Whether you're reading this article on paper or online, you're no doubt using your handssomething we all do every day without even thinking. But imagine if you were one of the thousands of children worldwide who have lost hands because of landmines, but are too poor to afford prosthetics.
Enter Lain Hensley, COO of Odyssey Teams Inc., a teambuilding company in Chico, CA. A few years ago, Hensley met some folks from the LN-4 Foundation, which partners with Rotary International to manufacture and distribute prosthetic hands to maimed children in developing countries. Odyssey likes to take teambuilding literally"It's building, right?" Hensley asksso in no time at all participants in Odyssey's workshops were making hands to send to needy kids.
"There's a magic to having people build something of value instead of, say, a tower of straws or paper that you just throw away," Hensley explains. Indeed, one of Odyssey's most popular programs is Life Cycles, in which participants assemble children's bicycles and then get the surprise of their lives when a group of kids comes into the room to receive the bikes.
"Once I learned that LN-4 needed volunteers to build prosthetic hands, I thought we could build an experiential learning program around it," Hensley says. "We build bikeswhy not hands?"
Making Grown Men Cry
Meanwhile, at Xyratex, a data storage manufacturer in San Jose, CA, Becky Welch was looking for a new teambuilding activity for her leadership summit at the Le Rivage Hotel in Sacramento, CA, last March.
"We'd done Life Cycles for a sales meeting, and it was great," Welch says. "When the kids who were going to receive the bikes walked into the room and surprised our team, these big, tough salesmen actually had tears in their eyes!"
The prosthetic hands get shipped overseas, however, so attendees don't get to meet recipients. Instead, they watch a video showing how to put the hands together and who receives them (Xyratex's went to Colombia). Then they divide into small groups and start assembling.
Thumbs Up
Hensley likens learning to assemble a prosthetic hand to a product launch, or anytime a company undergoes rapid change. "Participants go from being neophytesno one's ever built a hand beforeto experts in about an hour," he says. The hands are deliberately low-tech, so they'll be easy to repair later: "Anyone can make one."
Not that it's easy; Welch admits she saw "some frustration" in her group, especially among the competitive types. "But it was all in good fun, and it meant a lot to the participants that they were actually doing something to improve a person's life, rather than, say, a scavenger hunt."
Hensley agrees. "The challenge of building databases, as Xyratex does, is that employees don't see their customers and get distanced from the meaning of what they do," he says. "This activity brought people together quickly and gave them a deeper look at the purpose of their work. It reminded them that what they do is beneficial to others."
Originally published Oct. 1, 2008
For more ideas, tips, and tools for better meetings and events, get Successful Meetings' weekly e-newsletter delivered to your inbox.