April 2008 Archives

Experience (Odyssey w/17 years, 21 countries, 150,000 people) and positive, common, extraordinary teambuilding experiences are key to the growth of teams and leaders.

Are you the leader you are today because of the experiences you've had: In sports, at church and in scouting? Under a mentor's guidance and through challenges you've overcome? Through casual time with cohorts, from your time in the field and by having honest conversations?

We bet you answered Yes to most of the above. More than any book, class, PowerPoint presentation, or lecture, your most effective training has come from your experiences and your willingness to learn from them.

Leaders who have the humility to know they need to learn more and the drive to do so - engage in experiences that matter throughout their careers.

Rekindle and support your team's leadership qualities and behaviors. These results occur time and again during the Life Cycles, Helping Hands, and Playhouse Project programs we deliver and we don't take them for granted.

30 - 1200 people in 4-7 hours? That is where Odyssey Teams, Inc. excels like no other. Team building with purpose. Because experience and experiences matter!

Bucketworks. That is the name of a unique meeting space in Milwaukee. They promote themselves as "The Worlds First Health Club for the Brain." We are going to be delivering one of our Life Cycles: bike building, teambuilding programs at their facility in April. The magic of this partnership is that for the past 17 years of delivering teambuilding programs and eight years of our bike building Life Cycles programs, I have been using the term Neurobics to describe what we do. Neurobics is defined as exercise for your brain. Research has shown that if you are right handed and brush your teeth with your left hand one day each week you will decrease your chances of getting Alzheimer's in latter years. Our body thrives on learning and growing. We are built to adapt to our environment, however we are also built to create safe predictable environments. This tug of war between growth and security is at the heart of our programs. We strive to inspire people through our teambuilding events enough to not only cause them to consider a new behavior but create enough motivation that they would be willing to catch themselves and their team being themselves and adopt the new habit when no one is watching. Would you be willing to brush your teeth once this week with your off hand? Try it. You have nothing to loose. It will cross some new wires in your brain and you might solve that nagging problem you have been facing at work. Check it out. It works!

In Odyssey's team building and philanthropic bike building teambuilding programs (Life Cycles), we often mention that if you want something to be different for your self, team or business... the first thing to do is to catch yourself being yourself. This raised level of awareness puts you almost as 'another person' in the room watching/noticing your actions. This added awareness gives you more choices in which to move.

You may catch yourself being cynical, taking the lead, acquiescing, not asking for help, going first, going last, playing it safe, taking a risk, making a put-down, holding back a request, etc.

As soon as you notice a particular conditioned tendency creeping in, the gift then is to pause and decide if this action/thought will serve or hinder what you're up to and where you want to go. You may find a benefit to do more of 'it', less of 'it' or keep 'it' as is... thus, Choice. Now you get to respond and have influence rather than reacting...which can often cause mischief for you and/or those around you.

Our Life Cycles (Build-a-Bike), Helping Hands, and Playhouse Project programs all offer new and neutral experiences for people to have fun, connect with others, and to practice catching themselves being themselves.

Added bonus: The culture of your teams and business (just people) will shift for the better when this practice/skill is in the mix with you and your cohorts.

So go fishing. I'm sure you'll catch something useful.

I read a scientific study recently that people's overall success and happiness is determined by the belief that they have some control or influence on their future and the world around them. People that held this belief were far more successful, created more desired results, and had better health.

This fact seems instrumental in what Corporations should be focusing on providing for their people. Currently the economy is tenuous, which can lead to uncertain times and draw people into fear, hesitancy and stagnation. What we have witnessed is that Odyssey programs can reestablish and ignite people's attitudes that they can impact their world. This is a powerful belief that leads to more hopefulness, productivity, and pure motivation.
Businesses may not be able to give their employees security right now, but they can give them something (especially in this economical climate) priceless and long lasting. The inspired feeling that they do indeed have an impact and influence on the world around them. That what they do does matter significantly.
This is the first attitudinal principle that gets questioned in these kinds of times. Helping Odyssey programs like Life Cycles (bike building teambuilding) will ignite the belief that I can make a difference no matter what the circumstances. This is the key to success because it promotes an ability to transcend the current climate of fear and uncertainty. This fact has been revealed through our own experiences and observation, but also scientifically supported.

The Lifecycles, bike building teambuilding program is hands down one of the most emotional teambuilding experiences. After attending over 50 of these programs, I still find myself overwhelmed by the human aspect this program provides; and every program creates its own unique story.

One of my favorite programs occurred about six months ago when I was in Houston Texas. The recipients of the bikes were children from a foster care agency. We had a total of 9 children; four of them were siblings who had been split up into two different homes; they hadn't seen or heard from each other in months and had no idea they would all be together. This story is the prime example of how the Life Cycles ripple affect extends beyond anything we can possibly imagine...

I was meeting the kids and their foster parents at a hotel; they were all coming in separate cars and meeting for the first time. One of the fathers and two children had already arrived. He and I chatted a bit until the rest of the parents arrived. As I got up to greet some of the other parents, two little girls who had just walked in started shrieking with joy- they had just spotted their brothers. Immediately they ran and embraced each other; then looking each other up and down started declaring "You look bigger!" "Is that a uniform you're wearing?!" "You have a band new belt!" Then they started talking excitedly about all the changes in their lives- their new homes, new schools, new parents and new friends. When I was finally able to wrap my head around what I had just witnessed, my eyes started welling up and my heart just swelled. When you witness something of that emotional magnitude; you can't help but be moved.

It's crazy to imagine that this family reunion started with a phone call inquiring about a teambuilding session. Someone wanted to bring their employees closer together, and in doing so, brought a family together. It makes you realize everything you do, all your actions-and even inactions affect someone somewhere all the time, and you may not even see it.

Corporate team building putting focus on good deeds - Building bikes for kids, prosthetic hands for landmine survivors.

Written by Darrell Smith for the Sacramento Beedvsmith@sacbee.com

Published 12:00 am PDT Friday, March 28, 2008
Story appeared in BUSINESS section, Page D1 of the Sacramento Bee

Xyratex employees assemble a bicycle during a team-building exercise this month at the Le Rivage hotel in Sacramento. Randall Benton / rbenton@sacbee.com

Chris Sharman did a couple of unexpected things at a team-building workshop with 44 of his co-workers from the data storage firm Xyratex. First, he built a prosthetic hand and placed it in a wooden gift box that he and his teammates decorated.

Then, after he saw a brief slide show about the land mine victims all around the world waiting to receive the device, he brushed away a tear.

Eschewing the rope climbs and trust falls that have long been the traditional exercises at such retreats, Xyratex, based in the United Kingdom, and other companies choose to cement team bonds by giving employees a project with a higher purpose.

"We figured out what it was for fairly early," said Sharman, a Xyratex vice president, who had safely stowed the prosthesis he helped build under his chair. But that didn't lessen the impact, he said. "It pales into insignificance, your problems."

"Philanthropic team building" it's called, and Xyratex sought out a Chico-based firm that has designed and facilitated team-building experiences like this one for the better part of two decades. Known as Odyssey, it helps employees and managers work better together while helping the larger community in a "mix of inspiration and practical philanthropy."

The Xyratex employees who came to Sacramento's Le Rivage hotel from around the world March 4, worked together to build not only prosthetic hands but also bikes that they donated on the spot to nine smiling children from Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Sacramento. "We've tapped into the humanity of business," said Lain Hensley, co-founder and chief operating officer of Odyssey. " ... You don't have to quit your job and join the Peace Corps."

Utilizing firms like teambonding, with its twin homes in Boston and San Diego, to Oakland's Team Building Unlimited to Repario of Lake Tahoe, Nev., more companies in California are fusing corporate team building with good works.

"It's not just the trick du jour anymore," said Danika Davis, chief executive officer of the San Francisco-based Northern California Human Resources Association. " ... Anytime you add meaning, it's going to have an impact and drive the message home."

The emphasis on good works may even be part of a larger trend in corporate giving. Harold McGraw III, president and chief executive officer of The McGraw-Hill Cos. and chairman of the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy, discussed the evolution in the committee's 2007 review.

McGraw said the New York-based forum of corporate leaders now spearheads "holistic philanthropy" which, in part, "taps into the tremendous desire of employees to participate through their volunteerism."

Odyssey's programs are a natural fit for Xyratex, which has focused on charitable giving to children who live near their sites in Malaysia, Europe and the United States throughout its 13-year history.

Todd Gresham, a Xyratex executive vice president, has seen the program's effects on his people.

"The IT industry has a unique culture. Many came from venture-backed organizations, and this type of (exercise) tears down walls of intellectual prowess or macho success," Gresham said. "You see people who are very powerful in the industry broken down to their rawest levels of emotion."

It works on a number of levels, said Dwight Burlingame, associate executive director of the Indianapolis-based Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, a leading center on giving.

Many companies use this approach to increase morale, give employees a greater and clearer sense of purpose and develop a stronger understanding of the company's mission, Burlingame said.

"Firms are focusing in on how they can use community involvement programs to increase pride within their companies and increase morale," he said. "To be working for a company where you have that opportunity to build team pride in a business, that can provide another factor in the sense of engagement with the employer."

Xyratex employees, including about 450 in West Sacramento, produce data storage technology that has been embedded in systems for machinery as diverse as the space shuttle and GE Healthcare's mammography equipment, Gresham said.

"The person you're building that for could be your wife or your daughter," Gresham said. "It brings home that (the customer) is not just buying sheet metal and software."

Company executives emphasize delivering quality products that meet customer needs, so it was no surprise that Xyratex employees were anxiously awaiting signs of approval when the door swung open for the nine children who had no idea what they'd be receiving.

"Do they look like new bikes?" Odyssey facilitator Todd Demorest asked. "Who's No. 5? They built you a brand new bike!"

No. 5 was 10-year-old Alondra Tovar.

"I was really in shock," Tovar said later, standing next to her bicycle. "It was amazing that they gave us (each) a bike."

That's the payoff for Odyssey's Hensley.

"For the 99 percent who are skeptics, there's the 1 percent who say, 'I want to enjoy my work,' " Hensley said. "We want them to say, 'When I created this hand, I could probably do that more often, and I can probably change the life of someone two cubicles away.' They forget. That child, that hand, embodies that purpose."

Xyratex employees Ed Prager, left, and Penny Gillhan put together one of the nine bikes destined as gifts for children from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Sacramento. Randall Benton / rbenton@sacbee.com

Alondra Tovar, 10, gets her new helmet adjusted, which goes along with the bicycle she received from Xyratex. Randall Benton / rbenton@sacbee.com