1The Challenge
What was the challenge?
OLX's product team operates in two worlds simultaneously — in India day to day, but with closest collaborators in the US, working across time zones, contexts, and communication styles. The friction that comes with cross-geography coordination was the specific pain point this programme was designed to address. The ask was to create an experience that would help the team reflect on how they collaborate under pressure — how they communicate when information is incomplete, how they make decisions when they can't see the full picture, and how they balance individual team goals with a shared outcome.
2Our Solution
What solution did we design?
The Thought Bulb selected Everest Challenge and Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine as a deliberate pairing. Everest Challenge puts teams under the kind of pressure where communication breakdowns become immediately visible — with incomplete information distributed across the team, no single person can see the full picture. Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine takes that lesson further: teams discover that competing against each other is far less productive than collaborating — that the gold mine yields more when teams share resources and information across group lines. For a product team whose success depends on alignment with a US counterpart, the metaphor was precise.
3How We Did It
How was the programme delivered?
The programme ran from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM at the Savoy Mussoorie, with a lunch break woven into the flow. Up to 45 product team members moved through both simulations across the half-day, with each activity followed by a debrief designed to draw out the cross-geography collaboration insights. The Everest Challenge opened the session, surfacing communication and decision-making dynamics quickly and unmistakably. Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine built on that foundation — watching the room discover in real time that individual team strategy was limiting collective outcome was the kind of insight that lands differently when you've just lived it. The winning team took home a champagne and chocolate hamper.
4Key Outcomes
What were the results?
Mussoorie's altitude and the Savoy's historic setting gave the programme a quality that matched the depth of the work. The two simulations formed a complete arc: first, how this team communicates when they can't see everything; then, what happens when they realise that their biggest competitive advantage isn't competing at all. For a team that works across time zones every day, the insights from both activities arrived with the clarity that only comes from experience rather than instruction.
