Team Building - how not to do it

I came across an excellent post over at Positive Sharing this morning which really captures the essence of how not to develop a team i.e. by running a competitive team building event. How many times have you gone to one of these events and found that the objective is to beat everyone not in "your team" by completing some contrived exercises? Great, that will you be fixed then you have beaten everyone and and ridiculed the loosers.

So what to do if you really want to improve your teams performance? Here are a few tips:

First of all decide if you want to be a team - no common goals? Then you are a group not a team. Just give them all a day off and they will be happy.
Decide and agree what your goals are - all of you - make sure the Personal Assistants are in the room as let's face it they probably run your company anyway.
Ask the team to actually build something together - if you are a food company go and feed some people in need, a legal or consulting business - go out and provide some pro bono services etc.
Take some time out to reflect on what you did and most importantly how you felt during the process - what could you do to make everyday feel so productive?

All seems a bit obvious but as with many such things it appears to be so obvious that people just do not see it.

Law of attraction in action - Pecha Kucha

I was staying overnight in a rather depressing hotel last night when I quite literally stumbled upon a Pech Kucha night in a pub not far from London's King's Cross.

Pecha Kucha (ペチャクチャ), usually pronounced in three syllables like "pe-chak-cha", is a presentation format in which content can be easily, efficiently and informally shown, usually at a public event designed for that purpose. Under the format, a presenter shows 20 images for 20 seconds apiece, for a total time of 6 minutes, 40 seconds. This represents one of my favorite "beside the box" thinking methods which encourages clarity and innovation both in thinking and in presentation technique.

The result, in the hands of masters of the form, combines business meeting and poetry slam to transform corporate cliché into surprisingly compelling beat-the-clock performance art (Wired 2007)

Last nights speakers covered everything from architecture, U2 and art-fashion. I really enjoyed the experience both as a spectacle and as a networking opportunity. I had the pleasure of meeting one of the creators of this presentation format, Mark Dytham, who really inspired me to take my use of this technique further both personally and with my clients.

Other links (interesting people from the London event):
Conjoin:me
Azhar Architecture

The week that was!

Whilst no economist, I am starting to see an upturn in the economy, if the number of requests I am receiving to design, facilitate and MC corporate events is anything to go by. Having just spent 2 weeks delivering events both large (>400) and small (<15 delegates), and being in the midst of designing another 6 events to take place in the next few days, I'm pretty convinced that the economy is on the rise.

What is interesting is that these events are all very focused on creating and then delivering the future. I have seen a large IT services company state publicly that it is "reinventing" itself, another French based organisation committed to "glocalization" and yet another looking at how its high technology payments service can be used in "non-traditional" ways to improve business performance. All of these organisations have chosen to use large scale event techniques as the best way to help them drive towards a better future. Such methods as open space, appreciative inquiry and group facilitation are in my opinion some of the sharpest tools available to organisations undergoing business transformation - in the current climate where pace is essential, for me they are simply indispensable.