Team Building in a Growing Economy

Team Building During a Recovery

Since the 2008 Wall Street Meltdown, it’s been a bumpy ride for many industries and organizations. Yet, indications are that the economy is slowly but surely on the upswing.

---

Signs of the Recovery is a great tool for tracking articles with information pointing to a recovery.

---

“The economy may well be recovering, but those of us who have become accustomed to operating in survival mode are having a tough time adapting to a more upbeat climate, workplace experts say. After coping with budget cuts and layoffs and making the most of limited resources, some workers are stuck in a recession mentality, unable to think innovatively, shake off their gloomy outlook and seize new opportunities.” “Are you suffering from post-recession workplace disorder?” The Globe and Mail

Shaping Your Rebound Strategy

So, how does an executive inspire team that’s battle weary and discouraged to give those final pushes required to seize emerging growth opportunities? There are no quick fixes but targeted and focused business team building can be an indispensable arrow in your quiver as you shape your rebound strategy.

This is not the time to substitute fluffy recreational activities and frivolous social outings for bonafide business team building. Now more than ever when pay-off is imminent, it’s important to devote quality time to focusing on your company’s goals and objectives and shaping the strategies that will help you achieve them.

During the 2003 downtown, the National Post ran an excellent article called In Tough Times, the Smart Firms Retreat. (In fact, I was one of the experts interviewed for that piece.) Relatively few companies have heeded this advice. Instead, many companies have put team building initiatives and retreats on ice. This is unfortunate because a carefully designed and executed team building strategy can help companies:

• inspire team members to persist in the face of discouraging circumstances
• brainstorm and identify new target markets for their products and services
• identify emerging and new growth opportunities
• harness the creative genius of the team to generate new ideas and solutions to pressing business challenges

Preparing Your Team to Seize Growth Opportunities in a Recovery

If your company put team building on hold, this is definitely the time to pull the team together and devote some quality time to planning and strategizing. Team building for a growing economy involves giving teams new tools and a refresher on new ways to use familiar tools to:

• scan the horizon to spot emerging trends and shifts in the marketplace
• identify new opportunities for growth
• identify new markets and customers for your products and services
• move beyond traditional approaches and look for opportunities in new places
• fine-tune or completely transform your marketing and sales strategy and tactics to fit a more promising economic scenario

What does team building for a recovery look like?

• Focus on real business issues instead of just playtime



• Give the teams a project instead of just discussing cases

  Example:

  Team Building with a Project

• Give the teams a real project that has an impact on organizational performance and success

  Example:

  Executive Team Building for US Wireless Communications Firm

• Use a simulation that sharpens the skill set needed on the job. For example, if sales coaching is going to be key for success during the recovery, give project teams the task of coaching a local entrepreneur or small business owner to boost sales through a special campaign

  Example:

  Team Building for Sales Executives from a Middle Eastern Pharmaceutical Company (GSK)

Save on Venue….Don’t Scrimp on Content

It is astonishing how many companies still blow most of their team building budget on the venue and recreational aspects and then have little left for a facilitator. It’s like reserving a private dining room at an expensive restaurant and then spending so much on desert that there is no money left for the main course.

For many companies, it’s STILL not time to celebrate and have a lavish retreat at a 5 star retreat. Instead, a more practical approach to team building can be just as effective and it is likely the order of the day. Here is how to stretch your budget:

• Schedule all or most of the session on-site and ensure that employees respect the “do not disturb” sign.
• Alternatively, use one or more of the following cost effective venues:

1. a local hotel or banquet facility to save travel and accomodation expenses
2. meeting rooms at libraries, municipal offices, colleges, or universities
3. the living room of an executive’s home or cottage
4. conservation areas (for the recreational components)
5. Trade meeting facilities with a supplier or other local company that is not a competitor.

   Use their meeting or conference rooms for 2 – 3 days and let them use yours for the same period.

Fun is Still Important but Don’t Make it the Main Focus

I hope that regular readers of this blog have been able to break out of the “team building = fun and games mindset”. If not, please have a look at some previous entries.

• Team Building Tips: Gaining Clarity: Why Recreation and Entertainment are NOT Team Building
• Why Companies are Cutting Team Building

Certainly build in some recreation. It’s part of team bonding. However, make it shorter and more cost effective than you would during more prosperous times. Maybe devote half a day, a few hours or an evening to a social or recreational activity. Just don’t make this your main focus. Save the celebration for a corporate event or incentive trip when the company has turned the corner and taken advantage of the many opportunities for growth that emerge during a recovery.

Possible ideas include:

• a mini-race activity to find the off-site location for the retreat
• a mini-race with clues to help project teams find their mystery “mission control” location
• orienteering
• GPS challenges



• cooking challenges – if budget is tight, it can involve starting a fire and cooking lunch over a campfire at a local conservation or campsite



• dinner at a nice restaurant
• if your company is doing reasonably well, get a corporate table at a charity polo tournament – you can provide your team with a really unique experience at a fraction of what it would have cost you to schedule your entire team building retreat off-site.

  Example:Polo for heart Table or Tent Reservation

Related:

• Are you suffering from post-recession workplace disorder?

  Not everyone has been liberated by the recovery. Some cubicle warriors are finding that two years of putting out fires has snuffed their creative spark

Companies Still Substituting Extreme Activites for Real Team Building

I was sure that, in the aftermath of the economic downturn and the “AIG Effect”, we could finally say good riddance to companies using extreme activities as a substitute for real team building. Based on recent CNN report, this is not the case.

• Extreme retreats: Fire walks & snow survival with your workmates

Here are some excerpts:

“The desert experience involves archery and a “fire walk” across hot coals. The latter activity is intended to leave participants energized and on a “spiritual high,” ready to attempt an even more cathartic challenge — having an arrow pressed against their throat until it snapped.”

“Deep Snow Survival” retreat, held in the Rockies. Participants are given snowshoes, beacons and taught alpine survival skills, before trekking deep into avalanche country. Their guides then tell them there has been an avalanche, that they will have to overnight in the snow, and they need to begin building snow shelters immediately.”

“”A day out of the office trialling the Jetlev R200 — a personal, water-powered jet pack that can propel the wearer 30 feet in the air over water — fits the bill.”

“Another option for executives seeking an invigorating buzz is to take to the skies in an Italian military training plane for an old-fashioned dog fight.”

Is this for real?

The National Post has reported that, even the Sky Tower in Auckland, N.Z. has billed its walk around its circumference, 192 metres above the ground without handrails as “the ideal corporate team-building activity”.

At least CN Tower has described it  Edgewalk attraction which involves a walk around the circumference and balancing off the tower as an “extreme urban adventure” and not team building.

What do any of these activities have to do with team building?

• Bungee jumping off bridges in Australia
• Controlled free falls from a 260 metres launch pad at Sky Jump in Las Vegas
• Getting set on fire, jumping through breakaway windows or falling down stairs at stunt schools in Australia and California.

Absolutely nothing!

• Have some companies learned nothing from the events of the past 3 1/2 years?
• What are the benefits?
• Where is the R.O.I.?
• How do any of these activities contribute to the bottom line?
• Why are some companies still spending on these extreme activities instead of real team building?
• How can any CEO cost justify any of these activities, particularly when the economic recovery is still so fragile?

I hope that some executives will come by and share their perspective.

---

Looking for real team building that integrates:

• safe outdoor team challenges
• facilitated business team building exercises
• business cases
• debriefing and business applications exercises targeting your companies issues that impact the bottom line

Try the following facilitated team building simulations:

• Wilderness Survival in Toronto, or in Arizona and Colorado
• Island Survival in Jamaica
• Jungle Survival in Malysia or Costa Rica
• Desert Survival in Dubai, Oman or Arizona
• The Quest for Black Gold in Abu Dhabi or Dubai
• Mountain Team Building in Oman
• Arctic Survival near Toronto, in Japan, and in Colarado

Effective Team Building: 8 Essential Elements for Executives

8 Essential Executive Elements for Effective Team Building

Over the years, I’ve noticed that when certain elements are missing, team building is less than effective. Definitely, an effort is made to include each and every one of these elements for every team building initiative. Unfortunately, many clients are totally resistant to including some or all of these elements. Comments that provide insight into the reasons for this resistance would be greatly appreciated. It’s puzzling. Why invest money in team building and then doom it to less than optimal results?

Essential Elements for Effective Team Building

1. Short conference call or meeting with CEO.
   This is essential to pinpoint goals, objectives, expectations, and corporate challenges.
   If this step is skipped, you risk having the CEO turn up, find the session you designed is not what s/he was looking first. At best you’ll be scrambling to make last-minute changes. At worst, s/he’ll simply cut team building short. Participants will be left with all kinds of loose ends and you will be left looking totally incompetent.
2. Participant Profiles.
   Without input from participants about what they know and don’t know, you risk being criticized for pitching to the wrong level or having your session dismissed as irrelevant “fluff”
   Participant profiles will help you identify participants needs, issues and concerns. A well designed profile will also help you pinpoint the tools, models and strategies with which the group is already familiar.
3. Full or Mini-Learning Styles SurveyWithout an understanding of the learning styles of the group you risk missing the mark by designing a team building session that is too analytical or too out of the box for participants.Learning styles surveys will help you identify the most relevant exercises and facilitation methods.
4. Content outline reviewed and signed off by the CEO.Again, you want no surprises.
5. Checkpoint survey completed by participants at the end of the first half day and day.
   End of session feedback forms provide no opportunity for improvement. You can’t “fix” a session when it’s over.
   The information from checkpoint surveys will make course correction possible.
6. Checkpoint meeting with CEO and corporate contact at end of first day (or half day for a full day session).If you’re missing the mark, the sooner you know it and can undertake course correction, the better.
7. Allow sufficient time for debriefing and application exercise.Cut it short and analytical learners simply will not have enough time to process what they have learned.Debriefing requires 1 hour at minimum. Application exercises require 1 – 3 hours.
8. Post-mortem.
   Schedule this to take place immediately after the session or it may never happen.
   Identify take-aways, next steps and follow-up strategies.

Including these elements will require a total of 40 – 60 minutes from the CEO (i.e. about 20 – 30 minutes with the CEO before the session, 10 – 15 minutes during the session and 10 – 15 minutes immediately after). Any CEO who is not prepared to invest this much time to ensure  to drive team building and ensure that it is effective is simply not serious about it. When this level of commitment is missing, there is a high likelihood that team building will be ineffective.

LinkedIn Groups: International Business Team Building Network for Executives

It’s no secret that a lot of companies simply aren’t getting a lot of bang for their team building buck.  I’ve previously blogged about top 10 team building pitfalls but by far the most common are:

• Confusing team recreation with team building
• Trying to cram team building into such a short timeframe that it has to be diluted and “dumbed down” to the point that it is meaningless.
• executives abdicating the responsibility for driving team building initiatives and delegating it to inexperienced team members

To help executives have instant access to information to create effective team building, the International Business Team Building Network for Executives was formed on LinkedIn almost 3 years ago. It’s a growing network of over 225 executives from 30 countries on just about every continent. More are welcome

Some of the topics under exploration have included:

• Innovation Lessons from Steve Jobs
• Can Team Building Improve Engagement and the Bottom Line



• Competitive Alliances: Lessons from the Canadian Hockey Arena
• Innovation Lessons from Tim Hortons – A Canadian Institution
• Meeting, Team Building & Event Design: Integrity vs Flexibility
• Team Building in Dubai

There is also other discussions of interest to executives including :

• Executive Social Media Primer
• Strategic Sales for Executives
• Strategic Marketing for Executives

While membership is restricted primarily to CEOs, Vice-Presidents and other executives, the group does accept a handful of team building facilitators and consultants.

The stipulation is that they agree to contribute meaningful content that is of interest to senior executives. Care is taken to find contributers from around the world. From time to time, spaces open up if some consultants find that they just can’t contribute regularly.

So, if you are an executive or a team building consultant with meaningful content and the time to contribute it regularly, apply for membership today. You’re likely to pick up a number of strategies to take your team building initiatives to the next level.

Corporate Politics: 10 Sure-Fire Strategies to Reduce Turf Wars and Power Struggles

In large corporations, corporate politics (with its accompanying turf wars and power struggles) seems to be inevitable. These dynamics are not limited to large profit-making corporations either. Long before I had a career in business, I was a professional counsellor. The office politics in small organizations, even non-profits, can be nothing short of fierce.

Over the Christmas, there were reports of fighting between rival factions of monks at Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity. The bizarre footage of bearded priests in flowing clerical robes coming to blows and fighting with sticks and brooms was flashed on TV screens around the globe. What happened to “Peace on Earth, Good Will Towards Men”? It was such a disgrace and so disturbing that I definitely will not be posting the Youtube video. It is this scuffle that inspired this blog entry as it reminded me of what takes place every day in corporations and, since we’re talking about a fight in a church, this scripture:

“What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight.

James 4:1, The Bible

We don’t often see people come to blows at work (or church for that mater) but the emotional heat of the conflict can be just as intense when corporate politics trigger the flight or fight response.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a magic bullet that will eliminate turf wars but I do have some ideas about what is behind some of the in-fighting and a few ideas for leadership practices that can reduce it. The following suggestions will help executives and senior team leaders avoid practices that foster a climate of fear, insecurity and mistrust that fuels in-fighting. When guidelines are not clear, team members will have a tendency to try to make each other look bad or engage in unethical practices to ensure that they are rewarded or selected for opportunities despite the fact that they lack the minimum qualifications and experience.

1. Veto the appointment of volatile executives.
   People will do anything to get out of the line of fire.Executive outbursts and unpredictable behaviour breeds a climate of fear and insecurity that will only intensify politics and game-playing.
2. Set clear criteria for decisions and STICK to them.
   Constantly flip-flopping and changing decisions ensures that only the most spineless team members who can blow hot and cold with every change in direction will flourish in that environment.
3. Don’t set departments up to compete for scarce resources.
4. Encourage collaboration. Reward senior executives and team leaders who formulate joint solutions and plans for the good of the organization as a whole.
5. There is merit in a meritocracy.
   The modern corporation is not a meritocracy. If they were, the brightest and the best would be promoted into positions of leaderships. This clearly is not the case. Instead, irrelevant factors such as who plays golf, who belongs to the right country club and, heaven forbid, who is sleeping with who, have an impact.By developing a clear set of competencies and hiring and promoting team members based on these competencies, there is a higher likelihood that your best people will be promoted and the jockeying for position and “war games” reduced.
6. Stop the unethical practices to work around the qualifications.
   I have twice in my career encountered situations in which positions were designated as “acting” in order to avoid posting the position and promoting the most qualified person. In both instances, the individuals had not completed high school and they had minimal or no relevant experience.Qualifications are there for a reason. If a position requires a certain level of education and experience, what is the point of bending the rules? If the most qualified person is female, of a different race or religion, does this really have a bearing on whether or not they can do the job.
7. Nix the nepotism. It’s a major morale buster.
   To ensure continuity in family owned small businesses, keeping it in the family might make sense. Nepotism has no place in major corporations or, heaven forbid, public sector organizations.
8. Stop rewarding team members who are experts at gossip, news carrying, backbiting, “sucking up”, and “currying favour” (as we Jamaicans call it.) What is rewarded, gets repeated.
9. Stop rewarding “yes men”.
   Being round them drains the spirit of innovation from everyone around them.
   Scenario: I remember a manager who expressed her opinion about a corporate policy but then added “However, when the new VP comes on board, I will find out his views on the subject and they will also become mine.”Some of the biggest corporate failures of our time could have been avoided if leaders had the courage to stand up for their convictions and their cautions were heeded. Remember the old plastic bag commercial. Leaders need to be hefty, not whimpey.
10. Develop clear guidelines for rewards and recognition and STICK to them.Reward the wrong behaviour and your organization is guaranteed to become a hot bed of politics.

• What was your reaction to the monks battling it out with brooms in Bethlehem?
• Do any of these scenarios “ring true”?
• What strategies would you add to this list?
• What do you think is behind the constant in-fighting on some executive and management teams?

Photo Credit: sidknee23