A Bike

I heard about this from Marc Epner who works for Kronos. A company that makes employee time management software. Marc is one of their sales people.

Marc recently told me about a team work activity they did at Kronos recently that I thought was really cool.

The Kronos sales team was assembled for a typical sales meeting I believe in Chicago. One afternoon was dedicated to a team work exercise. The employee’s were divided into teams of five. There were one hundred teams and each team was given a box with a number on it. In the box the teams found bicycle parts and some assembly instruction. Each team had 2 hours to do the best job of putting the bike together.

About an hour into the exercise the doors of the hall they were in opened and one hundred underprivileged kids from Joliet walked in. Each was carrying a sign with a number on it corresponding to one of the bikes. These were kids from poor families that can not afford to get their kids bikes.

It was announced that each child was to get one of the bikes and the kids were to find the team that was working on the bike that had their number on it.

Once the teams met the kids who were going to get their bike their attitude changed completely. Before they where trying to be the fastest and were trying to keep what they had learned a secret from the other teams. Once the learned about the kids they started sharing between teams. So, they could all make sure that they got the best bike possible for their kid. They consulted with the kids to find out exactly what they wanted for their bike.

Their attitude be came one of service instead of competition.

Marc said that afterward almost everyone was overcome with emotion and he wasn’t sure but thought it might have been a life changing experience. Some kids who needed bikes got them and hopefully the employees learned to be better team players.

Think of how much more productive we might be if we always kept an attitude of service.

Golf

I heard this on NPR.

Moses, Jesus, and an old man with a beard were playing golf. They came up to the 13^th hole and there was a huge pond just in front of the green.

Moses teed off and sure enough his ball went right into the pond. He huffed and walked down to the pond and held his golf club up and the waters parted. He walked up to the ball and made a beautiful chip shot right on to the green.

Jesus was next and sure enough when he teed off his ball went right into the pond. He rolled his eyes and shook his head and headed down to the pond. When he got there we walked on top of the water and sure enough the ball rose to the top and he too made a beautiful chip shot right on to the green.

Finally the old man with the beard teed off. His ball went way off course. In fact if flew clear off the golf course. A bus happened to be passing and the ball bounced of the bus back onto the fairway and bounced twice and landed on a Lilly Pad in the middle of the pond. A frog hopped on the Lilly Pad picked up the ball and started to hop from Pad to Pad across the pond when an eagle swooped down and scooped up the frog and started to fly away, the ball still in the frog’s mouth. Finally, when the eagle, frog in tow, was over the green, the frog spit out the ball. It bounced on the green once and landed right in the cup.

At this point Moses leaned over to Jesus and said “I hate playing with your Dad.”

I believe this and many other good jokes can be found in the following book.

http://www.amazon.com/Plato-Platypus-Walk-into-Understanding/dp/081091493X