A medium sized London consultancy was looking for a motivational & reward programme for their consultants. It had to tie in with a business conference. Blue Pebble was given a brief of designing a programme that covered all the client objectives.

The final programme saw the group meeting in Southampton for a one-day conference. Part of this was a classroom based business game supplied by Blue Pebble to help demonstrate the importance of clear communication. The day finished with a standard dinner night in the hotel and overnight accommodation. The following morning, instead of returning to the classroom the group were transported to the Solent for their ‘team challenge’. The group was split into 5 teams of 8 and each team allocated to an ocean going racing yacht. A fully qualified skipper captained each yacht, but it was the team’s task to learn to sail the yacht in the morning and then compete against each other in a series of races in the afternoon.

The morning’s tuition period went by in a flash and all the teams ‘learnt the ropes’ extremely quickly, which led to some fast and exciting racing in the afternoon.

The teams expected to be returned to the hotel after the day but there can be more enjoyable ways to finish a day like that. The yachts were bought into Chichester Harbour and moored up close to shore. The gala dinner night was instead a beach BBQ and party and much more enjoyed by the teams than sitting in a hotel dining room. And instead of a stuffy hotel room they had their yacht bunks to drift off to sleep in at the end of the evening.