Change & Growth Mindset becomes visible in what a team does when the plan changes.
Adaptable teams can take in new information, reconsider an approach, and continue moving without losing sight of the objective. They can discuss what happened, learn from an early attempt, and decide what to do differently next time.
In Growing Through Change: Three Habits of Adaptable Teams, we introduced three habits that support this capability:
- Say what changed and what remained consistent
- Treat a first attempt as useful information
- Agree on one small behaviour, then check back on it
Experiential learning gives teams a shared environment in which to practise these habits and see how they affect performance.
Adaptability begins with shared understanding
A team cannot respond effectively to change if its members are reacting to different versions of what has happened.
People need to understand the new condition, the objective, and the decisions they are responsible for making.
This does not require perfect certainty. It requires enough shared understanding for the team to take the next step.
During an experiential challenge, new information may arrive after the team has already formed a plan. Participants need to interpret what has changed, determine what remains useful, and communicate the implications to one another.
This makes an important workplace behaviour visible: whether people pause to create a shared picture or immediately act on individual assumptions.
In Bean Around The World, teams enter a changing marketplace in which customer demands, trading conditions, and available opportunities affect their decisions.
Success depends on more than making one good plan. Participants need to monitor what is happening, exchange information, and adapt their strategy while continuing to manage risk and relationships.
The experience provides a useful metaphor for organisations working through shifting customer expectations, new priorities, or changing commercial conditions.
Early attempts provide useful information
A growth mindset allows teams to learn while the work is moving.
When an approach produces an unexpected result, the team can examine what happened instead of repeating the same process or abandoning the objective.
This requires people to separate the result of one attempt from their judgement of the team’s overall capability.
The useful questions are:
- What did we expect?
- What happened?
- What information did we miss?
- Which assumption needs to change?
- What should we test next?
Shared challenges create immediate feedback. The team can see whether its route, resource plan, or decision process is producing the intended result.
Lost Dutchman’s Goldmine gives teams limited resources and a defined objective while conditions change around them. Participants need to plan an expedition, assess risk, share information, and make decisions about how to use what they have.
The experience can reveal whether teams protect information, coordinate resources, or learn from the approaches being used around them.
The facilitated conversation afterwards can connect these choices with the way people respond to uncertainty at work.
Progress comes through testing and adjustment
Adaptability is easier to understand when a team can observe the effect of each adjustment.
A useful growth mindset process is:
- Create an initial approach.
- Test it.
- Observe what happened.
- Identify one improvement.
- Test again.
This creates a practical learning loop. It allows the team to improve through evidence rather than waiting for someone to provide a perfect answer.
Chain Reaction Table Top brings this process to life through a connected building challenge.
Groups design different sections of a larger chain reaction. Each section needs to work independently, but it must also connect with the sections around it.
Testing reveals where an idea needs adjustment. It may also show that a local solution creates a problem elsewhere in the system.
Teams practise responding to feedback, refining their design, and communicating across boundaries. The final result depends on persistence and the willingness to improve an approach through repeated testing.
This mirrors many workplace changes. A process can work well within one function but create friction during a handover. A small adjustment can improve the wider system when teams are willing to share information and test again.
Growth also requires flexible contribution
Change can alter what the team needs from each person.
A familiar strength may remain valuable, while a different challenge gives someone else an opportunity to lead. Teams with a growth mindset can redistribute responsibility according to what the situation requires.
A varied challenge format can make this easier to observe.
Game Changer uses a mix of collaborative and competitive activities that require teams to communicate, think quickly, and support one another. Different challenges bring different strengths forward.
The learning opportunity lies in noticing how the team responds:
- Does the same person lead every task?
- Can participants recognise when another strength is needed?
- How does the team respond when a preferred approach is ineffective?
- Can people adjust roles while maintaining trust and momentum?
These observations help teams discuss adaptability as a collective behaviour. Growth involves becoming more capable as a group, not asking every individual to respond in exactly the same way.
Debriefing turns experience into workplace learning
An activity can create energy, but the facilitated debriefing helps the team understand what the experience revealed.
A useful debriefing may explore:
- What changed during the challenge?
- How quickly did we recognise it?
- How did we communicate the implications?
- What did our first attempt teach us?
- How did we decide what to change?
- Where do we see a similar pattern at work?
The facilitator helps participants move from describing the activity to examining behaviour.
The final step is to agree on one workplace application.
A team might decide to:
- Add a short learning review after the first stage of a new process
- Clarify who communicates changing information
- Test one change with a smaller group before wider implementation
- Make assumptions visible during planning
- Revisit one agreed behaviour during the next team meeting
This gives the experience a practical continuation.
Choose the experience around the change
The most suitable experience depends on what the team needs to practise.
Bean Around The World can support conversations about changing conditions, customer expectations, commercial awareness, and strategic adjustment.
Lost Dutchman’s Goldmine can make resource decisions, information sharing, risk, and collaboration visible.
Chain Reaction Table Top can demonstrate testing, persistence, cross-functional dependencies, and continuous improvement.
Game Changer can help teams explore agile thinking, flexible contribution, communication, and mutual support across varied challenges.
The selection should begin with the team’s context:
- What change is the team navigating?
- Which behaviour would help people respond more effectively?
- Where does the current process slow down?
- What should participants be able to recognise after the experience?
- What action should continue back at work?
The program provides the practice environment. The outcome guides the choice.
Build the capacity to keep learning
Future-ready teams do not depend on every plan remaining unchanged.
They know how to understand a new condition, test an approach, discuss what happened, and make a considered adjustment.
Experiential learning gives people a shared reference point for these behaviours. It makes adaptability visible and gives the team language it can use when similar situations arise at work.
Change becomes more manageable when people know how to learn through it together.
Explore Change & Growth Mindset experiences or start a discovery call about what your team needs to practise.