Expedition Challenge
case study and interview
The principal shareholder of a family-run Austrian company wants to improve communication in his management team.
With its own production facilities and more than 150 retail outlets, the company is an industry leader in the field of optical and electronic instruments. Together with a 17-person management team, the son of the founder is responsible for the business. In early 2005, he decides to make communication with and among his managers more open than before.
He instructs Process One to carry out a Leadership Challenge in Botswana for him and his top management team. The main mission of the expedition is to reach eight points in the open countryside using coordinates only. Only if those points are reached will the team receive money to buy food and fuel. In other words, the business success or failure of the enterprise chiefly depends on whether and how efficiently the "mission" is accomplished.
The participants receive the mission four weeks before the start of the expedition. They decide on the route on the basis of given GPS points, as well as appointing people responsible for navigation, security, financial control and purchasing. They also put their equipment together themselves up front, the challenge here being to select precisely 70 objects from the materials list provided. In addition, day managers are nominated, who will each have management responsibility - in pairs – for a one day during the expedition.
Finally, the expedition itself follows a route of nearly 3,000 km over rough tracks through Botswana and into the Kalahari Desert. The participants enjoy the surprise of seeing the desert in bloom, but also encounter monsoon rain that makes it hard to pitch and take down their tents. Far from civilisation, they are required to leave their normal “comfort zones”, sometimes to change their thinking and adopt new points of view. And just like in day-to-day business, decisions, non-decisions and attitudes as well as communication within the team will have a tangible impact on the process and on performance.
Every evening, the managers for the day receive feedback on their management behaviour and their contribution to the overall goal. In the morning workshops, in contrast, the group’s performance is examined. Here, the participants receive suggestions and input on the topics of leadership, teams, communication and project management, depending on the day’s requirements.
On the last day - back in an excellent hotel – the participants then work out ideas and models for future collaboration. In particular, they find the “opinion map“ tool particularly helpful. It will enable them to address even critical topics openly. A follow-up day six months after the end of the expedition shows that communication in the management team has been permanently improved and the Leadership Challenge has therefore contributed to achieving the goal.
Interview with Robert Hartlauer
principal shareholder
of HARTLAUER Handelsges.m.b.H.
