A631.1.5.RB_HallMike

With so much of the business world switching to a team oriented environment for tackling big problems, it is not surprising that a company would take team building to the extreme.  Seagate’s team annual outdoor experimental laboratory training exercise known as EcoSeagate is a challenging 5 day course is the remote areas of New Zealand that pushes the selected employees to the limit of their capabilities.  I personally see great value in the process for a variety of reasons. 

This kind of program has got to be a huge attraction for members within the organization – who wouldn’t want to take a trip to the outback of New Zealand, hang out and learn from some of the best and brightest your company has to offer, and in the meantime better yourself both physically and mentally?  From the looks of it, the program really encompasses the saying, “That which does not kill you only makes you stronger.”  By pushing people to the limits both mentally and physically, you can truly see into a person’s true character and without doing it, I would argue that you are only scratching the surface at making deep rooted changes within a person.  I also would imagine that this program has got to be an incentive in attracting people to work for them and has got to be a huge morale and pride builder for employees.  With this being said, I do think that they have taken it to the extreme and could probably get similar results by doing something a little more scaled back and less costly, but again, it is a unique program within the business world.

So why would something like EcoSeagate be something that is necessary in a high-performing organization?  I think there are 3 reasons for it.  First, if you are not constantly learning and keeping ideas fresh, you fall behind in the business world.  One only has to take a quick look at companies that have gone bankrupt over the past several years to see what happens when you lose the creative edge within you sector - Kodak is the big one that comes to mind.  They failed to stay up with the trend in technology, fell behind in the race, and have gone from one of the most recognizable companies in the world to a mere shell of what they used to be.  Secondly, just as the CEO said, people don’t work hard (or die as he said) within an organization for money/God/country, they work hard for the people around them.  This team building has got to develop, if nothing else, a strong bond between people within the organization that have completed the course.  This bonding probably goes a long way in generating the strong feelings for your co-workers.  Thirdly and again as the CEO said, it is better to do something than do nothing (or in military terms, no decision is worse than the wrong decision) because nothing will happen if nothing is done.  As I just said above, at the very least, this builds espirit-du-corps within the company - this wouldn’t be there without EcoSeagate.

Could my organization benefit from a similar activity?  We already do and it is called deployments.  Deployments break you down both mentally and physically – you see a person’s real personality after a month of underway.  You also develop a bond knowing that other people around you are going through the same hardships that you are, and that they have your back in the event that something goes wrong.  I think that EcoSeagate is attempting to quickly create the conditions you might find on mission or deployed in order to build the person back up (also similar to initial military training – you can’t buy into the system until you have broken yourself down).