Mission impossible for top managers

The most common image of a manager, chief accountant or department head from a large company generally shows a lofty corpulent person, surrounded by cigarette smoke and sitting behind a huge desk.

Things are no longer quite so. Modern companies are careful with their employees’ health and image and appreciate the ability of their top managers to make a team.

Oradea-based RoMarketing is specialised in training and selecting workforce. But one of the services this company offers is actually spectacular.

Important people, most of them managers of multi-national companies, leave the suits and ties for sports and climbing equipment for several days.

Sorina Bradea is a constructor, but she does not erect buildings. Instead, she builds something else, which is more important in any enterprise: the leading team.

Her job is to make those who are responsible for a business or a department to become unbeatable decision and execution machines.

“Practice has proved that it is not enough to have high technology if the people using it do not work as a team.” Sorina, the head of “team building” department, says that her methods were brought from the West by those who came to do business in Romania.

Oradea-based company is one of the few in this field that make the clients achieve almost impossible missions, in order to help them find their aptitudes and weaknesses.

“At the very beginning, we faced such situations ourselves and realised that our results were positive.”

It is a real challenge. The attendants play childish games, overcome obstacles, or maintain their balance on a rope crossing a precipice.

“Such experiences help people to do their best. If their colleagues can do it, it means that they can do it as well.” Sorina adds that, during such training, the company’s specialists watch the evolution and development of inter-human relationships.

The ambitions of RoMarketing are even bigger. After asking the clients to swim into the sea, searching for several objects, or let them by themselves in caves, the best team is now ready to try an adventure with an inflatable boat on a mountain river.

The participants’ safety is guaranteed by specialists in mountain climbing and cave exploration. “This service has become one of our basic products. We like to run it and see how people change in several days,” Sorina says.

The success of team-building is proved by the fame of the clients trained by Oradea-based company: Coca-Cola, Lafarge Romcim, Mars, Benckiser Romania, Master Foods Romania and Rombike Oradea.

One team-building programme takes between one and three days, depending on the team’s condition and the target. The minimum cost is 1,000 dollars/day, for a team made of 16 participants.

The price includes the accommodation and food. RoMarketing and the climbing coaches supply the team with sportswear and equipment necessary for the special tests.