The Games, KKR

A superb Olympic style event held at 2012 Olympic rowing and kayaking venue, Dorney Lake. 

Event Background

KKR, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co is a leading global alternative asset management company that prides itself on its excellent culture and values. Over the years following its foundation in 1976, it has become the norm for KKR to hold an annual company wide team building event in order to maintain the company’s integrated culture and underline the importance of working together. For this year’s team building event, EMG was asked to put together a sporty, challenging and unique team building event for 80 highly competitive KKR employees.

Event Objectives

KKR maintains a strong focus on the importance of its company culture and values, which include honesty, team work, excellence, innovation & creativity and shared accountability for both successes and shortcomings. The company culture and values show clearly that it was vital for a team building objective to be at the core of KKR’s event.

Event Proposal

With the world focusing on the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, what better event to offer than KKR’s very own Olympic Games, which would embrace both sporting competition and working together to achieve success. To cater for the large number of attendees and their highly sporty and competitive nature, EMG suggested splitting the group into eight teams, each representing a country, which would rotate around a variety of Olympic activities.

EMG’s suggestion for the event location was Dorney Lake, a mere 25 minutes away from KKR’s event base, Coworth Park in Ascot. A modern world-class rowing and flat-water canoeing centre set in a spectacular 450-acre parkland near Windsor, Dorney Lake is the official venue for the rowing and kayak events in the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012.

Event Outline

11.00, event briefing and introductions
Attendees received a full briefing to outline the day’s objectives and activities. The group were then split into their country teams and introduced to their activity instructors who included Mark Wiseman, a former international thrower, and Dan Penbrooke, a current junior international athlete.

11.15, discipline 1 – volleyball & field sports (javelin & shot)
Teams rotated around the three activities. Volleyball was judged on a points based system with teams awarded bonus points for team work, communication, enthusiasm and the overall best shot. Both javelin and shot were judged on each team’s overall distance thrown rather than individual performance to place emphasis on team work. After completing their three rotations teams, attended a mini-prize giving with winning teams awarded bronze, silver and gold medals.

12.30, BBQ lunch to fuel the afternoon’s activities

13.30, discipline 2 – country sports (laser clays & archery)
Once again teams rotated around the chosen activities. Unlike the morning’s activities the focus was on accuracy rather than strength, with bronze silver and gold medals awarded to teams with the most number of shots on target.

14.45, discipline 3 – water sports (bell boats & canoes)
For the bell boats rotation, one team member from each team volunteered to be a helmsman and was taken for instruction from a member of the Dorney Lake team. The rest of the group were then taken for a pre-race warm up on Dorney’s ergos (rowing machines) before joining their helmsmen at the lake. The bell boat racing was split into two heats, after which two members from each team took part in a canoe race across the lake (although most participants ended up in the lake!). Once again teams then attended a mini-prize giving to ascertain the discipline’s overall winners.

16.30, awards ceremony
Scores were calculated and the overall KKR Olympic Winners were announced in grand awards ceremony. Teams in 1st, 2nd and 3rd place were awarded with bouquets with the winning team also receiving an Olympic Torch as a sign of their overall victory.

“The Italian job team was a hilarious, fun packed team building exercise full of problems to solve and challenges to complete. This was the first time a number of our remote team had met face to face and it was the perfect activity to break the ice and get people working together.”

“The team at EMG is passionate about enhancing our ‘guest journey’ and constantly take the time to understand our guests’ objectives in order to seamlessly deliver the most creative and engaging events.”

“Just a quick thank you for all your help in making this event such a success…the feedback has been excellent. It was a real pleasure (but unfortunately something of a rarity) to deal with people who actually know what they are doing!”

“EMG is an excellent company to partner with in order to support team growth and development. We have used them on several occasions…the results have always been excellent.”

“We’ve worked with EMG for more than five years, not only do they provide engaging and exciting events but the service supplied mirrors that offered by ourselves to our guests… making EMG an ideal partner.”