Team Building Based on Historical Events

Based on Historical Events

At Kaizen Coaching and Team Building, we try to offer our clients the best Team Building days, corporate activities or incentives.

We look for great experiences, great adventures, that serve as examples of overcoming challenges, creativity, and teamwork, to empower participants, to make them "live" events that changed the course of history. As an example, a great story like the one lived by the Wright brothers, based on dynamics set within a specific context, turning Team Building into a recreation of history.

Many people haven't heard of Samuel Langley. At the dawn of the 20th century, the possibility of achieving the first manned, self-propelled flight was like today's ".com". Everyone was trying it. And Samuel Langley supposedly had the recipe for success. Why does a product or company usually fail? It usually comes down to a variant of the same three things: lack of capital, the wrong people, poor market conditions. It's usually the same three things, so let's explore that. The old War Department, now called Defense, gave Samuel Pierpont Langley $50,000 of the day's money to invent this "flying machine". Money wasn't a problem. He was an assistant at Harvard, worked at the Smithsonian, and had extremely good connections. He knew every great mind of the time. He hired the best engineers money could buy. And market conditions were fantastic. The New York Times followed him everywhere, along with other media. And everyone was rooting for Langley. So how come we've never heard of Samuel Pierpont Langley?

A few hundred kilometres away, Wilbur and Orville Wright had none of what we consider the recipe for success. They had no money. They funded their dream with the profits from their bicycle shop. No one on the Wright brothers' team had a university education, not even Orville or Wilbur. And The New York Times didn't follow them anywhere. The difference was that Orville and Wilbur were driven by a cause, a purpose, a belief. They believed that if they could invent a flying machine, it would dramatically change the course of the world. Samuel Langley was different. He wanted to be rich, and he wanted to be famous. He was solely focused on the outcome. He was in pursuit of wealth. And look what happened: the people who believed in the Wright brothers' dream worked with them, giving blood, sweat and tears. The others only worked for money. On December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers took flight, and no one was even there to witness it. The world found out a few days later. On the day the Wright brothers flew, Langley gave up. He could have said, "Congratulations, gentlemen, that's an amazing discovery and I'm going to improve your technology," but he didn't. He wasn't first, he didn't get rich, he didn't get famous either, so he gave up.

Our Team Building activities always aim to challenge participants, break down their usual structure, pull them out of their work role, and make them feel immersed in a great adventure.

And this isn't the only Team Building activity based on real events we recreate, both in Madrid and Barcelona — ask us with no obligation.