Today was our first official day at the business school, but not our first day of the MBA. That started on Saturday, with a team building weekend that has been affectionately termed “boot camp”.
Boot Camp Explained
The reason for the name boot camp, is that in order to get to know how our groups that we are going to be in for the next year operate, we were put through a series of challenges. These challenges were both physically and mentally challenging.
Some of the activities were abseiling, building a raft and getting to the other side of a pool, building a tower out of dry spaghetti and marshmellows, a quiz about African countries, a puzzle, obstacle course, and more (there were 11 activities in total plus one pit stop.
What did I learn
I thought that this would be about which team was the most competitive. I am competitive, so yes, that was part of it (we came 4th out of 22 
), but there was so much that I learnt about the group that I am going to be working with for the next year.
Some of the things that I realised are:
- Always start with a strategy
- The person who is the expert in that field (if there is one) needs to take the lead – ego’s must not take over
- Everyone must play a part, even if it’s the admin stuff that is not very fun
- You have to trust your team if you want to deliver great results
That was just the start, so let’s see if I agree with those thoughts in a couple of weeks time, hopefully I will.
Soli Deo Gloria