Steve Duffield had his work cut out for him. It was December 2005, and he and his teammates had been told that they had one day to build a working catapult out of a pile of old wood and rubbish, using only a couple of tools. No, this wasn’t a television game show. The “Scrapheap Challenge” was part of a corporate team-building exercise held in the countryside of East Sussex, UK, by Synchronica PLC, a company that specialises in software to help companies manage mobile devices. At the end of the day, most of the teams’ catapults fell apart, but some surprisingly shaky-looking contraptions actually performed well. “The results were hilarious,” recalls Duffield, a 32 year-old technical writer at the technology company.
Building a catapult is far from the only challenge that employees at mobile device management company Synchronica have faced over the past 18 months. The company has undergone a radical change, including a merger with publicly-listed DAT Group PLC and an ongoing restructuring. Dealing with these changes has required a creative approach in the company’s communications strategies, both internally and externally. The Communication Director takes a look at how that adjustment is taking place.