France

We gave 22 people five hours to build this…

INSEAD | Fondation des Amis de l’Atelier

“You’re challenged to work together as a high performing team. All we need is your brains, your hands and your enthusiasm.”

This is what Splash Projects Project Manager Lloyd Comer told 22 businesspeople on an INSEAD Executive Education course ahead of their task to build a ‘bouleodome’, in just under five hours, this April.

The team rose to the challenge and created a beautiful pergola, deck and scoreboard set around an existing pétanque court, within the deadline – despite their professor’s attempt to tempt them off-course!

The team’s efforts will greatly enhance the lives of the disabled residents being cared for by Fondation des Amis de l’Atelier in Fontainbleau, France.

Loic Sadoulet, Professor of Economics at INSEAD, said: “Splash Projects pull people together and connect them to make a difference.

“One of the ways to get people to work towards a common goal and benefit a community in need is to recognise what the purpose is and then to make that the focus, rather than their focus being solely on delivering a short-term performance.

“We purposely plan for things to go wrong, presenting our teams with a conundrum – but our wicked plan failed this time!

“In addition to the bouleodome infrastructure, we tasked them with building several planters. They chose to miss them out and leave them until last, and by doing so, they actually saved themselves a lot of time, even though they didn’t know it!”