“You have to protect the egg from breaking” explained our trainer.
“You will have to throw it on our target kept at approximately 6 feet away” She continued “and it should not break”
“WHAT THE?? “ I thought. Even before my thought process could finish the world favorite line, she continued “You will be given 4 sheets of paper, one thread, cello tape, and three balloons. Protect the eggs!!” She declared.
I was lost, I felt like our team was lost in wilderness. I could hear the wolves. I need to protect the team…. ‘ACT FAST’ my mind rolled.
“Okay let’s use the balloons to protect the egg from the impact” I said.
There was counter opinions, changes in plan and even a 5 minute discussion on how to inflate the balloon. Finally we managed to inflate the balloons in no particular plan or shape. But fate had other plans.
The oversized elderly gentleman in our team accidentally sat on one of the balloons.
“One down” I declared. “Let’s not lose hope here” I assured the team.
The other balloon was declared lost when our extremely lovely lady in our team poked it with her extra long pointed-polished NAILS.
Her continuous sorry(s) was not helping our team. We had to go on.
The third balloon was down in action; at least we have a martyr who died for a cause.
Before anyone starts complaining on what the hell is happening, let me explain. I am in training “Managing people” and this activity was part of it. We had to protect an egg with the help of few items that the trainer has provided. We had to throw the egg, hitting the target kept 6 feet away. The winner would be the team whose egg did not break.
My last encounter with an egg was two days back when an egg slipped off my hand while I was taking it out from the refrigerator. It fell on the tiled floor and broke.
The worst part of it was cleaning. I realized that the contents of the egg cannot be absorbed by cloth nor can it be swept away using a broom. Its sticky and slimy and its worse when it’s on the floor.
Getting it out of the floor was indeed a task; I tried the above two and miserably failed. So I decided to dilute it. Dilution will help soften hard solutions, I have learnt and tried applying it. I was left with a messy floor.
I had to cover the entire thing up before my wife find out. The last resort was to use a spoon to recover the contents on to a vessel and hide the rest under the refrigerator.
I did just that.
Now back to the story, we were left with nothing but 4 sheets of paper, one thread and a cello tape.
“Hooooray” that was from our rival team. They completed the task of wrapping the egg in a protective cover. Now they can continue with the ‘throwing’ part.
We had 5 minutes left. We quickly made soft paper balls out of the sheets provided, kept these at strategic locations around the egg and used the thread to bind them. Finally we wrapped the tape around the egg-paper combination to strengthen the protected area.
“We are done!” I declared.
Now for some action, I thought. The trainer, sensing danger, quickly requested a person to lay paper all around the target (a white board). She did not want the fresh carpet to be stained with fresh egg contents.
I aimed at the target carefully calculating the trajectory and the angle at which I should be throwing the egg.
I used as little force I could to project the egg to the target.
It was a direct hit.
The trainer gasped.
The rest of the crowd gasped.
I closed my eyes.
“Hoorrrraaaay”
Was it the other team celebrating our misery? Or worse should I clean the floor myself?
I thought.
“It did not break!!!.. Clean shot !.” Said an overly excited trainer. She continued.
“Now my friends, that’s a practical explanation for team management. The egg was your team and you put in all your efforts to protect it from everything. That’s what we learn from this activity.”
EGG? Team??? Will I be a bad manager? Chucking the team under the refrigerator? Or making bulls eyes of it? Only time will tell!
PS : The trainer took the egg back. I had plans to replace it with the one I broke two days back.
Happy Friendship day to all !.
