The whole Tecma headquarters team recently spent a full day enjoying team-building activities together. Production teams from the factory floor worked hand-in-hand with office-based colleagues from the design, leadership, finance, HR and commercial teams.
The activities were Viking-themed. A strange choice for a company based just to the north of Barcelona? Maybe not! The Vikings did venture into the Iberian Peninsula between the eighth and eleventh centuries so perhaps a few Tecma people have a little Viking blood coursing through their veins! Whether or not this is the case, the whole team handled the activities with enthusiasm, good humour and considerable skill. A Barcelona-based group of team-building experts facilitated the tasks. They were dressed in full Viking costumes and led by a charismatic warrior with a booming voice. Wearing Vikings helmets of their own, the Tecma team looked
But what were the Tecma team asked to do?
After a few short activities designed to emphasise the importance of clear communication and close collaboration, the main part of the session involved breaking the group into randomly selected teams, each given separate materials and instructions. The overall objective was to construct a giant Viking longboat on the grounds of the hotel complex where the activities were being hosted. This required constant and effective communication within and between the separate teams as the different sections of the longboat were assembled and added to the main structure.
The finished longboat was to be decorated with a number of shields. Part of one team’s task was to write words on these shields. Uttered in the same booming voice as all his other instructions, the chief Viking warrior told the team that these words should represent Tecma’s values. The words they chose were growth, balance, equality, unity, team and constant improvement.
The team given this task did not include any members of the company’s leadership team and Tecma CEO Narcís Puigdemont was delighted to see that a sense of the business living by such positive values has developed organically as the team has rapidly expanded in recent years: “It’s clear that we don’t need a top-down, heavy-handed approach to building a strong team dynamic at Tecma. The men and women who make this company great came to us with great values and a willingness to build on them for the good of our business and our customers. It’s clear that this continues to happen even as our headcount grows at an accelerated pace.”
It was that rapid growth in headcount that motivated Narcís to set aside a day for team-building activities. While adding new people to a growing team and creating jobs is a happy consequence of responding to rising demand for Tecma’s one-stop-shop aluminium components manufacturing service from around Europe and increasingly from the USA too, it could potentially create challenges around keep the workforce cohesive and engaged as more and more new faces appear. Any such worries were certainly laid to rest on Tecma’s team-building day. Although the activities certainly helped to foster an even greater closeness between colleagues and highlight the need to keep refining key competencies, it was clear from the first minute of the day that a wonderfully positive energy already drives the company’s work every day!
