The Odyssey Team divided and conquered last week in Texas, North Carolina, Michigan and Washington with one committed company. This company's non-profit foundation is the largest in the world and today they leveraged both good deed AND developed their organizational culture. They were psyched with the approach and outcome of the Helping Hands Program, as well as the combination of business simulation and Charity. Conducting concurrent sessions in these states with their employees was a way to get them all on the same page without having to fly them all in to the same place. They found it easier to fly four of us to four different locations than to send 200 of them to one location. Collectively, we built about 60 LN-4 prosthetic hands and built a more committed team who is better focused on Customer Service through excellent delivery.

A company as big as this needs lots of small nudges to make a turn. The participants felt that nudge and are in turn pushing a little harder themselves. Look for great things from this 'Ship' in the near future. Any guesses who it is? Hint: Don't let the nautical metaphor fool you. This 'ship' holds about 94,000 employees as of June 2012. A thousand new ones went through Odyssey's Life Cycles program in July.

Bill

Team Building- Connect to the "Why" at work

Life is now, for the moment. At Odyssey Teams, Inc. we strive to bring emotion and insight in our programs so people get at a visceral level what it means to Plan, Support, Align, Create etc. together. Two of our goals during our Philanthropic Corporate Team Building sessions are to create an emotional connection to the 'why' of people's work and strengthen the connections to the people they work with on the job/projects.

It is a busy time of year for us. In the past 24 days we've been in 2 countries, 5 states, delivering 4 types of philanthropic and team building programs to 19 different groups. Needless to say we are a bit road weary though proud of the results we've co-created with our partners and participants.

At the start of this 'run' I was at UCLA Medical Center and watched a friend (45 years young, wife, 2 kids 6yrs & 3yrs) just four feet away take his last breath. My wife had her hand on his heart, while his wife held his hand as he went to the next place. From that moment on it has been a special kind of Team Building and Charitable event. His family and friends mobilized to plan and align on all of the many known and unknown next steps. Support, brainstorming, creativity and care were all on hyper aware mode. The results made the best (and beautiful) of very challenging times for all involved.

It seems more and more people are being 'Teflon Business Nice' to each other -- Being pleasant, saying just enough, following protocol, a bit of 'game face' on, keeping it surface level. While this may work on a typical/average day, the risk is that a crisis, critical choice point, or other breakdown may occur and these people have no depth of connection/relationship to reach out to those who need help or the ability to extend to those who may help them with their issue.

Things are easier with others by our sides. Share a bit more of yourself- Life is now.
So, connect. Connect now.

Philanthropic Team Building is good for your head, hands and heart

There is a new paradigm in the concept of Team Building and it's called Philanthropic Team Building. In days gone by it was sufficient to be selfish, even decadent, about getting to know each other outside the work setting. When it was done well it involved heads and hands in experiential exercises and simulations. Now it's about incorporating the heart through give back events or Philanthropic Team Building. The response from participants has been overwhelmingly positive - all over the world.

Events like Life Cycles, the original Build a Bike workshop (Odyssey Teams has built and donated over 13,000 bikes alone), Helping Hands is the building prosthetic hands for amputees in developing countries (over 10,000 delivered to 63 countries), and The Playhouse Challenge have revolutionized the Team Building industry and it's good for more than just your team. It's good for your heads, hands and hearts and that means it's good for the world.

Bill

Waiting. Plugged into one of the few, coveted outlets at Gate 12. Ready to pierce the night sky at 560 mph, 40,000 feet and 60 below zero - in a coke-bottle-shaped tube with wings. As the earth's most collaborative species, together, we have made this kind of technologically advanced transportation possible. So many shoulders on which we have stood.

Our world is becoming smaller and smaller, faster and faster every day. But with each breakthrough in technology we also galvanize a new level of expectation where we feel justified in complaining that our flight is delayed an hour - or a day, or that "this" airline doesn't have TVs in the back of EVERY seat or that our phone can't make toast.

I can't take it anymore!!! What is teambuilding?

After 20 years of traveling all over the world and working with the top of fortune 100 companies and the bottom of lots of others, I have hit my breaking point. I've been doing leadership development, communication seminars and "teambuilding" and many of my own clients are still wondering... What is teambuilding? I'm wondering what they really want from me. I'm not sure anybody really knows. I might not even know. But at this point, I'm as big an expert as I can find, so I am going to try and help define this beast for all of us. The definition has become so broad, so overused that some people are beginning to confuse "team hazing" as teambuilding and I don't really want to be a part of that. Do you...?