Have you ever craved the great
outdoors, total freedom from the daily minutiae that encompasses us? Have you
contemplated if you could push yourself to the brink of exhaustion and still
push on… you versus the elements by submersing yourself into the wilderness by
climbing mountains, traversing canyons on cables, running, biking torturous
terrain, facing icy rushing waters all with just a vague map? Can you think of
a time when you were so dependent on other people to truly work as a team where
everyone needed each other entirely and no one had the upper hand? You probably
heard airline tickets to New Zealand are pretty pricy; wouldn’t you like to
travel there? What if your company footed the bill, that they could take you
there, you deserve it right? Can you become a team with people you maybe have
never met and adventure race to the finish line in those outdoor conditions?
Well, if you answered yes to the above questions, if they piqued your interest
and sense of adventure, Seagate Technology may be the place for you. (Not me.)
Bloomberg Businessweek described
Seagate Technology in 2006 as the world’s biggest makers of hard drives. Around
the early 2000’s the employees had a quaint way of describing their
organization, “Slavegate” and people were frequently fired (Brown, 2011). CEO
Bill Watkins felt that the company needed to be shaken up and turned around,
showing that teamwork had value. His way of doing so was to start Eco Seagate,
an outdoor lab experience. Out of thousands of employees located globally, two
hundred employees apply and are selected to participate. This requires physical
conditioning, reading The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable and
of course, volunteering yourself to participate.
According to Brown, outdoor
experiential laboratory training, which parades with many other monikers,
brings a group of people together outside of a work setting to participate in
exercises which are typically foreign. The point is so that no one has an
advantage or upper hand (Brown, 2011). “Thus the outdoor lab puts participants
on an equal footing. This seems to encourage discussion of leadership styles,
teamwork, and interpersonal relationships.” (Brown, 2011, p. 273) Outdoor labs
can be intense like adventure racing or more leisurely and should fit the needs
of the organization, teams, and participants. Brown details the importance of
the outdoor lab fitting into an organization’s goals, which will “fit into a
large program that lays the groundwork for it and follows through after it has
ended.” (Brown, 2011, p. 275)
The most surprising part of
EcoSeagate is not the enormity of the extreme sport and conditions, but the
price tag, which is two million dollars each year. Since outdoor labs are
relatively new with little empirical research, there is no evidence of results
of the effectiveness. Call me reckless with abandon, but I did a little basic
poking around on the internet and the cost of the lab juxtaposed with their
revenue change my perspective on the cost and it doesn’t seem wholly
outrageous. Brown (2011) warns that without prior groundwork and follows
through after the outdoor lab it could turn into an expensive company retreat
that does not reap long term benefits. So, the big question that looms in the
foreground, is it worth it?
Admittedly I am a complex blend
of both supportive and skeptical. Part of my bias stems from the safety gene I
was born with and I know that I am not a good physical candidate for such
feats. I did gymnastics for about a decade and while most of the time I could
maneuver a four inch balance beam, I cannot ride a bike without crashing into
very obvious and stationary walls and such. I am the clumsiest coordinated
person who has no business on the side of any mountain. With that objection covered and tucked away, I
really think it comes down to the individual whether it is effective. I feel
that being totally open to the lab would be very important, not just signing on
to travel or get away from work for a week. Each person also has been shaped
from their own unique experiences and no two are alike. The effectiveness a
person could be different from person to person. Without cynicism, I think that
something that extraordinary and daring likely has an everlasting impact.
Sometimes you do not really know
yourself or understand others until you face something out of your comfort
zone. Adversity tests us all. I believe this because I experienced it early on
in my lifetime and although it seems cruel and without purpose while you are
going through the thick of it, it changes your perspective in indescribable
ways. There are things that once seemed so important that once you pulled back
were trivial. In the same way studying abroad can dunk you into the deep end and
you just learn to swim, I imagine the outcome to be tantamount. At the very
least if teamwork and development did not stick it is a great idea for employee
attraction and perhaps retention. Nothing builds morale like reward, although
Seagate employees are quick to point out that this is not a vacation (Seagate’s
Morale-athon, 2006). I think that there is merit to team development process.
Take a look at the Youtube videos and you see people pulling each other up a
mountain while hiking or grabbing another person’s bicycle from them so you can
get out of the river. It reinforces behaviors to think of others, help others,
and ask for help for your own benefit.
For the same reasons I think it
is necessary for high-performing organizations. Throughout the videos the CEO
spoke on concepts such as trust and commitment, embracing healthy conflict, and
other topics. If you think about what a high performance team is, it is a group
that works so well together to meet their goals that they outperform the
competition. To accomplish something of that caliber there is a lot of trust
and commitment. For example, if you were to launch something never before seen
and exceptional in concept but unknown in execution and market performance you
have to be able to trust that your ideas will become more, become actualized
and succeed, that the work and all you put into it will pay off. It takes
commitment to choose that unknown path and continue down it. In the way that
the cost is extreme just like the outdoor lab, it takes something like this
that is so dramatic and so different to separate yourself further from other
organizations. To be successful, more successful than others, sometimes you
have to push beyond what is common and the current standard.
When I think about my organization
and whether something like this would be a fit I am torn. ERAU as a whole
actually has some exuberantly fit and game individuals. I am completely unsure
how it would go over with others, since participation is voluntary. I can
picture this being a positive experience for some and a negative experience for
others. When I think about my department I would like to think it would bond
us, but it may cause a divide between those who want to and those who do not.
Although I would prefer a spa and a king sized bed experience, I would be
willing to give it a go in a more sensible, less EcoSeagate format. My
particular team, the graduate advising team, has thrown around the idea of
trying to get permission to go on the big obstacle course used for military science.
I think only time would tell if it would have the kind of return we are looking
to gain.
References:
Brown, D. R. (2011). An
experiential approach to organization development (8th ed.). Boston: Prentice
Hall.
Eco Seagate 2008 1/3. (2008,
April 25). YouTube. Retrieved October 23, 2014, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCOfOFMiLtE&feature=youtu.be
Eco Seagate 2008 2/3. (2008,
April 26). YouTube. Retrieved October 23, 2014, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Etwuap-_Azk&feature=youtu.be
Seagate's Morale-athon. (2006,
April 2). Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved October 23, 2014, from http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2006-04-02/seagates-morale-athons-morale-athon
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