School Manager's Annual Strategy Meet 2009

Last year we had our Manager’s Meeting at our 482 F.I.E., Patparganj office and discussed a lot of things, This time round Marketing was assigned the responsibility to handle the event and as always we were different …, After a lot of discussions and going through research and analysis of about 6 to 7 properties including Kaziranaga and Wildflower Shimla throughout India we choose Baikunth Resort, Kasauli. The place proved to be beautiful beyond expectation, the evening we landed the cold breeze greeted us and I was wondering how it can we get such a wonderful weather at just 2000 feet altitude.

The evening began with a cricket match between Longman and Heinemann, although the conditions were not suitable as we had to play the match on a practice pitch but the enthusiasm and interest was full and after a lot of bowling, batting, manipulation of score card and boundaries Longman won the match.



In the evenings we had live music playing in the lush green lawns of Baikunth resorts, beyond the lawns their was huge green valley and beyond that scattered lighting on the hill just across the resort. It was a wonderful experience all across the evenings also not to mention the unusual games we played in the evening like blindfolding one of our buddies and asking them to locate their glass full of …do not need to mention …..What???

Day 2

We started our presentations and discussions on predetermined schedules and everybody presented their achievements and plans to further the cause of business. We wrapped up the day well within the schedule and moved on to the lawns for the evening.




Day 3

Was the day probably everybody was most excited about, we had arranged for team building activities and games at potter’s Hill Shimla. We drove down and up the hill to reach this place and suddenly we were in the middle of forest with a bunch of trainers and their equipments The place had few cottages too where few of us stretched their legs before starting the ‘commando’ like training and team building.

First of all we were divided in to groups of two according to our months of birth and we went on with our teams to do different activities, First of them was valley crossing, beneath the rope their was only hard rock and spines,,, anyways we checked out the equipments listened to the trainer, I also heard few of them shouting the slogan “Jai Mata Di” while crossing the valley.


We encouraged our buddies to go on and do it, helped each other being packed in to safety equipments and unpacking as well….I was really surprised at times that the average age of our group was 35 but still we were enthusiastic about each activity like school kids…


Then our group moved on to something called “Mougli Walk” where we were supposed to go up and down a rope , walk on a rope by holding another,and some of us also tried to get in to the rubber tyre, Its another matter that few of them were pulled out of that with help of five other team members …hmmm.. “Anything for the team”….as somebody had said,
Well going ahead we encouraged other team members to take up the activities……The next activity was Burma Bridge (I do not know whether I got the spelling correct) , It was very thin rope bridge to be crossed very carefully
there are chances if you slip you might end up in real adventure, and Naveen as usual didn’t slip but wanted to have real adventure, slipped out hanged for a moment and then was brought back with the help of trainer …

The most difficult of all these was rappling in which we had to lie perpendicular to the hill and go down the hill , very few could gather the courage to do this activity but it was real fun an real adventure . In the end our groups merged and we did a few more team games and learned that a lot of things can be done if we think in similar direction to achieve same goal.

Day4

We had our Leadership training, we did a lot of calculations and introspections and a lot of thoughts which we can bring back at our respective base and start applying in our routine work . All in all we had spent some really good time doing a lot of activities and came back as One Goal… One Team….


Prashant Rathore

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This blog is for all employees of Pearson in India . We hope to share updates - both personal and professional - from the worlds of education and publishing.