I used to work for a big bank, and my manager had the idea of taking his team on various physical activities, walking around islands near Singapore carrying heavy backpacks. It didn't really work because some of us were reasonably fit and others were terribly unfit. Therefore the experience varied from being a stroll in the park for some, to an exhausting endurance trial for others. This simply did not cause us to bond. To be fair to the guy who organised this event, he was an excellent manager, something extremely rare in the banking or in IT, and the experience probably did produce some subset bonding.
This article shows bad it could have been. A group were practically cooked alive by a management guru. Almost nobody believes that management gurus are any better than corporate witchdoctors. Lucy Kellaway has practically made a career of mocking their pompous idiocy in her weekly column in the Financial Times. But still there are managers out there who think it's a good idea to steal their staff's leave in order to subject them to what is, for some, ritual humiliation.
Thanks to Flip Chart Fairy Tales for the lead.
