Snakes and Ladders - Times Online - WBLG

Another utterly ridiculous team building idea

There are no castanets in my professional life. As I am not a dancer, a children's television presenter or some sort of flamenco-styled stripper, this is entirely normal. And, as my idea of team building revolves around several glasses of red wine after work, it's also unlikely to change.

But any poor sods whose bosses believe that extravagant out-of-office events engender collegiate morale might soon find themselves clicking their little wooden discs while workmates rumba around them. Yes, it's time to add dancing (line, belly, salsa - there's a multitude of embarrassing options) to horse-whispering, gorilla watching and all the other ridiculous activities that are supposed to turn teams of employees from individualistic back-stabbing gossips into hard-working, supportive colleagues who like nothing more than a group hug.

Pah.

The mother of all teambuilding events

"Extreme corporate bonding". It sounds like the kind of thing that happens once a year - at the office Christmas party. But actually, it's the name for a new breed of team-building exercises that companies are using to get the best out of their employees, reports Fortune (May 26).

Each year, 200 employees at Seagate Technology, a technology company, take part in Eco Seagate, the $2 million "mother of all teambuilding events", involving months of preparation for activities such as adventure racing and scaling cliff faces in places as far away as Hong Kong and Northern Ireland.

Best MBA blogs

The internet is famous for the way that it captures the attention of people who suddenly notice a discharge that's too worrying to ignore and too embarassing to explain to a doctor. This is partly due to the web's anonymity - there's no shame in asking questions when no one knows that it's you - and partly because of the way it lets us feed our obssessions ("okay, so I click 'yes' to the 'is it green?' question and...gosh, can I really have caught tropical pymomyositis in Reading?").

Add to that the relief of knowing that you're not the only person in the country who can shoot avocado-coloured goo out of the lump in your armpit and it's surprising that anyone gets any work done.

Falling McStandards

News that McDonald's has won the right to offer academic qualifications has resulted in a predictable amount of ranting and raving about falling educational standards, and a forum on the BBC News website provides a taste of the reaction. But it is worth examining the comments closely. "How rediculous! (sic)" complains Rob from Cranfield. "Do they really expect anyone in Business/Industry/Education to take these McQualifications seriously?" Sarah Feehan from Liverpool chips in: "Not content with dumming (sic) down GCSE's and effectively scrapping A-Levels; in addition to encouraging plagerism (sic) and cheating, we now have the Mcqualification."

Though my favourite comment comes from Annette Jones in Bristol: "They do not know much about nutrition & good quality food, will they no (sic) much about anything else?"

I don't no, Annette. I really don't no.

Has it come to this? Degrees in financial services?

The time was when school kids wanted to be teachers, train drivers, astronauts or marine biolgists when they grew up. Now, it appears, they want to be financial advisers. Or at least enough do to prompt the ifs School of Finance and the School of Management at the University of Surrey to offer a four year degree course designed to offer comprehensive preparation for anyone considering a career in the field.

Considering that financial services accounts for about 16 per cent of our national output, it looks like a useful addition to the choices facing school leavers. It may not be as much fun as swimming with dolphins as a marine biologist or taking on G-forces in the upper atmosphere as a would-be astronaut. But teenagers that can bear the ribbing from chums, and the sheer tedium, will be making a thoroughly sensible career choice. No doubt.

But do we really want university courses to be this vocational?

How to tell right from wrong: join a book club

I can't help feeling that it shouldn't be hard for people to tell right from wrong at work, or indeed anywhere else, but it seems that it is; European Business Forum devotes 13 pages to a discussion of businesss ethics and cultural sensitivity in its winter issue, for example.

Jimmy Hill for CEO

It's not the Oxbridge degree, Harvard MBA or track record of success that will get you to the top - it's your chin. A plastic surgeon with a ruler and a copy of Fortune calculated that 90 per cent of top CEOs have prominent chins while only 40 per cent of the general population fall into this category.

As one of my colleagues helpfully pointed out, this suggests that Jimmy Hill should now be running a highly-successful multinational corporation, if not most of the world.

Read the full story at BusinessWeek.com

More women accountants with short CVs please

What do you have to do to succeed in business? You may get some idea if you keep an eye on the 2008 edition of The Power 100, which is being published by The Times over the course of this week. As it happens, it is a survey I have been involved with for five years now, and although everyone could - and should - argue about what makes a good business leader, I would make three key observations.

The usefulness of e-learning and blogs

This interweb marlarkey. Is it worth holding a candle to? I'll never forget the dog-eared poster in the (dashingly-advanced-for-its-time) computer room back at Reigate Grammar School, circa 1981. "A computer is a moron," it read. "We have to tell it everything." So I am not surprised to hear that e-learning is proving to be something of a damp squib. Research for the Chartered Management Institute finds that 72 per cent of employees reject it, prefering face-to-face contact. Teaching and learning is quintessentially personal. Web research can assist (by making it quicker and easier to find stuff out); but anyone who thought the internet would lead to the re-invention of training was deluded. And probably driven by the hope that costs, not corners, would be cut.

With the internet, life is a good deal more, er, computerised. Lots of things are quicker and easier too. But the trick, surely, is to assume that the internet has NOT altered much in really fundamental terms.

Among other things, the full report from the CMI suggests that only 16 per cent of junior managers use blogs or social networking sites and only 10 per cent of directors bother, which must, ahem, make all bloggists like me wonder whether they are doing anything but braying in the darkness. Still, only 67 per cent of employees spend 30 minutes or less using the internet or intranets to solve a problem. That leaves 33 per cent of you devouring all the wise words posted on The Times' Snakes and Ladders management blog.

Appraisals are a waste of time. Right?

Investors in People, the workplace lobby group, is clearly alarmed that one in three workers who endure appraisals think the whole exercise is a waste of time. As is commonly the case, a better picture comes by turning the survey's observation on its head. Two in three think appraisals are worthwhile?  That is either astonishing to the point of incredulity or a major achievement.