Case Studies
Bean Around the World - A Case Study for Team Collaboration and Communication
Programme: Bean Around the World
Location: Hong Kong
Client: Samsonite Asia Limited
Outcome: Team Collaboration, Communication, Continuous improvement
As part of a full day programme involving BeatsWork and Hollywood Challenge, leading luggage company Samsonite experienced Team Building Asia’s Bean Around The World.
In reinforcing their team collaboration, Samonsite wanted to promote a theme of “We are an unbeatable team”. It was decided that Bean Around the World would be an excellent activity to test the strengths of the entire team. Working as coffee syndicates, teams buy and sell coffee beans for the highest profit. After receiving specific instructions and market information, the room was abuzz with energy as teams discussed the best strategy, negotiating and trading with other teams.
After the first trading period teams grouped with their syndicate to assess how much profit they had made and engaged in a sharing session on how they can be even more competitive and strategic in Period Two to prove they are unbeatable. Unknown to them was that in Period Two a commodities crash took place and this drastic change element forced teams to quickly adapt their strategy. This resulted in more frenzied negotiations and regrouping to align and motivate team members through the change. In order to increase supply a suspenseful auction was fought out between all teams to grab the last supply of precious coffee beans.
During Period Three the information of what suppliers would be buying was not known and teams had to collaborate with their competitors to gain all the information they needed. This changed what had seemed like a purely competitive activity atthe beginning into exercise of unified vision and competitive collaboration. The collaboration did not last long though as competition took over and the final trading session began.
During the customised debrief each syndicates’ money and coffee were tallied and the syndicate with the highest value won the exercise. A new record of HK$92 million was achieved by one syndicate, which since 2009 is the highest so far ever scored in Bean Around The World. This really proves that Samsonite are indeed and unbeatable team, unless other are up to the challenge to pip them off the post?
