Herman School of Business
Take them out of the office
You ride around seeing clients all week. Sometimes you travel to another city, having dinner out and sleeping in a hotel. Rental cars, lunch in Malibu, you got to see Fenway park and Wrigley Field. For most people they think you are so lucky. They commute in traffic, throw a lunch bag in the community fridge in the “office kitchen” which might actually be in a corner behind their desk. Workers sit in the same cubby hole day after day. They see the same walls every working hour of every day. And those incessant meetings you want, and sometimes actually need…ugh…the conference room again.
Yet, within a few blocks, and certainly not more than a mile from the office or your place of business is a restaurant that does a great lunch business and then a wonderful dinner rush. From 3 to 5 PM they stare at their empty establishment. At least once a month have the meeting out of the office. Change the environment. Give the workers a chance to breathe. Spend two hundred bucks and have some snacks and drinks for the meeting. And do some kind of team building exercise, or have a contest to start the meeting to break up the routine. Which team can name the top ten customers you have? Who knows which month last year was the best and worst and why? Or make the questions about something else entirely. Make them laugh and cheer and feel good for the first half hour. Then put on the meeting and watch the creativity flow.
Once energized workers open up and let their feelings out. You “released them” from the prison of their cubicle and the conference room and your reward is their expressiveness and the freedom erupts in ways not possible when you keep them back in their cages at the office.
- Posted: 8 November 2007
- Comments: 0
- Category: Business success
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