Decisions need to be made quickly whether in a boardroom or in the field. When different personalities come together to solve problems, more problems can arise. If a clash of egos and ideas keep problems from being solved, your business, your employees and your customers suffer. Try these effective problem solving activities to get your team using different points of view to their advantage and come up with the best solution to everyday issues.

Problem Solving Activities FAQ

As a manager or business owner, you can spend countless hours searching for different problem solving activities — we’ve done the work for you. Use these exercises at your next meeting, outing or retreat. These are all designed to get your employees working together, seeking the best outcomes for your business.

1. What Are Problem Solving Activities?

Problem solving activities are specific exercises to help your team solve an irrelevant topic, so they can see how each individual can contribute to work-related issues. They are entertaining and lively activities to show a group how each point of view adds to a greater solution.

2. What Do Problem Solving Activities Do?

These exercises help hone, develop and refine the problem solving skills of the group. They develop abilities that the group can then take with them back to the job where they can apply them to real-world problems in the workplace.

3. How Do Problem Solving Activities Work?

These kinds of exercises help your group of employees:

• Define problems with a limited amount of information
• Push the group to analyze the problem
• Brainstorm different solutions
• Decide together on a solution
• Implement the solution while delegating or working together
• Review and analyze the results

4. Where Can You Find Problem Solving Activities?

Right here! We’ve scoured many resources to provide you with a comprehensive list of the most popular and effective problem solving activities available to managers and their teams.

How We Reviewed

We took into consideration how effective certain problem solving activities are and the outcomes they’ve gotten other teams. We also wanted to make sure these were doable and without too many moving parts. Another consideration was ensuring these are HR compliant and won’t get anyone in hot water by offending a particular group or person.

We wanted them to be fun. Work is serious enough and problem solving even more so. Laughter gets endorphins coursing through the brain and body making people more open to new and different ideas. Use these with your group and dynamics shift as they take on these challenges.

What We Reviewed

• Tower Building
• Egg Drop
• Lost At Sea
• Picture Pieces Puzzle Game
• Line Up Blind
• What Would X Do?
• Balloon Tower
• Reverse Pyramid
• Minefield
• Frostbite

Tower Building

Description

You can describe many metaphors this applies to in the workplace. Solutions at work can involve different, seemingly unrelated, pieces of the puzzle. This gets a group of 4-8 people working together to find a solution.

Helps With 

• Promotes collaboration
• Removes roadblocks to a team environment
• Highlights the benefits of working together

What You’ll Need 

• 20 pieces of regular, uncooked spaghetti
• 1 regular sized marshmallow
• 1 yard of string
• 1 yard of masking tape

Time Required

20 minutes.

Instructions

Each team should get a kit of necessary materials. The teams can only use the contents provided to them. Whichever team can build the tallest tower wins. The towers must be freestanding and cannot rely on a wall or structure to stand. They must plan their tower in advance because you won’t provide replacement materials. Be sure to ask reflective questions after:

• What did you learn?
• What would you do differently?
• How can you apply this at work?

Egg Drop

Description

One of the most popular problem solving activities, this helps with collaboration, planning and communication. This is a fun exercise with impactful results. The egg represents delicate situations at work and how people work together to solve or destroy the outcome.

Helps With 

• Tactful decision making
• Group planning of a solution
• Commitment to the plan while being flexible

What You’ll Need 

• One raw egg for every team of 4 people
• Various supplies: paper, rubber bands, balloons, scotch tape, straws, plastic wrap, toothpicks, yarn and paperclips
• High balcony or ledge 

Time Required

20 minutes

Instructions

The point is to protect the egg with the supplies given from cracking when dropped from a high altitude. Give each team the same amount of each supply to even the playing field.  Once time is up, drop each egg from the same height. If there’s a tie, keep increasing the height until only one egg is left intact. Ask the same reflective questions.

Lost At Sea

Description

This exercise is a go-to because of the intensity of the decisions being made and the consequences of a poorly thought out plan.

Helps With 

Critical thinking
Group analysis
Negotiation and cooperation

What You’ll Need 

Groups of four
A large room
A whiteboard or blackboard

Time Required

30 minutes.

Instructions

Set up that each team is lost at sea with a box of matches in their pockets and in a lifeboat that holds the following supplies: a mosquito net, a can of gas, a one gallon empty water container, a small mirror, a sextant, an MRE (meal ready to eat), a sea chart, one life jacket, a rope, a chocolate bar, a waterproof tarp, fishing rod, shark repellant, a bottle of rum and a VHF radio (radius of three miles).

Ask the groups to pick the 10 items they would keep and the order of importance they would rank them. Ask each participant to make three columns on their piece of paper: one column for the team’s decision, one of their individual rankings and one for the Coast Guard’s answer.

The first 10 minutes should be spent individually ranking the items, then 20 minutes ranking as a group. When time is up, write on the whiteboard the answers the Coast Guard has provided, ranked from most to least important:

• Small mirror—signals location by reflecting the sun
• Can of gas—once lit, can signal for help
• Water container—collect fresh water 
• MRE—calories
• Tarp—used for shelter and to collect rainwater
• Chocolate—food
• Fishing rod—potentially useful and can be used as a tent pole
• Rope—handy
• Life jacket—life preserver
• Shark repellant—useful if in the water
• Bottle of rum—antiseptic for injuries only
• Radio—chances are you’re out of range
• Sea Chart—worthless without navigation equipment
• Mosquito net—no mosquitos in the middle of the ocean
• Sextant—impractical and irrelevant

This will highlight how the group did in relation to the individual. If the individual did better, had they tried to state their case? If not, why?

Picture Pieces Puzzle Game

Description

This is a great exercise to get your employees to be creative and innovative.

Helps With 

• Imagining a solution
• Collaboration

What You’ll Need 

• A print out of a famous picture cut into as many pieces as there are participants
• Blank pieces of paper, rulers and colored pencils

Time Required

30 minutes

Instructions

Participants must put the picture back together again. Once they have, they must use the ruler and pencils to make their individual piece five times as big. Ask them afterwards if they could successfully recreate a larger piece and how working together helped.

Line Up Blind

Description

This exercise helps team members be creative and not rely on the easiest answer even though it may be the quickest.

Helps With 

• Critical thinking
• Outside the box problem solving
• Teamwork

What You’ll Need 

• Blindfolds

Time Required

10-20 minutes depending on the size of the group.

Instructions

Have everyone pick a number from a hat and give it back to you. Once they put on the blindfolds, they have to line up in order of their numbers without seeing or talking to the other members. Once they’re finished, see how close they got to the correct order and how they got there.

What Would X Do?

Description

This one helps participants put themselves in someone else’s shoes to solve a problem.

Helps With 

• On the spot problem solving            
• Empathy

What You’ll Need 

• A pre-conceived problem for you to pose to the group
• A list of celebrity names

Time Required

One minute per participant.

Instructions

Pose the problem to the group and have them write a quick solution individually. Next, assign a celebrity to each person and have them write what they think the famous person’s solution would be. Discuss how they got to different decisions and how this can help them at work.

Balloon Tower

Description

Another fun structure activity to help teams work together while delegating and taking direction. Break participants into groups of three.

Helps With 

• Team building
• Group problem solving
• Delegation

What You’ll Need 

• 10 balloons for each team
• Four 3-foot-long strips of masking tape per team

Time Required

15 minutes

Instructions

The goal of this game is to build the tallest freestanding tower. They can do whatever they like with the balloons but cannot get replacements. There is also no talking during this activity, each participant can only use one hand and one of the three can only give non-verbal directions and may not touch the materials.

Ask how they made use of different problem-solving skills and non-verbal cues to complete the task.

Reverse Pyramid

Description

This is a fun way to get people in the mindset of trusting in an answer even if you can’t always take an actionable role in the solution.

Helps With 

• Adaptability
• Remote collaboration

What You’ll Need 

• A group of at least 9 participants 

Time Required

10 minutes

Instructions

Have the group stand in the shape of a pyramid—rows of 4, 3, 2 and 1. Tell them to flip the base and the tip of the triangle by moving only three people. This will require collaboration and experimentation before coming to the right conclusion. Have them discuss the amount of mistakes made and what they learned from them.

Minefield

Description

This gets the blood pumping and helps people hone their communication skills to be succinct and clear.

Helps With 

• Trust            
• Collaboration
• Succinct communication 

What You’ll Need 

• A large, empty room or hallway
• Random office supplies: chairs, staplers, paper, clocks, cups, pencils, etc.
• Blindfolds

Time Required

10-20 minutes depending on size of room.

Instructions

Split the group into teams of two. Blindfold one person from each team. Place the objects all around the room. Have the partner not blindfolded direct the other from one end of the room to the other, without touching the other. Make it more interesting by having all the teams go at once.

When finished, ask the teams how they were able to drown out the noise to communicate with their partner. What did they find the most difficult? Did their partner step on any mines?

Frostbite

Description

This exercise set in an arctic tundra is a lot of fun while still being beneficial to any team.

Helps With 

• Collaboration
• Critical thinking
• Trust

What You’ll Need 

• Blindfolds
• Construction materials like paper, card stock, tape, paperclips, sticky notes, rubber bands and toothpicks
• An electric fan

Time Required

30 minutes.

Instructions

Split the team into groups of 4 or 5. Set the stage that they are in the Arctic. Each team must choose a leader. Once chosen, tell them the leader has frostbite and cannot touch any of the materials. The snowstorm is so bad the other participants cannot see. Using the materials provided, the leader must tell the blindfolded members how to construct a small shelter that will hold up to the wind of the fan.

Ask them the difficulties they faced and how they overcame them. How did they lean on each other’s strengths?

The Verdict

Problem solving activities are always good to expose a group to. They help reveal each other’s strengths to each other and show how many minds are more powerful than one. Always discuss the outcome of any activity you choose and how the lessons learned can apply to their everyday working issues.

Before your team leaves for the day have them commit to two or three skills they will implement because of the day’s problem solving activities. Whichever exercises you choose, your team will benefit. The investment in your employees will translate to higher employee satisfaction which leads to higher and more successful results for your business, customers and bottom line.