Next Gen: A Training Day Dedicated to Collaboration and Growth
Next Gen: A Training Day Dedicated to Collaboration and Growth
Stepping away from our daily work routine for a day, changing setting and testing ourselves with a challenge unlike any other. That was the starting point for the Next Gen Training Day, which in September brought us together for an experience centred on collaboration, open discussion and building relationships.
We were welcomed by Orto in Cucina in Novara, a venue that allowed us to experience training away from our usual surroundings and to focus on a fundamental aspect of teamwork: the ability to bring together different ideas, skills and ways of thinking to achieve a common goal.
Chain Reaction: when the result depends on teamwork
The heart of the day was the Chain Reaction, an activity built around a seemingly simple challenge: creating a sequence of elements that set each other off one after another, producing a chain reaction.
Split into two groups, we began by designing two independent lines.
From the very first steps, we had to talk things through, put different ideas on the table, run tests, correct what was not working and find new solutions together. Each element of the chain had to be designed with the next one in mind, so everyone’s contribution became part of a wider system.
Then came the real challenge: connecting the two Chain Reactions and turning them into a single sequence.
Two teams that had worked separately, with different approaches, insights and solutions, had to find a point of connection. They had to coordinate, adapt what they had already built and make sure the final result worked from start to finish.
It is a dynamic that, ultimately, has a great deal in common with what we experience every day at work. People with different skills and responsibilities work on different parts of the same project. The value of each individual contribution remains essential, but a truly shared result comes from the ability to communicate, coordinate and work in the same direction.
Corporate training and collaboration: learning by doing
Experiences like this make it possible to work on group dynamics in a different way from traditional training.
During the Chain Reaction, collaboration and problem solving did not remain abstract concepts. They became concrete actions: listening to a proposal, explaining your own point of view, revisiting a decision, stepping in when something was not working and understanding how your own work could fit with that of others.
Setbacks were part of the experience too. After all, working together means accepting that a first solution may not be the right one, and being willing to change it without losing sight of the final goal.
This is precisely where a training day can leave something that lasts well beyond the return to work: a different way of looking at the dynamics we share every day with our colleagues.
Orto in Cucina: people, community and sharing
Choosing Orto in Cucina in Novara gave the day an additional meaning.
Born within the project of Gèrico Società Cooperativa Sociale, a social cooperative, Orto in Cucina is closely connected to the Novara area and brings together food, community and care for people.
Alongside the restaurant, the project also includes a social garden: a space that follows the rhythm of the seasons and is one expression of a broader commitment to participation, inclusion and making the most of people’s skills.
These are values in which we found several points of connection with the meaning of our day.
After the training activity, we had the opportunity to get to know this organisation more closely through a tour of its spaces. The day then ended around the table with lunch together, a chance to carry on the conversation more informally and simply spend time with our colleagues.
Next Gen: building together starts with people
The pictures taken during the day capture what happened well: tests, discussions, constructions, a few attempts to start over and, above all, people committed to finding a solution together.
The Next Gen Training Day reminded us how different skills can become even more effective when they are able to work in dialogue with one another.
Because a project, just like a chain reaction, works when every element finds its place and fits with all the others. But it is people who create the connections that allow the result to take shape.
Would you like to get to know the people, experiences and moments of sharing that help Gruppo Baglioni grow every day?
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