1The Challenge
What was the challenge?
Deutsche Telekom brought its team to two of India's more striking retreat destinations — Coorg in the Western Ghats and Jim Corbett in the Himalayan foothills — with a brief spanning four themes: collaboration, fun, networking, and big picture thinking.
Those four don't naturally coexist in a single activity. Fun and networking want energy, movement, and low stakes. Collaboration and big picture thinking want focus, shared purpose, and something at stake. A programme that chases all four with one format usually ends up half-delivering each. The design question was how to give each theme its own vehicle across a six-hour day without the day feeling like two disconnected halves.
Running the same programme twice, a week apart, in two very different locations for two groups added a consistency requirement on top.
2Our Solution
What solution did we design?
Squid Games was chosen to own the fun and networking end of the brief. It's a high-spectacle elimination format where teams move through a sequence of physical challenges under pressure — and its particular value for a networking objective is that it strips out hierarchy fast. Nobody's job title helps them in Red Light, Green Light. Colleagues who might never have spoken end up on the same side of a challenge, shouting for each other, within minutes.
The format was kept deliberately flexible rather than locked to a fixed sequence, so facilitators could read each group and each location and adjust. Facilitators led in costume from the outset, opening directly with icebreakers already in character, and participants were given props to play with — small touches that establish the theatre of the thing immediately and give people permission to be silly together, which is exactly what a networking-driven session needs in its first ten minutes.
Paired with it, the Radiant Mosaic carried the collaboration and big picture thinking half of the brief. Each participant contributes an individual panel; only at the reveal do the separate pieces resolve into one large image, chosen in advance with the client. It's the literal expression of big picture thinking — nobody can see the whole while they're working on their part, and the outcome depends entirely on everyone contributing to a vision they can't yet see. Set against Squid Games' noise and competition, it gave the day a genuine second register.
At the client's request, the day closed with a video summary rather than a group photograph — a moving record of what the group had done rather than a static one.
3How We Did It
How was the programme delivered?
The programme ran 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM at each location: Coorg Cliffs Resort in Madikeri, and Riverview Retreat at Jim Corbett a week later. The same format ran at both so the two groups shared the same experience despite the distance between them.
Facilitators opened in costume and moved straight into icebreakers, setting the tone before any formal briefing — a deliberate choice for a group whose brief led with fun and networking. Squid Games then ran through its challenge sequence with props in play and no rigid format, giving facilitators room to pace it to the group in front of them.
The Radiant Mosaic ran as the collaborative counterpoint, with the final image agreed with Deutsche Telekom in advance so the reveal landed as something meaningful to them rather than generic. A minimum of two facilitators ran each session across both locations, with travel and logistics for both handled end to end.
The day closed with the video summary, capturing the full arc from icebreakers to the mosaic reveal.
4Key Outcomes
What were the results?
Squid Games gave Deutsche Telekom's team the energy and levelling the brief's fun and networking themes called for — costumed, competitive, and hierarchy-free from the first minute. Paired with the Radiant Mosaic, the day covered all four of the client's themes without asking one activity to do work it wasn't built for.
Delivered consistently across Coorg and Jim Corbett for 90 participants, the programme gave two groups in two very different settings the same shared experience — and a video summary to carry it home.