Tuesday’s management meeting was a bit different to the others; although I have only been to one before so don’t take my word for that. The first difference to the last meeting was that we were not in the office. We were also not told the location of the meeting and left guessing where and what we were going to be doing for the day. Even when we arrived in Portsmouth and walked towards the location David kept us guessing. It turned out that we were going to the Action Stations in Historic doc yard.
The purpose of the day was to discuss and set a one year goal for ourselves and take part in team building activities. Brining in the one year goal will give us and the company direction; as we will know where we want to be in a year’s time. To help with this we also set 90 day plans to give us targets that we would need to meet to achieve our one year goal.
After having our meeting we were split up into three teams of three.
Team A consisted of:
• Tricia
• Sara
• Tracey
Team B consisted of:
• Myself – Sean
• Nigel
• Andrea
Team C consisted of:
• Mark
• David
• Lisa
The first activity that we participated in was a treasure hunt. We were given three pictures of locations in the dockyard and the aim was to plot the location on a map then draw a line with the angle that was given for each location. By doing this we could find out where our card was hidden which we had to bring back to the start. To help with this we were given a map of the dock yard, protractor, ruler and a GPS locater to help us get near the location on the picture. As it was a team event we all had to go back to the start to win. We were not allowed to have one person run ahead. Sounds easy but when we were out there our team had a few problems finding the first two locations mainly because of the GPS pointing us in the wrong direction. Luckily I had guessed the third location which saved us having to look for it. Unfortunately the other teams had already finished by the time we found our card.
The other activities that we did throughout the day were a moving wall climb, human knot puzzle, a 9 piece puzzle and a simulator where we flew a helicopter blind folded. The simulator was a really good game for our team because it was all about building trust as the pilot had to rely on the team to give clear instructions so that we could fly under a bridge without looking. Our team was the only one to have all members fly under the bridge successfully.
The last activity for the day involved us designing and making a water rocket to see which design would travel the furthest. This activity was useful as it highlighted the importance of planning because if we didn’t plan and design our rockets, we would have wasted money on materials that were not needed. Even with our state of the art design, Team A was able to match our distance with their rocket but Team C’s rocket seemed to like nose diving too much so it wasn’t much of a competition.
Before I end the blog I would like to say thank you to the staff at the historic doc yard for their hospitality and for providing us with a fun filled day which has helped us work as a team and build trust in each other.
Sean Bland, Frontline Telephone Answering Service
