PlayTime Inc. Team Building & Leadership News

Starting to upload press

http://playtimeinc.typepad.com/photos/press

I just uploaded a note of kudos that Andrew Gustafson got from Garrett Creek Ranch!

Kudos to our own Jo Fjellman from Combined Insurance on a great Team Building event

October 9, 2006

Jo Fjellman
P.O. Box 25022
Seattle, WA 98165

Dear Jo,
I want to thank you and Playtime Inc. for the amazing Geo-teaming experience you provided for our A-Team at the Garrett Creek Ranch in lovely Paradise, Texas, September 19, 2006.  As a member of the Combined Insurance Company training staff and a member of the A-Team, I have participated in many “team-building” events.  Your program was extremely unique and value-added.  Not only did I have fun working with my team, but I also learned a lot about my peers and myself.  It was refreshing to be out of the classroom, not just talking about teamwork, but actually engaging in teamwork!  Each person on the team took on a role, whether it be leader, thinker, doer, or even whiner!

Your staff was well organized and took a lot of time to set up the event and get our participants in the right frame of mind.  I was pleased that there were two goals for each teams to work towards; first, being the winning team and second, having the entire group retrieving all the caches.  This parallels true winning in the business world also.  Our Regional Managers need to achieve the goals they set for their Region, but true leaders will also support the goals of the entire organization. 

You also kept control of the event by having a facilitator accompany each team and conducting a half-way checkpoint.  It was so interesting at “half-time” that all three teams had primarily focused on their own win, but not the collaborative win.  The goals of each team changed at this juncture. 

What stood out the most for me was the session we held after the event.  The questions you asked and the observations you made were right on.  On the final day of our program, we asked the participants to share three key ideas that they would take home and implement.  Many of the team members shared principles they learned from our Geo-teaming experience.  We heard things like, communication, planning, assigning the right task to the right person, and many more!

Jo, just as the A-Team is “a cut above the rest” your Geo-teaming event is “a cut above the rest!”  Thank you for giving us you’re very best!

Sincerely,

Kari Wendorf
Assistant to the N.A. Director of Training and Executive Development

ROI Controversy Rooted in Expectations

Attached is an article that ran last week in CLO Magazine on the subject of ROI evaluation.  Rob Brinkerhoff was quoted extensively in this article.

I hope you enjoy the read.

ROI Controversy Rooted in Expectations
September 13, 2006 - Kellye Whitney, Associate Editor  Email This Article To A Friend - Print This Article

Learning leaders can’t reach consensus on something almost all of them value intensely: measurement of learning impact on the business. ROI measurements or metrics continually spark conversations and debates in the enterprise education space. Parties on both sides of the fence — those who say learning can be measured, and those who subscribe to “We know intuitively that learning works” — might want to go back to the beginning of the debate and evaluate their learning and development expectations before they initiate programs, are disappointed and potentially conclude that learning program content or delivery was to blame when results are less than stellar.

Ideally metrics should prove whether learning and development activity has an impact on workforce performance and ultimately on the bottom line. Learning also should improve performance, and learning executives might be overlooking this aspect when metrics are at issue.

“Any training investment gets really predictable results,” said Dr. Robert O. Brinkerhoff, professor emeritus at Western Michigan University and senior consultant for Advantage Performance Group. “It never works 100 percent of the time. Typically a training program, whether it’s leadership development, technical or soft skill training, is going to work for about 20 percent of the people and not work at all for about 20 percent of the people. The remaining 60 percent, it will be just partially or marginally effective with. The second piece, the improve, is so important because if the training for the top 20 percent gets good results and has a positive return on investment, it’s really important to figure out how can you get more of that middle 60 percent into the top 20 percent. That way you realize much more return on the investment because companies pay for training that works, and they pay for training that doesn’t work. Getting it to work more of the time is really the most important outcome from metrics.”

Brinkerhoff said what constitutes good, effective or worthy metrics is hotly contested, and it has been for decades because of the confusion over whether training is a benefit or an investment in employee performance improvement and capability.

“A lot of senior executives look at training as a necessary overhead. Just the same way that you have to have a building, utilities, a parking lot for employees, you’ve also got to give them some training. It’s necessary to recruit and retain people,” he said. “Then there’s another view of training that says it should be a principle driver of performance improvement, and it should help a company be more competitive. I think there’s confusion right at the beginning over what should training be doing. When expectations for the value it should bring aren’t clear to begin with, then you’re going to get a lot of argument on the back end, when people start bringing measurement metrics forward because there was never agreement in the first place over what it was supposed to do.”

Another often-talked-about piece of the metrics controversy arises rose because senior learning executives aren’t getting what they want. Most don’t want simple numbers such as those related to course completions, training hours taken, etc. Yet complex or more elaborate reports might be too much to handle and still not relay the most vital pieces of information: Was learning effective, and how so?

“Too many of the methods have been too complex and too difficult to use and understand, and they produce results that are highly qualified,” Brinkerhoff said. “There’s all sorts of caveats to any conclusions. People get frustrated with the reports and the results that they get back from a training department, when really what they want, I think, is clear, sensible and credible information. They want to know if they’ve invested in a training initiative: Is it working — yes or no? What good is it doing? This is where ROI procedures have really let them down. They have a second set of questions underneath those first questions: If training is working and doing some good, what would more investment get us? Metrics fall short at that point.

“Metrics don’t tell people why they got what they got. The two deeper questions that are important to ask are, ‘What would more investment get us?’ and the corollary is ‘What’s the risk by reducing the investment or by not investing at all? What money are we leaving on the table with training, and should we be investing more to get more back?’ The current set of metrics are very much retrospective and after-the-fact — it’s sort of like measuring how open the barn door was after the horse is already gone. There’s nothing you can do with the data to make decisions going forward as to what’s needed, what would work better, what would more investment get us, and what’s at risk by not investing as much as we did.”

Boeing begins work on new GPS satellites

Boeing begins work on new GPS satellites
bizjournals.com via Yahoo! Finance Fri, 13 Oct 2006 11:11 AM PDT
The Global Positioning System, used by mariners, aviators and outdoor people throughout the Northwest, will be getting a major upgrade courtesy of The Boeing Co.

Cool, even more accuracy for our GPS Powered Team Building events!

geteaming - GPS Team Building in South Lake Tahoe featured on Channel 8

CEO John Chen was interviewed for Opening Day at the Lake 2006 at South Lake Tahoe, sponsored by the Lake Tahoe Visitor's Authority. This contest was covered on TV, radio and newspapers as the AP picked it up and it even ended up in my hometown newspaper in Stockton, CA! This event attracted ~500 participants, had 100 prizes valued at over $5,000 and was a huge success for a first year event!

Cool, I'm checking out video egg and wanted to try to post our Geoteaming video on GPS Team Building. This was created by our amazing intern from the Technology Access Foundation!

Aloha Hawaii: Andrew’s In Hawaii Now!

Aloha, now you can start your Geoteaming Team Building adventure on the

Hawaii

islands with even more ease and convenience.  Our own Andrew Gustafson has relocated to

Hawaii

to fulfill one of his life dreams to help the

University

of

Hawaii

start their own cheerleading course while bringing the power of Geoteaming to the islands!  Andrew has already closed an October event for the Hilton Waikaloa (I spent many seminar in this AMAZING hotel, see the sunset at Buddha Point if you get there) as well as continuing to service his clients all over the

US

.

If you’re interested in holding your next event in

Hawaii

or you’d like to set up a demonstration or partnership in

Hawaii

, such as creating a Geoteaming course at your location, please click below and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can to help you with your team building needs.

If you want to keep up with Andrew, check out his new Hawaii blog!

Mahalo (thank you in Hawaiian)

We found it sucka! This is us finding our 5th cache at Discovery Park Seattle during a GPS Team Building event called geoteaming.

High Tech Team Building

We found it sucka! Here we are at the tree, finding our 5th cache during a GPS based team building event. Oi!