Teambuilding

Working in a team is very important. But therefore the team morale should be good. Great teamwork helps in achieving solutions for the most difficult situations in organisations and encourages people to perform more effectively. Teambuilding courses can be used to improve the working atmosphere. If you are looking to build a great team, the foundation lies in selecting the right approach and planning a team building activity that gives results. A team building activity should be chosen carefully to deliver benefits to the organisation and team members.

For example the team could do a cookery course together. There are many advantages of sending teams on a cookery course. It is not a competitive thing and brings people together. Also it helps to break down barriers and cuts across ages, backgrounds and cultures. You don’t need special abilities for cooking. Anyone can take part and they can participate as much or little as they want. Furthermore it feels natural compared to other team-building activities. And at the end there is a tasty meal on offer.

The event group is a nationwide team building company, which offers unique corporate team building activities, fun team building games and stimulating leadership team building challenges in Auckland.

One team building activity in Auckland is “What a Production”.

Using broadcast quality cameras and sound gear industry professionals guide the team to become a production crew creating a commercial or film/television trailer. It is great to reinforce key messages, introduce new initiatives or for just bringing out hidden skills and talents in the team. Viewing of the final product is done on the day and can be part of an after dinner presentation. So everybody works together and has a great and funny time with a nice result at the end of the day.

Teambuilding activities are very important and useful especially in business. They bring people together and the team can get more team spirit. Teambuilding activities can help in business to get more effective team working and you can receive better and faster results. Also the activities can improve the team morale and the team can figure out their qualities and strengths. The team get to know more about every individual team member and they learn to work together under different circumstances. The team can improve communication, break down barriers and create a sense of unity. In Auckland there is a company called

“the Events Group” which offers a lot of different team building activities like team sailing, art challenges and much more. If you are looking to build a great team, the foundation lies in selecting the right approach and planning a team building activity that gives results. A team building activity should be chosen carefully to deliver benefits to the organization and team members. 

The company also offers a challenge which is called “Can you stand the heat?”. You can cook a 3 course meal together with a celebrity chef. Their events are created just for teams. I think cooking is a very good teambuilding activity because you don’t need previous knowledge about cooking. Anyone can take part and participate as much they like. Also the team can learn to work together in a stressful situation.

Crowdfunding: The Pebble E-Watch

Cowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the Internet.

Crowdfunding has the potential to increase entrepreneurship by expanding the pool of investors from whom funds can be raised beyond the traditional circle of owners, relatives and venture capitalists.

A popular crowdfunding platform is “kickstarter”, which is based in the United States.

“kickstarter” allows members to pledge amounts of money towards an idea in return for a reward from the creator.

An example for a successfully funded project is an e-paper watch for iPhone and Android. The project was launched by a company called “Pebble Technology” on April 11, 2012. Their goal was $100.000 but the total pledge exceeded this by far. They received $10,266,845 in total.
The Pebble E-Watch is a watch built for the 21^st century. It is easy to customize with apps such as heart rate monitoring and exercise tracking. The e-paper watch connects with smartphones using Bluetooth, and alerts you to incoming calls, emails and text messages.

The inventors of this watch claim that this is probably where Apple got the idea for the iWatch from.

The smartwatch was released in 2013. It is the most successful product funded through “kickstarter”.
“Best Buy”, an American consumer electronics corporation, began selling Pebble smartwatch in July 2013, and sold out within 5 days.

I would be very interested in this smartwatch because it really makes your life easier as you don’t have to carry around your mobilephone all the time, since the smartwatch alerts you to incoming calls and messages.

Furthermore it is compatible with both Android and iOS which is an advantage compared to the iWatch.

 

Brazilian Crowdfunding

Have you ever heard about crowdfunding practices in Brazil? It’s a good option for a small business and is not necessary to deal with banks' high interest rates.

It arrived in Brazil in 2009 through the website Vakinha, which proposed to raise funds for relatives' and friends' projects. On the other hand, it’s not restricted to business and projects, it also includes personal matters such as purchasing a new car or traveling around the world.

Nowadays, Catarse and Movere are the main crowdfunding websites in Brazil. They choose projects based on art, cinema, dance, music and literature. Creativity, talent and innovation are characteristics of these websites. It’s a challenge to traditional Brazilian mentality that still tends to value a professional education and it may increasing the number of liberal professionals in Brazil. 

CEO Hartmut Mehdorn - Airport Berlin Brandenburg  

              

Overview Hartmut Mehdorn
Hartmut Mehdorn is a German mechanical engineer as well as a German industrial manager. He was born in July 1942 in Warschau. He finished his degree as a mechanical engineer at the University TU Berlin and subsequently, he worked in different positions for the Aircraft Industry before he became the CEO for the airport Berlin-Brandenburg GmbH in 2013.

In his private life, Hartmut Mehdorn is married to the frenchwoman Hélène Vuillequez. He has two adult sons as well as an adult daughter. He is an admirer of the French culture and lifestyle. His hobbies are sailing and golf, philately, the forging of metal and the winegrowing. On the basis of his last hobby, he owns a vineyard in Southern France.

The difficult project “Airport Berlin-Brandenburg”
The airport Berlin Brandenburg is an international commercial airport in Southern Berlin and has been building since September 2006 and should have been finished 6 years later, in June 2012. Because of serious variety technical issues, the opening date could not be observed and was multiple rescheduled. At the moment, the implementing can not be foreseen, but it is said the implementing is expected in 2017. Besides the opening date, the costs increased rapidly from 1,7 mil Euro (2004) to 5,4 mil Euro to the end of 2014.

The reason, Mehdorn became the CEO for the airport Berlin-Brandenburg are his high qualifications, his work experience as well as his marked skills to lead and complete such a huge problematical project. It was assumed that he is the right man for the department of the CEO.

Mehdorns present management style
Currently and because of the big problems at the airport, Mehdorn is criticized not the right CEO for the project. It is heavily criticized, especially by the supervisory committee, his management methods are outdated and he breaks the basic rules of good communication. 

It is said Hartmut Mehdorn is quite reserved with important utterances and he does not communicate the different problems honestly. The supervisory committee says without truthful and straightforward communication it is not possible to have a reliable collaboration. It is important that Mehdorn implements a corporate culture and it is wanted that he shows a more reserved behavior, because his job is to finish this project very fast, nothing else and because of that he get support from the supervisory committee. 

In the past, Mehdorn described his management style with his own words and said: "You can not rehabilitate a company with your hands wrapped in cotton wool, I never wanted to be a diplomat".

Therefore, Mehdorn is a very commanding person, he knows his tasks exactly and obviously, he does not have much confidence in foreign people, so he makes most decisions by himself. Based on his successes in the past as a CEO and with his autocratic leadership style, Mehdorn is used to being in the right and as a result he is quite tenacious, ambitious and does not give the control to someone else.

Mehdorn wants to finish this project stubbornly with all his energy. This is his big strength and that is the reason he became the CEO, but he does not regard that the time has changed. Now, his democratic leadership style is obsolete, the society wants to have a democratic style.

For the future, Mehdorn has to realize that he has to change his behavior, has to talk with his team members and has to speak clearly about facts, rules and tasks and as well as he has to trust his project team and has to create a pleasant and truthful atmosphere in his team.  

Steven S. Reinemund

  

Steven S. Reinemund was born on the 6^th of April in 1948. He was a Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo between 2001 and 2006.

Reinemund spent 22 years working for PepsiCo. During his CEO tenure at PepsiCo, revenues grew by $9 billion, earnings per share were up 80% and PepsiCo’s market cap exceeded $100 billion.

For Steven Reinemund and his team it is really important to be innovative and they have to bring constantly new ideas into the company. This is what leads to the growing of a company.

Reinemund takes a major role in mentoring and teaching staff formally and informally. He also underlines that everyone in the senior ranks do the same.

For Reinemund, the key is making enough new bets to keep customers coming back while delivering strong shareholder returns. He thinks that it is very important that you are happy with your job as a leader. He says that you have to enjoy your job in a company you respect.

Dr. Norbert Reithofer (BMW AG) 

Norbert Reithofer was born in 1956. He studied in munich (Germany) mechanical engineering and later business management. He started his career by BMW at 1987 as leader of maintenance. Reithofer is the chairman of the Board of Management of BMW AG since 2006.
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) is a German automobile, motorcycle and engine manufacturing company founded in 1916. It also owns and produces the Mini brand, and is the parent company of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. 
Fundamental transformation like new technologies, business fields and service offerings requires innovative strength, flexibility,  new ways of thinking and especially the determination to act said Reithofer in Conference Call Interim Report to 30 June 2013. Reithofer won over his manager colleagues above all with his "excellent strategies", "realistic" management style and "international presence".