Work Buddy Program
Free interactive tool

The Strategic Collision Calculator

In any group bigger than a small team, people self-sort into tight pockets and never collide with the rest. A buddy program engineers those collisions on purpose — the moments when two people who'd never have met end up building a real relationship. Pick a cohort, duration, and card size; we'll show you what a completed cohort actually looks like.

WorkplacesUniversities & classroomsFaith communitiesSocial & networking clubsConferences & alumni networks

Number of people in this onboarding wave (4–500).

Onboarding duration

How long the program runs.

Bingo card size

Bigger cards = more activities per pair.

Collision multiplier
8.4×
vs. chance encounters in a group this size
Strategic collisions
59
Cross-group pairings the program created
Cross-group coverage
26%
Of all possible cross-group pairs
New connections / buddy
5.9
Unique partners each person met
Hard-task completion
50%
Proxy for relationship depth

Strategic collisions vs. chance

Without a program, only about 7 cross-group meetings happen organically in a cohort this size. This program creates 59.

8.4×
Collision multiplier

Connection map

Each arc is a strategic collision; ring colors group people by their home group.

Simulated completed cohort
Buddy 02Buddy 13Buddy 16Buddy 18Buddy 22Buddy 23Buddy 06Buddy 15Buddy 19Buddy 21Buddy 03Buddy 09Buddy 11Buddy 12Buddy 14Buddy 17Buddy 24Buddy 01Buddy 07Buddy 08Buddy 20Buddy 04Buddy 05Buddy 10
Customer ServiceOperationsFieldCall CenterIT / Software Development

Collisions by group

Where the program puts its energy — total cross-group meetings credited to each home group.

59
Cross-group collisions
  • Customer Service32
  • Operations18
  • Field32
  • Call Center20
  • IT / Software Development16

Connection density

Each cell = how often two people were paired across all rounds.

24 buddies shownDensity

Task completion over time

Easy connectors get knocked out fast; hard, relationship-deepening tasks trail in late. Longer programs visibly stack more depth.

How we modeled this

  • • Every buddy is randomly assigned to one of five home groups (think departments, majors, ministries, or chapters).
  • • A seeded RNG drives Fisher–Yates shuffles; each round greedily prefers partners who haven't met yet, falling back to repeats only when forced.
  • • The organic baseline assumes roughly √(cohort size) cross-group meetings happen naturally — a stand-in for how thin spontaneous coverage gets as a group grows.
  • • Tasks are split ~50/30/20 easy / medium / hard. Each round, every remaining square has a difficulty-weighted chance to complete — easy connectors finish fast, hard collaborations take real effort.
  • • One trial per re-roll. Hit re-roll to see how another cohort with the same inputs plays out.

Run a real cohort — at work, on campus, or in your community.

Spin up an actual Work Buddy room in under two minutes. Free to start.

Start a room