottlenecks no single team owns but everyone pays for
• A live discussion about their organisation’s real competitors versus internal rivalries

What’s inside

• A complete 22-page Facilitator Guide: the logic behind the activity, three ways to build the prop, room setup & safety brief, the full word-for-word script, the R.A.C.E. debrief, real-world parallels, adaptations and a ready-to-run checklist

Ideal for

Cross-functional and cross-department programmes, leadership & management sessions on collaboration, sales and business-unit groups measured against each other, and “one team” culture or change programmes. Scales across many parallel teams at large offsites and conferences.

Group size: 12–24 (3–4 teams of 3–6) · Runs in: 30–45 min activity + 20–30 min debrief.

Format & licence

Instant PDF download — print it and run with any team. Simple, low-cost props you build yourself (three build options included, from a classic wooden ski to a no-build ankle line). Lifetime single-facilitator commercial licence. Built on our own original design and debrief framework.