Day 146 - Building The Team!

I write this, while I recover from the exertions of the previous day.  The previous day, was a very enjoyable day spent with my team at an offsite doing a lot of team building activities.

The entire last week was spent chasing various people to get things in place for Saturday, including budget approvals for the do.  Finally we were ready for Saturday; Deven and Sagar doing a great job!

I was picked up in the morning by Roshan, as I did not have my car.  Poor Rampyaari, is in the workshop after I did not notice a pillar in the office parking lot and backed up into it, leaving a huge eye sore on the driver's door!  The seven'o clock start did not deter the team to be there on time to make the trip to Karnala, some of them not having gone back home the previous night as they were doing the US / late EMEA shifts.  I was impressed!

We started the game of Antakshari as soon as the bus started and were singing till we reached the destination, ably led by Renita, Vishakha, Bhaskar and other enthusiasts.  As soon as we reached the resort, I realised why the resort was named as Panaromic Resorts.  It afforded a panaromic view of the famous 'Thumb-Point'!  After quickly freshening up and having breakfast no. 2 (the first one being in the bus itself!) consisting of poha and crispy medu vadas, all of us trudged to the conference room for the serious business of the townhall.  I spoke about the priorities for the year for the team for about 40 minutes.  I hope the team appreciated the effort as well as the key messages in my talk. 

One of the reasons of this exercise was to get everyone within the team to know eachother.  I was shocked to find out over the period of the last few months that even within this team of 70, people did not necessarily know eachother; some did not even know the names of some of their own colleagues.  After my talk, we did an interesting exercise of everyone introducing a colleague of theirs to the entire audience.  This was well recieved.  The idea was to promote the motto of 'One Team, No Boundaries!' and gradually ingrain it in the behaviours of the team.

After lunch, myself, Deven, Arshan and Sagar conducted a couple of team building exercises which had key takeways for the team.  I did see the dawn of realisation in some of the eyes when doing the takeaways session.  After these 'work-play' sessions, the everyone was free to spend their time as they wanted to for the rest of the evening before we returned from the resort.  Water slides and the pool beckoned some; some fell for their love of under-arm cricket.

Having exhausted themselves by doing these physical activities for a couple of hours, everybody then began to gather around the bar counter for a drink.  The DJ was playing load music by now as well, probably happy at being of use for only the second time during the day!  Gradually the entire team gathered at the place and had a blast for an hour and half dancing to popular Hindi, Punjabi and English songs.  I think there was a Tamil song as well in between; who can resist 'Appudi Podu Podu....'!  The team was enjoying the dancing and drinking so much, that we kept on extending the last song for the day for about half an hour.  Finally, I had close the day, regretfully so. 

Tired and exhausted, everyone hopped on to the bus to make the journey back home; half of them wishing that the day could go on and on; only of the do had been an overnight one, etc, etc.  The only sad part of the day was at the end when a colleague, a teetotaller, had had too much to drink, of course, at the insistence of yours truly and others.  The sleep on the way back in the bus, however, did wonders for him and he was fit and fine by the time the bus reached Powai.  He ended up driving his car home, dropping atleast 3 people on his way!

What a day!  The greatest moments for me were when I saw people who had never spoken to eachother starting to speak to eachother.  By the end of the day, I could see the happy camaraderie amongst the people who hitherto had not known eachother. 

A good start to building a great team.  A team that can fight.  A team that can win.

One WINNING Team; No Boundaries.  Take care.