Escape the Process

A build-your-own escape room where every answer is a real fact about how the company works: a code found in the expenses policy, a name in the on-call rota, a number in the product documentation. New starters learn the things nobody remembers to tell them, and existing staff discover what the documentation does not say.

What it is good for

• OnboardingHelping new people learn names, norms and who to ask about what.
• CollaborationWorking a shared problem where no one person holds all the information.
• Problem solvingStructuring an ambiguous problem under a time limit.
• Pure funNo learning objective. Sometimes that is the correct answer.

What you need

• Five or six puzzles you write
• A timer visible to everyone
• Envelopes, or a locked document per stage

The run sheet

1. Pick six facts worth knowing (prep)

   Things new people get wrong: who approves what, where the incident channel is, what the support hours are, which document is the current one. Each becomes a puzzle answer.

2. Write puzzles backwards from the answers (prep)

   Answer first, puzzle second. A four-digit code from the four stages of the approval process. A word spelled from the first letters of the leadership team. Keep each one solvable in five minutes.

3. Chain them (prep)

   Each answer unlocks the next envelope or document. A chain means teams cannot skip ahead and split up — they have to work the same problem.

4. Run it in teams of four to six (40 min)

   Mix new starters with people who have been there years. Visible countdown. Hints available, at a cost of two minutes on the clock.

5. Walk the answers (10 min)

   Go through every puzzle and state the real fact plainly. This is the part that teaches — the game only made them care about the answer.

Facilitator notes

• Writing it takes two to three hours the first time and twenty minutes to refresh afterwards. It is the highest-prep activity here and the one with the longest shelf life.
• Every time a puzzle turns out to be unsolvable because the documentation is wrong or missing, you have found a real defect. Keep a list — that list is half the value.
• Do not use anything confidential as a puzzle answer. Teams photograph these.

Debrief questions

Ask these immediately afterwards, not next week. Fifteen minutes of these is what turns the activity into something the team refers back to — see the debrief guide.

1. Which answer did nobody on your team know?
2. Which of these facts should have been obvious from our documentation, and was not?
3. What would you add as a seventh puzzle?

Variations