1The Challenge
What was the challenge?
ARM's Workplace Team — the group that coordinates and manages events across the organisation — holds an annual get-together, and this year's carried unusual weight. A senior leader from London, who had personally run the previous two annual programmes, was visiting, with India hosting him. The client stressed repeatedly that the experience had to be seamless and memorable, and, wanting something different from previous years, had chosen a fresh format on our recommendation.
The size of the group made engagement the whole game. With just nine participants, there is nowhere to hide: in a large room, one or two people drifting goes unnoticed, but in a group this small, a single disengaged person is immediately visible and changes the feel of the whole session. Add a senior guest of honour who sets the bar, a group from varied backgrounds who all needed to feel equally comfortable contributing, and a few hours to fill without energy dipping — and the challenge was less about the activities themselves than about sustaining a genuinely immersive experience from start to finish. As the client put it, activities can be replicated; the participant experience cannot.
2Our Solution
What solution did we design?
The Game of Thrones Catapult Challenge was chosen as a centrepiece precisely because it generates energy and involvement that a group of nine can't sit at the edge of. Teams design and build catapults, then battle them in a kingdom-versus-kingdom format — here, two kingdoms at war. With only two teams, every single person is materially involved in their kingdom's fortunes; there is no passenger seat.
For a small, senior group, that's the point. The format is playful and a little theatrical, which loosens up a room of leaders and puts the visiting guest on exactly the same footing as everyone else — all of them building, aiming, and cheering for their side. The competition creates the buzz; the fact that each kingdom is a team that has to collaborate to win supplies the bonding. And because it looks nothing like a standard corporate exercise, it delivered the freshness the client wanted for a group that had done annual programmes before.
Game of Thrones sat within a tightly-run afternoon alongside Minute to Win It and a Cooking Challenge — a deliberately varied sequence, moving between fast-paced fun, hands-on creativity, and competitive team play, so the energy kept shifting and never had a chance to flag across the session.
3How We Did It
How was the programme delivered?
The nine participants were split into two kingdoms for the Game of Thrones battle, and into small teams of two to three for the other challenges, so that everyone was hands-on at every stage. Two facilitators ran the afternoon — a high facilitator-to-participant ratio that was entirely deliberate: with a small, senior group and a visiting VIP, proactive, personal attention to keeping every individual involved and energised was the core of the job, not an afterthought.
Facilitators actively managed the room's energy throughout, reading engagement in real time and adjusting pace to keep all nine invested from the first minute to the last. Across the activities, the debrief kept to the natural themes — collaboration, adapting to change, and teamwork — drawn out lightly, in keeping with an event whose primary goal was engagement and bonding rather than heavy learning.
4Key Outcomes
What were the results?
The Game of Thrones Catapult Challenge gave ARM's Workplace Team a high-energy, level playing field where all nine participants — including the visiting leader from London — were fully in it together. For a small group where engagement is everything, the format did its central job: nobody sat on the sidelines.
For a high-stakes annual get-together that had to feel seamless and memorable, the afternoon delivered exactly the fresh, immersive experience the client asked for — and gave a senior group a genuinely fun shared memory to take away.