Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Why We Hate Off-sites - 1


Sticks and stones

“Sticks and cornerstones won’t break their bones, but they just might break their spirit”

A dozen workers at a small international marketing company recently found themselves at a retreat run by experts from an "experiential learning" firm. "They came in talking about the seven cornerstones of teamwork," says one attendee, so each employee was given a pouch filled with seven colored stones that stood for concepts like sharing resources, defining roles, and communicating frequently. Whenever a participant violated a cornerstone during the exercise, others had to roll a stone at him across the table. "Not communicating? Here's a purple stone," says the attendee mockingly. "It was ridiculous. We've worked together better since that silly offsite, but it's probably because we sat around the bar afterward laughing."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've been following "Why We Hate Off-sites" and keep coming back to this one, why because this happened at my company not too long ago and yes we also found it ridiculous. Please someone tell whoever in senior management that marbles are for the playground.

Anonymous said...

Off sites are egocentric activities for management to find out secrets