The Return of Jumping Off a Cliff

Jumping off cliffs was the "it" corporate activity of the mid-1990s. It seemed everyone who was anyone in corporate America was flying 2,000 miles away from their downtown headquarters to spend four days in the wilderness to jump off cliffs, hug their teammates, and hopefully, come back to work with a stronger sense of trust and team spirit.

After a hiatus to make room for bottom line trends like Six Sigma and leadership, it seems that businesses are reconnecting with their soft and fuzzy side.Jumping Off A Cliffs is making a corporate comeback -- at least at Caroline's company.

The company has just initiated a 2005 version of the Jumping of the Cliff program. Instead of flying to New Mexicoto jump off a cliff, she’ll be jumping off a telephone- like pole in the back off a local hotel. She’s been instructed that she will be staying at the hotel for five days even though she lives 10 miles from the facility.

Caroline is not a happy camper.“The company wants me to sign a waiver saying that I can’t hold them responsible for any injuries, even if my injury is their fault.”

Caroline says she’s not signing. An instructor for the course says no one is forced to do anything they don’t want to do.

For Caroline, that’s not the point. It’s the waiver. “I’m one of those people who read things before I sign them. I bet 90% of the people just signed the waiver, not realizing that even if the company is at fault they’ll have no recourse.”

“It’s just not right,” said Caroline. Caroline is still in negotiations. She is scheduled to attend her training later this month.

If she follows in her mother’s steps the waiver will be a moot point. Caroline’s mom, Alison, did something that no one else in her company had dared do before: she didn't jump. "I made it to the zip line and my knees buckled. The program leaders said, 'you've gone as far as you can go,' and that was that. Later, one of my team members came up to me and said that was the bravest thing anyone had done on the trip."

"Why did he say that?" I asked.

"Because everyone thought they were going to be reported on their performance, and the rest never considered that not jumping was even an option."

"How would you rate the overall experience?"

"I learned a great deal about the people I worked with, but it didn't make our team stronger. We were dysfunctional before the trip, and we continued to be dysfunctional."

In the 2005 version of Jumping Off A Cliff, the teams will have several follow-up sessions for the next year  to reinforce the learnings. However,there is one additional risk --re-org.

Back in the 90s Barbara didn't just jump off the cliff once. She didn't just jump twice . She jumped on three separate occcasssions because during a three year period she was on three different teams --all assigned to jump off the cliff.

"Obviously, it wasn't as terrifying to go off the cliff after the first time. It did give me the opportunityto reassure my teammates and give them encouragement. I liked doing that."

NOTE: Caroline,Alison and Barbara are not their real names. Barbara did jump three times, Alison never and the jury is out on Caroline.

But did it make your team more effective?" I asked.

"Quite honestly, you learned a lot about yourself. How you respond to fear. How you respond to other people's fear. Did we work better? I think people got along better. We were probably more considerate, less impatient, less abrupt. But are you asking if we got more work done? I'm not convinced that we did."