If you're interested in setting up an adventure-based off-site for your organization, check out the Experiential Training and Development Consortium, a group of adventure-oriented training consultants. The consortium comprises 28 companies that banded together last year and created deep (Definition, Ethics, and Exemplary Practices), which is the first standards and ethics document for the corporate adventure-training market. Visit the Web site, and you'll find companies that adhere to those standards.
Coordinates: Experiential Training and Development Consortium, www.etdconsortium.com
Erick Soderstrom
Title: VP of marketing at Altrec
Previously: Director of advertising and consumer communications at Nintendo of America
The Impact: "Right after we got back from the river, we had a major meeting about Web-site enhancements. As soon as we sat down, about four or five people looked around and said, 'I don't need to be in on this.' And they left. They realized that by leaving us alone to hash out any problems, they were shortening the discussion by a factor of three.
"That sort of awareness is the biggest insight that came out of the trip. There's a time and a place for building consensus. But there's also a time to let people with core competencies run their part of the process. We needed to learn that."
Coordinates: Erick Soderstrom, ericks@altrec.com
Cathryn Buchanan
Title: Altrec's senior content producer
Previously: Senior Web producer for National Geographic
The Impact: "Before the trip, I wasn't really sure where I stood in the leadership team. I was hesitant about asking for money and for staff resources. But I felt that I got a vote of confidence on the river. Basically, the message from the rest of the team was, 'We value your work and your vision.'
"Since the trip, I've been a lot more assertive in our weekly strategy meetings. For example, we have a big project we're trying to pull off, and at our last meeting I just said, 'I need our design team to make this project a top priority next month.' I never would have pushed that hard before.''
Coordinates: Cathryn Buchanan, cathrynb@altrec.com
Chris Doyle
Title: Altrec's VP of public relations
Previously: Head of public relations for Eddie Bauer
The Impact: "The first week back from the Salmon, our leadership team met to write a job description for the position of COO that needed to be filled. We discussed that role extensively during the trip, and we felt an urgent need to move on it. We used the feedback skills we'd practiced on the river to create a pretty powerful document. Now CEO Mike Morford and executive strategist Don Pickering have some tangible feedback to work with.
"The most amazing thing is that it took us only 45 minutes to write that job description. That's it. It was the best meeting any of us could remember having.''
Coordinates: Chris Doyle, chrisd@altrec.com
For those do-it-yourselfers, Project Adventure's senior consultant Moe Carrick offers three packing tips for team building in the wild.
Bring a good field guide: a cutting-edge business manifesto for putting a spark in campfire conversations.
Recent regulars in Carrick's pack: Peter Senge's "The Dance of Change: The Challenges to Sustaining Momentum in Learning Organizations" (Currency Doubleday, $35), "Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace" by Gordon MacKenzie (Viking, $22), and "A Simpler Way" by Margaret J. Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers (Berrett-Koehler, $19.95).
Bring contingency gear.
For this adventure, the "contingency gear" is a few props for getting a team to act like a team. Call them team-building accelerants. Standard to Carrick's kit are four to six loops of rope. These are used in a game called "Mergers," which explores paradigm shifts in thinking. For another game, which tests a team's ability to innovate, she has a stopwatch, a 75-foot rope, and 30 rubber dots. These items can be purchased through Project Adventure, which (thankfully) also provides instructions on how to use them.
Bring a plastic bag and a journal.
The bag is for keeping your journal dry. The journal is for recording insights and epiphanies -- or at least a few action items.
Coordinates: Moe Carrick, mcarrick@pa.org
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