business

 I have been involved in the teambuilding industry since 1994 and as a result I often get asked by industry publications if I’d like to write editorial or them.  When I agree, they want to charge me a fee because they feel that my article will constitute “marketing”. 

The real message behind this practice though, is not that they want to charge me for marketing, but they are willing to place anyone’s contribution if they are willing to pay.  Irrespective of the author’s experience and / or standing in the industry. The teambuilding industry has changed dramatically in recent times, in part due to the recession, but for the most part because people have changed along with companies' expectations of these excursions.

 Marketing hype today is all about so-called “viral marketing”.  If your budget is big enough, and you want to embrace internet technology, almost any viral marketing company will get you to throw some of your budget their way.  The truth is though that viral marketing is nothing new:  Doctors have been doing it for years, at a fraction of the cost. In fact we've been paying them to do it. Let me explain.

This is about the tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, Modern Corporate wisdom and then ‘the world according to Jianele’ follows at the end, because I was reminded that no matter how creative and ‘reasonable’ our excuses seem, we sometimes have to make difficult decisions in order to succeed.

Idea Friday.
Those of you who follow me on Twitter, or Facebook, might have noticed the IdeaFriday hash tag I created. In case you’re living in a cave in Afghanistan and don’t know about Twitter (or, heaven forbid, Facebook) it looks like this: #ideafriday. Now even you’ve seen it, and you’re wondering what it’s all about. Let me briefly explain.

Well, I say “new” but it’s not really new at all. It’s just a bigger challenge than ever before. Why? Because the world has fallen out of love, not just with big business, but with leadership as we know too. And we don’t need to look much beyond the current global crisis to see why. The population at large have put way too much trust (and money) into the so-called leaders of industry whose decisions and total lack of accountability have placed us in the precarious position we find ourselves in.

I often get asked by industry publications if I’d like to write editorial or articles for them. When I agree, they want to charge me a fee because they feel that my article will constitute “marketing”.

The real message behind this practice though, is not that they want to charge me for marketing, but they are willing to place anyone’s contribution if they are willing to pay. Irrespective of the author’s experience and / or standing in the industry.

One such publication recently published a “feature” on teambuilding in which the contributors (along with glossy photos and company promotion) claimed that outdoor teambuilding was fast replacing indoor, boardroom-type training sessions. The same publication ran an almost identical feature about four years ago. It is naïve to think that in the fast –changing business culture we operate in, teambuilding trends would not also have changed over the last half-decade.

A shepherd was tending his flock in a field, when a new sports car screeched to a stop on the road nearby in a cloud of dust. The driver, a young man in expensive designer clothes and sunglasses, leans out of the window and shouts over to the shepherd, "If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have here, can I take one?"

The shepherd looks up slowly up at the young man, then looks at his peaceful flock, and calmly answers, "Sure, why not?"

There are probably as many reasons for entering sports events as there are competitors in every event.  But there is only one reason why athletes at any level get up every morning to train – they have somehow become “addicted” to pain.  Whether we win, or just finish, that pain is relative b