DISRUPTING TEAM BUILDING: A DINOSAUR IN THE AGE OF THE SHARED EXPERIENCE

You have all (I hope) read my revolutionary stance on ROI, ROE, etc. So I now invite you to join me in throwing team building into the junk pile of antiquated events and embrace, instead, the world of "shared experiences." Why? Of course you are asking that. Isn't team building vital to the corporate culture?

In a world where virtual reality, augmented reality, devices of various kinds (toddlers learn to live in a solitary world, tablets in hand so they can play games that have no human interaction), how can we inflict a team culture on people who hardly know how to communicate without typing (or is that a word that is antiquated too)? I like virtual reality, and I've even recently experienced new augmented reality. They are fun and amazingly inventive technologies. Though you experience new worlds of imaginative possibilities, you do so alone. They are isolated and solitary. What, may I ask, is wrong with "real" reality? Where you are in the present, and even in the company of others?

I am not sure that a scavenger hunt or building a cardboard boat on a beach or even a trust fall truly creates a team concept. I do think that the sharing of your story, inviting people to get to know you, and you wanting to get to know them is a unifying force. It can be done in a group. It can be done one-on-one. It is called bonding.

Participating in a project for a greater good, being charitable, and doing it together may not create a "team"... but it will create a spirit of shared experience that will live on long after climbing a telephone pole, being cheered on by people you may or may not know or even see again.

Sharing is a potent experience. And though we can do some form of sharing on tablets, the face-to-face experience cannot be replicated on a computer screen. Virtual hugs, approving smiles, gentle handshakes or handclasps, nods of understanding... all lead to a better place. It's called friendship. It's called relationships. It's called human to human communication.

Being part of a team somehow sounds competitive to me. Sharing an experience does not. What do you think?

Andrea Michaels is the founder and president of Extraordinary Events, a Los Angeles based, international event agency, and the author of Reflections of a Successful Wallflower: Lessons in Business: Lessons in Life. Andrea may be contacted via amichaels@extraordinaryevents.com.

Know Your Audience

A few years ago, I made a life-altering decision. I was obese and self-conscious, so I signed up for gastric bypass surgery. Vanity and health-related issues like diabetes influenced this decision, but in all honesty, vanity was the primary contributor. My reason: Just once in my life I wanted people to look at me and say, “My, she has a nice figure.”

I was a size 22/24. Yep, obese. I’ll skip the details, but the end result was that I lost almost 100 pounds and was not only “normal” but better than normal. Clothed, I had a great bod. Unclothed, another story. But I later fixed that, too, though it has nothing to do with this story. Now between sizes six and eight, I had a lot of “big lady” clothing in my closet.  It was designer stuff (Yes, they have designers for large sizes) and expensive. By now, you already know that my great love is, and always has been, shopping.

This information is important to my story because my medical group offered support meetings every week, and part of its routine was to have people bring in the clothes that they had outgrown so that those losing weight wouldn’t have to buy new clothing as they down-sized. Some of the ladies were almost 400 or 500 pounds, and I decided to bring them my clothes, thinking that by the time they got to my size 22s they could have a glamorous wardrobe.

So, I attended one of these meetings with bags filled with my lovely offerings. To kick the meeting off, the facilitator asked, “So what’s the best part of losing weight?”

One lady responded, “I can walk into K-Mart and buy anything I want now.”

I should have grabbed my bags and run at that moment, but I didn’t. At the end of the meeting, the various bags people had brought were opened, and clothes started being passed around. I happily anticipated the joy of watching women seize my designer clothes, ranging from evening gowns to business suits. It didn’t happen. These women were almost repelled as they handled my clothing. They snickered at the evening wear …”Where they hell would I wear THAT? When I shoveled horseshit?” Business suits were almost as denigrated.

I was aghast. I knew I (and my clothes) didn’t belong there.

The Lesson

Know your audience. Do your research. Know who you are speaking to and what their likes and dislikes are. Are they young and if-I-don't-get-it-in-a-text-I-won't-read-it" or are they a "paint me a picture in words" type?

Do they have limited time? Are they world travelers? Are they gourmands? Do they like classic rock or classical music? Are they family-oriented or young singles?

For sure if you don't know who you are appealing to, you won't be appealing, and they won't listen to what you have to say, written or spoken. Because here's the key. It's all about THEM, not YOU, THEM!

Andrea Michaels is the founder/president of multiple award-winning Extraordinary Events, an international event agency based in Los Angeles. She is the author of Reflections of a Successful Wallflower –Lessons in Business; Lessons in Life. To learn more about her and her company, visit http://www.extraordinaryevents.com. Andrea may be reached via amichaels@extraordinaryevents.com.

Experience vs. Degree

While other children typically experience movies, theme parks and occasional family vacations, this kid did that and more! I traveled more, was exposed to more and got to observe the positive work ethic of my mother - which had a large effect as I grew up and started working. It was an experience that would give any young person a "leg up."

 

 I literally grew up in the business. When Extraordinary Events produced the opening of GM Place in Vancouver, I took a few weeks off from college, and my role was to be Shania Twain's hospitality manager and take care of communication with the Vancouver Canucks hockey team. Not bad, right? My friends were pretty jealous, and all wanted to change places with me.

As I grew older (late 20s), I was in charge of some fun tasks like driving Kenny Loggins or Ziggy Marley around Las Vegas. In fact, on one of those days, while driving Ziggy and his band, we stopped by Guitar Center for some items. Once there, about four or five of them grabbed instruments and put on a nice little acoustic show for the customers. It was certainly a highlight!

Over the years as I was growing up, I attended entertainment showcases and traveled to MPI meetings nationally. A great bonus was meeting all of Andrea’s closest friends in the industry, whom I am so lucky to work with now.

Even with this great experience under my belt, I went off to California State University Northridge to explore journalism and got an opportunity to try covering high school and junior college games for the Los Angeles Times. From there I went to work for another Southern California paper, and that turned into 10 years of on-the-job education.  

So, here I was, with a job I loved covering UCLA athletics, local sporting events and being at Kings, Dodgers and Lakers games, and winning awards for doing it! But, even though I loved it, the pay was never good, and I never saw my wife, since she worked days and I was always working nights and weekends. Something had to give. A family meeting determined that a move to Extraordinary Events would be good for both Andrea and me and the future of EE.

At that point, I took the opportunity to get my Master’s degree in Business Administration at the University of Phoenix. It was the perfect opportunity to balance my home and work life and earn the degree. The advanced education allowed me to use EE for data and explore our internal management practices, discover business ideas I’d never considered in the past and improve our processes.

This was a stark difference to my days at the newspaper, which were all about learning through experience. So, when other event producers ask me how I compare having a business degree to practical experience, I have to say they both have a number of strengths and weaknesses.

There’s something to be said about learning under fire and working on your craft. In my first two years at the newspaper, I learned more than I ever would in two years of school studying the subject. I found a few really strong mentors who were open to sharing their knowledge, and I would advise anyone starting in the business to do that.

And to be fair, I had the mentor of all mentors in the event production business as well! The most valuable experience (my big takeaway with having Andrea as my mentor) was seeing how she deals with vendors and clients. Her communication skills and the way she rectifies situations are amazing to me. She’s fair, compassionate and listens to their needs without making emotional decisions. These are the values of having a mentor to emulate.

  

“The benefits of experience vs. book learning - If you need to have brain surgery, do you want a medical school’s most recent graduate who has scored well on many tests or a doctor who’s successfully performed such surgery many times before?” –Andrea Michaels

For people starting out in the business, unless their goal is to own a company, my advice would be to reach out to quality event production companies and offer to support them in pre-production and on-site projects. This provides an opportunity to gather work for resumes and gain valuable experience. Working hard and showing a company how much you can help them is an invitation for them to let you stick around!

For those who want to become owners, a business education is crucial if the company is to grow from a small, tight-knit company under five people into a true event company. The knowledge and education you’ll receive will help you organize the firm correctly as it grows. Otherwise, once the business expands, you will experience too many growing pains along the way!

I have to admit that my road hasn’t been perfect, but each challenge has led me and EE to places of which I am proud. Ultimately the decision to join Andrea and EE was the best business choice I have ever made. Working with family is not the easiest thing to do, but there are far more benefits and rewards from the experience.

Best of luck to you in all your endeavors,

Jon Michaels, co-owner/EVP, Extraordinary Events