Monday, August 27, 2007

Get the corporate body moving


A great many years ago when I was working at Grant Andrews Office Furniture we had an industry action cricket tournament. One of our suppliers hosted it and all its clients entered teams. It is one thing to participate internally in sporting events but a whole other kettle of fish when competing against your industry competitors.
A lot could reveled about the character of people when participating in this kind of event. Operating at the high end of the market, we worked on projects such as Vodacom (in Midrand), ABSA and a number of high end clients. This coupled with our very beautiful art deco premises in the heritage belt in Parktown in Johannesburg, plus our well groomed consultants gave us a reputation for being arrogant.

My assistant Marisha and I joined the action cricket team and I have to tell you that we had both never played a single game of action cricket in our entire lives. In fact Marisha read the rules of action cricket to me on the way to the tournament. Marisha and I always had a lot of fun, we were in charge of marketing, newsletters, catering, and end of the year kid’s party’s and always came up with gags to lighten the atmosphere. In fact when we had our lucky draws for Valentine’s Day, Halloween day etc, we always dressed up. Many days we were seen with fairy outfits or Halloween costumes and Santa hats. But sports were not our strong suit at all.

The action cricket tournament meant to be fun, but at the event our competitions tore strips off us. There were a number of nasty comments thrown at us. Grant always told us to sell on our strengths and not on other’s weaknesses, but that lesson was a challenge on that evening, because actually inside I felt like punching one or two individuals. If I had been doing kick boxing at that time, I would have made quite an imposing figure at a mere 5.2ft. Aah isn’t it great to fool yourself.

After a barrage of these nasty comments, I turned to the sales director and said “You do know that we actually HAVE, to win this tournament.”

I partnered the sales director with batting. Both of us have choleric personalities and at times we would clash because of our strong personalities. But on this evening I had to take all our brilliant sales’ director’s direction as although I had never played, he had.
His advice to me was “No matter what happens, when I say run you run, whether you have hit the ball or not.” And run, I did. I ran my heart and probably bits of my lungs too. I ran despite the fact that he had hit the ball squarely on my foot. Despite our odd choleric debates at the office, we made an excellent action cricket team.
By sheer spirit, because talent was limited to a few members of the team, we actually won. The transformation was amazing. Marisha usually participated in events such as choir, bow making, painting and other crafts which she was excellent at, but on that evening she was a victor. On the way home she said “You know Kim, people who say that winning is not everything, and clearly have not won anything at all.”

Well what a spectacular evening. I still have my Gant Andrew Action Cricket t-shirt and still smile when I think of the night that our team crushed the opposition.

What a moral booster. If you have a team of runners, go cart riders, whatever, go for it. Get yourself some corporate clothing, branded t-shirts, tracksuits and go strut your stuff.

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