A 24-hour intensive team effectiveness intervention

Unearth your ability to work as one team:

• Work shoulder-to-shoulder in an out-door underground pit-cooking challenge
• Learn lessons about your team’s strengths and weaknesses
• Develop a sense of common purpose and improved ways of working
• Contract a team charter that will get the best contribution from everyone

We've had great fun with this team off-site. But it's not all about fun. It really gets the team to look at itself and recognise ways in which it can perform better.

An engineering company with significant site operations asked us to help with their most important project team. They were trying to land multiple work-streams under time and budget pressure with frequent disruptions. This fuelled a combative spirit and ways of working that served only short term objectives.

The team leader needed them to develop collaborative ways of working and whole-business awareness fast, and without reducing their output.

So we ran our "Dig Hole, Make Fire, Cook Food" process with them as a 24 hour intensive team intervention.

It wasn't all kumbaya around a camp fire. Some sparks flew. But as a result the project team confronted sticking points and spoke openly about what was needed to work better together. The team also developed skills to more positively resolve conflicts. The team leader was able to reset some behaviour expectations. Then the whole project operated in a calmer way, more able to handle predictable tasks without the previously entrenched 'firefighting' approach.