Is Artfulness a team building activity?
No, and the difference is worth naming honestly. A team building activity entertains a team for ninety minutes and is bought by whoever organises the annual day. A day of Artfulness changes what a team can do afterwards, is bought as learning and development, and is measured at thirty days. If what you need is the first, there are good suppliers of it and we are not one. If you are not sure which you need, that is the most useful conversation we can have.
The short answer. No, and the difference is worth naming honestly. A team building activity entertains a team for ninety minutes and is bought by whoever organises the annual day. A day of Artfulness changes what a team can do afterwards, is bought as learning and development, and is measured at thirty days. If what you need is the first, there are good suppliers of it and we are not one. If you are not sure which you need, that is the most useful conversation we can have.
- Its name in a budget line
- Learning and development, not events. Capability building, not the annual day.
- The programme
- The programmes. A ninety minute session to a three day residential, on your own site, measured afterwards.
- Where
- On your own site, in Kochi and across Kerala, and elsewhere in India for a full day or more. Eight people or more. No artistic background is assumed and nothing is graded.
What is actually going on.
The two things look alike from a distance and they are bought from different budgets for different reasons. A team building activity is an event. Its job is to be enjoyed, its measure is whether people enjoyed it, and its life is over when the bus leaves. It has a real purpose and the good suppliers of it do it well. It is also the cheapest possible thing to buy when what you actually needed was for the team to work differently on Monday.
A capability is what a team can do afterwards that it could not do before: offer an unfinished idea, admit an error before it travels, hold a room, test before committing. Building one requires the making to be the learning, not a warm up before a talk, and it requires somebody to check a month later whether the behaviour is there. That check is the whole difference. An activity is never measured, because there is nothing to measure.
An activity is never measured, because there is nothing to measure.
What a session does about it.
We share some of the same materials, which is where the confusion comes from. There are games, there is singing, there is a great deal of joy in the room, and a participant who came expecting an activity will not be disappointed on the day. What is different is what the making is for. In the singing day, rehearsal is where a team practises dependability and repair several hundred times. In the ideation programme, the design cycle runs several times with a real audience at the end of each. Nothing is graded and everyone is having a good time, and the mechanism underneath is doing work an activity was never designed to do.
If your brief is the annual day for a hundred people and more, Unwind is an evening built for exactly that size, designed as recovery rather than as a party, and we will tell you honestly whether it fits.
How you would know it worked.
This is the distinction in one line. A day of Artfulness is followed by the seven item psychological safety scale at thirty days and by named behaviours rated by managers at thirty to sixty days. A team building activity is followed by the photographs.
What we do not claim.
We do not claim that an activity is worthless. An evening a team enjoyed has value, and the suppliers who do it well deserve the work. We claim only that it is a different purchase, and we would rather say so before a quote than after a day.
We do not discount to meet a quote from that shelf, because the two things are not the same product and pricing them as if they were misleads everybody.
The full list is on one page, alongside the evidence and the claims we have retired.
In Kochi and Kerala.
In Kerala the question usually arrives from an HR team that has been handed the annual day and suspects the company needs something else. Both needs are real. The useful thing we can do is tell you which one your brief is, and if it is the first, say so and point you elsewhere.
We work from Kochi and run sessions on the client's own site anywhere in Kerala. Elsewhere in India we travel for a full day or more. If you would rather meet before you book, here is how.
Related questions.
Is Artfulness a team building activity?
No, and the difference is worth naming honestly. A team building activity entertains a team for ninety minutes and is bought by whoever organises the annual day. A day of Artfulness changes what a team can do afterwards, is bought as learning and development, and is measured at thirty days. If what you need is the first, there are good suppliers of it and we are not one. If you are not sure which you need, that is the most useful conversation we can have.
Can Artfulness run our annual day?
For a hundred people and more, Unwind is an evening built for that size, designed as recovery rather than as a party, with a real performance to close. If the brief is purely an event, we will say so and there are good suppliers of exactly that.
How is it priced compared with a team building activity?
It is priced as a learning and development day rather than as an event, and we say so before anyone is surprised. Investment is discussed on the call, once we know the room, and we do not discount to meet a quote from the activity shelf because the two are not the same product.
What if we want both?
Then tell us that. A day that builds a capability and an evening that lets a large team recover are both things we run, and the honest answer may be that you need one of them from us and the other from somebody else.
An activity entertains a team. A day changes what a team can do.
Eight people, one room, no preparation.