You are locked in a room with up to nine other people. They could be known to you but chances are they are strangers. The group is given 60 minutes to find the key to the door by discovering clues that lead to puzzles that reveal “meta-puzzles.” Solve those larger brain teasers and you…
Read More
Group Creativity with Espresso
Fascinating. In his “Where Good Ideas Come From,” Steve Johnson‘s TED talk is a must-watch (multiple times at that) as he explains the environment that suits creativity: tight spaces that allow our “hunches to collide” with others. His thesis is that the Enlightenment was propelled by the tight seating in the emerging English coffee houses…
Read More
Positive Affirmations: Napoleon Hill to John Lennon
I know. You’ve heard enough about Napoleon Hill and his best selling self-help handbook, “Think And Grow Rich.” You have had it up to here with the trans-generational do-it-yourself millionaire advice that you’re not even going to read it. Or maybe you did read it, and you “thought,” and you never got rich. Well, to…
Read More
Extreme Risk Taking: Everest to Wall Street
In the 80’s and 90’s extreme risk taking through team building was the rage. Executives were kayaking down rapids, zipping across zip lines, scrambling over Project Adventure walls and, yes, climbing mountains – all for the purpose of teaching team effectiveness. In time, cooler heads prevailed, as did higher liability premiums and the extreme…
Read More
The Grease Pole: Team Lessons at an Italian Feast
When I was eight I was first introduced to team effectiveness. Our parish, Corpus Christi, in the New York suburb of Port Chester, held the feast of St. Anthony every summer which had a carnival every night. Music, games of chance, rides, even a spaghetti eating contest, were all part of the action. But one…
Read More
Amazon, “Survivor” and True Team Building
What happens when you love a company’s product but then glimpse how the sausage is made behind the curtain? In our family, we’ve grown to rely upon Amazon for so much fulfillment. I still miss the old Lighthouse bookstore of my youth in Rye, NY with its stacks to the ceiling, easy chair for browsing and…
Read More
The Art in Team Building
The summer of 2006 was notable because Paul McCartney finally turned 64, a little known company launched its new idea called Twitter and Pluto was demoted from the Nine Planet Club. It was also the summer of the DaVinci Code. Dan Brown’s riveting mystery-detective novel was everywhere (since then it has surpassed 40 million sales.)…
Read More
Leadership Paralysis
Last week I ran an team builder for a major Silicon Valley company and all went well until I spied a very typical scene. Like all my events, we put people into heterogeneous small groups of 4-6, some from management, some from the ranks and even a sprinkling of executives throughout. Their mission was to…
Read More
Don’t Say The “S” Word
Running With Scott Jurek on his record-breaking Appalachian Trail run
June 24, 2015, approximately 3:30 PM on the Appalachian Trail just east of the Hudson River, I ran with Scott Jurek for several miles. While I am no ultrarunner by any means, I was surprised that his pace allowed me to jog along with him and talk for most of the time. We even walked…
Read More