I'm always looking for interesting ways to create unity amongst my team. With over twenty people on staff, its easy to get bogged down in our daily load.
Being a kid at heart, I try to think of things that will be engaging and fun.
One step into my son's room gave me the inspiration I needed.
He is a huge fan of Legos... always has been.
So what if I purchased several large lego sets, split my staff into teams, and had them compete to see which team could build their set first... what would happen?
Watch the video below to see how it turned out!
Be sure to leave your comments below.
By the way, this video is an excerpt from the latest episode of The Joel Comm Show, with special guest Mike Filsaime. View the entire episode here.
love legos & always will...if you want a harder challenge, try compact marble runs. These have been used for corporate training.
Honestly Joel - this was an incredibly boring snippet
- having taken it out of the greater context which was???
Anyway just thought I'd tell you why so you can maybe you
can re-do the idea next holiday with an added benefit for all.
First mistake was to divide the team into solo units and put
them into competition with a time limit that can only reduce
and limit their efforts to the lowest common denominator.
Ability to read instructions is good practice but is that it?
Expand by letting them collaborate? cooperate and learn to
think as a TEAM - which is the name of the game in the very
survival of society. as we now know it. Whereas we have
become conditioned by being governed by competitive low
level liars with serious incompetence with money for many
centuries. In your movie I saw a glimpse of creativity with one
guy towards the end who's creation looked far more interesting
than the showy ship that won.
Slick editing and canned music was a wow to the public at first
and I hope you will allow me to mention that the bewildered herd
is wising up and you have to get very good at what you do
technically like Eben - who's modeled himself on the design
maestro Jobs who's message always gets through.
Joel when you repeat the same word too many times it loses
its meaning and this concept was so 'same old' as to fall into
that category.
The video did not engage humanly with any of the team or
with you either since your expression showed no bond with
your team which is the least one would expect.
I shall end there - by this time you or your readers will be
verging on defensive at my remarks which I hope get through
to you because I sincerely wish to contribute - I would not
bother to spend the time criticising for no reason believe me.
Swerve away from the catchy phrases that eventually undermine
your purpose - like info-wars. Why use the word war to attract
attention I wonder? what have wars brought to the community
of men and women? We are getting more and more divided when
we need to get more and more unified in the promotion of the
truth and the reclamation of man's natural estate. It's happiness.
I wish you and your team a cohesive, collaborating and most
importantly a community spirited New Year off the beaten path
All the best - Jackie Mackay
PS Chrome beats all the other browsers into a cocked hat.
Hi Joel,
I really appreciate this stuff! Not many people think about their people anymore and I feel happy for your team :)
However, I feel that instead of making someone a winner the goal should have been to complete all three sets in X hours... however the first target was to complete your team's target first... and then once your team's target is achieved others could help the remaining teams... this way you could foster a greater amount of team work.
Regards,
Suniil
That's funny, I was just building a Lego set with my sun when I came across this video. So it was a chance to show my six year old grown ups can have fun playing Lego too.
Next time I would suggest a generic set of legos (i.e. no theme) and see which team can come up with the most creative structure, as judged by their peers.
Get those creative juices flowing! Creativity leads to innovation.
I thought this video was cute. Not your standard video from an internet marketer.
I think it put a human side to all the emails.
I thought it was an excellent way to highlight that you have staff working with you and that they are real people.
That's what I got out of this video.
Adele
So your getting into reality TV now.
I love Legos! I always have! I'm a freelance web designer and I work mostly out of a dedicated home office. I don't have a team of people that I need to collaborate with but Legos are always a way to help the creativity flow. For me, it's a solo-building exercise rather than a team-building exercise!
Great video Joel! Well done!
You know one of the things I try to learn from with any newsletter I subscribe to is how the internet marketing author of that newsletter affects me with respect to having me get motivated enough to come visit their site.
You are one of the top one's in that regard Joel. This video is a case in point. I was curious and felt that I had established somewhat of a relationship with you by previous comments I had made on your blog and so...I showed up to watch a video on leggo building. Go figure.
Actually it's pretty clear what motivated me to come.
Something interesting that I was curious to see. No overt salespitch of any kind. A willingness on your part to let me into another aspect of your life, in this case something you did with your own employees.
All leading to a sense on my end that you were sharing something of yourself with me just because and not out of a desire to get a dollar of mine into your pocket.
Now I know that of course you are into internet marketing to make a buck. I am too.
But it's the way you approach me through your newsletter that I find interesting as I watch myself coming to read what you have to share.
In all honesty I don't view you as an internet marketer who is on the cutting edge as much as I view you as a person who is just a nice guy who says things I would like to hear about and perhaps learn a thing or two from. I look elsewhere for cutting edge Adsense advice and mentoring.
Mind you I haven't bought anything from you ever. Probably won't since I can't afford much of anything at this point in time. But...you are getting ample opportunities to present something to me over and over again through your web site when I come a visiting.
I am not an easy one to come visiting sites through a newsletter. Not at all. I unsubscribe to most newsletters that I try as quickly as I subscribe to them.
But there's something about the way you approach things which makes me want to come and see what you are up to. I call that internet marketing at it's best Joel and will watching closely to see what I can learn from your approach.
I contrast your approach with that of another very famous and very respected internet marketer. I kept his newsletter for many months just on his reputation alone. But eventually I just couldn't stand it anymore. Every newsletter came across as an attempt to get money out of me and I unsubscribed. Very little of reaching out to me through his newsletter to build even the semblance of relationship with me. You don't build relationship with subscribers by trying to get them to buy something.
You build relationship or at least the feeling of relationship by sharing something of your self with them. It is on the back of that relational impression that you will undoubtedly continue to build your business.
Well done Joel.
Carlos
Joel,
I enjoyed seeing your staff. One of my dreams is to staff it up like you.
This was awesome!
Happy New Year,
Robin Buckley
Great idea! There is no right or wrong way to do this! It's about the intention. Keeping good care of your staff is what keeps your business successful. Lucky them, lucky you!( oh yeah, and a bit of hard work). IF you wanted to go further - a bike building event is pretty awesome - the team thinks its just a teambuilding activity, then - when it's all done local charity arrives to present bikes as an award to two deserving kids. Build a bike, build a team, build a community. cheers. Dawn McCooey - fellow Morgan James author "Keeping Good Employees On Board".
Great video! I have to tell you, Dan looked a little like me if I had been in the mix...LOST! Just messing with you Dan. Thanks for sharing your wonderful team with us.
Who cares about the competiton I just want to get in there and play.
Great fun. And a way I'd have never thought of to build team work. But then it may not work for me because well I said it all above.
Richard
This hit my feed reader on Jan 1 so I'm a little late to the party. Some of the comments were well thought out and on the longish side almost to the point of being TLDR (almost). The video itself was on the longish side for the content.
Having said that, as long as everyone had fun and enjoyed themselves, it seems like a great exercise. My personal experience with "team building" exercises is that they are a kind of forced camaraderie. Of course, I'm kind of introverted. My thing is: if I'm doing my part "for the team" and the goals and objectives are being met than, please, don't make me "play" with the team members. This could be making Lego structures or going out and having a group beer at the local bar or even attending the office Xmas party.
However, this looked pretty benign and probably doesn't require a lot of deep analysis. Joel, you can run your own business any way you want. It's your baby.
PS - nice production values in the video. Makes me jealous.
What a great idea to create teamwork and unity!
Sweet stuff there Joel.
Follow directions,
work as a team,
everyone contributes,
sum of the parts,
all this and fun too.
What a wunnerful life.
For me, this is a great idea. There are other ways to do this more creatively but you got what you want and that's an achievement. Simple things like this can already bond the team. Nice work!
This is a perfect idea!! I think that this would increase team effort and be of great benefit to a lot of people! I think that finding more creative ways to do this would all completity and i think keeping it simple would be better! A lot of people love to do fun things like this!! Thank you! Great site!