Executive team building: stop wasting their time
Stumble It!In Off-Sites that Work, July 2006, Harvard Business Review, the authors argue that the core problem with most strategy off-sites or team away-days is that they're insufficiently structured and not enough thought given to how they are to be facilitated.
It is simply not enough to schedule a meeting, invite top leaders (and, perhaps, an outside expert), and block off units of time to discuss big subjects expecting the rest to take care of itself - it wont produce anything useful.
"If you and your executive team spend four days a year rafting down rivers together, you'll eventually get good at rafting down rivers".
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This article hits the nail on the head. When planning executive team building, more attention is paid to the location for the executive retreat, the recreational activities and the menu than the content. Sometimes the facilitated exercises are just a way to justify the other expenditures. When a company spends top dollar for a luxury venue but fails to set objectives for the executive retreat, skimps on facilitation, and crams the facilitated exercises into half a day or a few hours, clearly team building is not the priority. To produce results, team building has to be more than an afterthought. It must be carefully planned, flawlessly executed and thoroughly debriefed.
Posted by: Executive Retreats by Executive Oasis International | October 9, 2007 1:31 AM
Bioteams Books Reviews
Organisational teams: thin slice for responsiveness
Humans and animals do not need complete information to act; they can operate on various clues provided there is a sufficient context. Organizational teams can also use this thin slicing technique in conjunction with short messaging to enhance their performance. Malcolm Gladwell’s introspective book Blink digs deep into the abyss of human cognition to illustrate the human ability to think at a subconscious level. The idea of thin slicing is used where one is introduced to only a few snippets of information which lead to a series of conclusions based on moments of rapid cognition – an ability claimed to be intrinsically dormant in most humans. By bioteams guest author Max Bhanabhai.
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