Business groups get the Outward Bound treatment

Press, 22 May 1986, Page 14

Business groups get the Outward Bound treatment

Dawn: the mist still clings to the bush that crowds down to the beach. Four yachts lie at anchor in the bay and four dinghies are drawn up on the sand. A few metres away, still in shadow because the first rays of the sun over the island’s low crest have reached only as far as the mast-tops of the yachts, a cluster of people strain at pushups, toe-touching, and other physical Jerks. These completed, the 14 men and one woman, aged from late thirties to middle forties,

By

PHILIP WORTHINGTON

disappear into the bush at a jog. After scrambling up and down slippery bush tracks for 15 or 20 minutes, they will emerge from the bush and continue running straight into the sea. The ritual begins each morning of a week-long management course, an experiment in outdoor education that plucks people from behind their office desks and throws them in at the deep

end of an intensive programme that is something of a cross between an adult Outward Bound course, a university lecture series, and a study in group behaviour. That these should be the elements of the course is no coincidence. Trevor Lund, the man leading the morning exercises, is a former instructor at the Outward Bound school at Anakiwa. He now works for Rainbow Yacht Charters, the Bay of Islands firm whose yachts are moored in the bay and which is marketing this “experience."

Two of Lund’s victims are university lecturers: Bruce Dixon, of the University of Waikato’s department of management studies and director of its Interfirm Comparison Unit: and Nick Marsh of Auckland University, also in management and business administration but with degrees and a special interest in psychology. They have instructors’ roles in the course at other times in the day, but for the present they strain and sweat as participants. While teaching others during the week or while helping others to learn about themselves they also will have to learn.

They will be pushed and cajoled to new physical limits like the paying customers. By the end of the week they will have had to master the elements of seamanship and learn how to handle an 8.5-metre yacht between them, even though one had never stepped aboard a yacht before the course started and the total experience of the other was a couple of afternoon cruises as a passenger on the yachts of friends.

Everybody on the course is there to do much the same: to impart whatever special skills or knowledge they have and, in return, to gain as much from the others as possible. The technique is not new, but, this style of

course is something of a departure for New Zealand. It was dreamed up by the owner and founder of Rainbow, Roger Miles, who also is taking part in the Inaugural course as a guinea pig. With the promotional help of Air New Zealand, he hopes to run another course each month for the next four months, tailoring each to a different group — sales and marketing people, executives and middle management, small business entrepreneurs, and staff supervisors and personnel officers. Whatever the targeted group, they will start with the same uncertainties and hesitancy that marked the inaugural course on the afternoon its members gathered at Opua. Unknown to each other, in unfamiliar though beautiful surroundings, and wary of what they had let themselves in for, the members of this first course showed then little indication of the cohesive teams that would soon develop, or of the easy rapport these strangers would have with one another within a couple of hectic days. Perhaps of all the impressions gained from the week this was the most marked: in the necessarily close quarters of a yacht, and under the rigours of the course, it was possible — ho essential — to come to know people amazingly well in a very short time. The course demands a team effort from the members and is structured to encourage one, but it is hard, nevertheless to explain why people should talk so freely and candidly with their shipmates after a few days, about things they would not mention to business colleagues after even years of acquaintance. Part of the reason may be that there are no formal structures to the course, no rankings, no preconceived boundaries or ways of doing things that are to be found in every office and business. All are equal and quickly come to appreciate the value of co-opera-tion and mutual understanding. In this atmosphere it Is easy also to absorb the information being imparted by the university lecturers. “Absorb” is the correct word because, unlike the teachings at a seminar or office study, little on this course could be classified as a lesson. Mainly it is a process of osmosis. By drawings on comments and following suggestions, the participants lead themselves towards a conclusion and are almost surprised to find that they not only have learned

something, but were their own teachers in doing so.

At the end of it all, a lot fitter and at least a little wiser, the course members can gauge just how far they have come. Their ability to organise themselves efficiently and to co-operate under trying circumstances is tested by a search-and-rescue exercise. The whole of the Bay of Islands is the search area and time is limited.

At the end of the Inaugural course the verdict was unanimous. All participants had found that they could be stretched to limits they had not thought possible. It was not always easy to meet the challenge, but the group supported the individual. Some cajoled, some nagged, others rearranged the load; by whatever means the teams always found a way to make the grade. The lessons from the weeklong experience will find ready application back in the workaday world. The added advantage from learning this way — once the blisters have gone — is the memory of a surprisingly enjoyable interlude in one of the world’s most scenic spots.