IKEA assembly as corporate team-building

by philg

I’m trying to move into a new house in suburban Boston this weekend, in time to host a gaggle of cousins for Thanksgiving. There is a big stack of IKEA furniture in the garage, waiting to be assembled. It occurred to me that I could offer the assembly project as a corporate team-building exercise, charging $1000 per person per day so that four-worker teams could put together tables and chairs, enjoy a wonderful catered lunch, and then talk about (a) what they learned, (b) the value of diversity, (c) what went well, (d) what still needs work, (e) what strengths did each member bring, (f) what helped in accomplishing goals, etc.

Brilliant or stupid?

20 thoughts on “IKEA assembly as corporate team-building”

  3. I don’t know if it is a stupid idea.

    Do you want the boxes to be assembled correctly?

    (charge more for your exercise and then buy real cabinets)

  4. I assume you can promote the event, and run it before TG at a cost that is less than the fees (minus the expenses). Right?

  6. Brilliant. And if you were a minority you could probably win a Federal grant for providing the experience, to boot.

  7. Eh, you’ve had better ideas. Anyone who has worked in a startup over the last ten years has developed a healthy skepticism about the entertainment value of assembling IKEA furniture. Although we do have a wonderful piece of new American folk art at the office, made entirely from different sizes of allen wrench. It will be on the Internet eventually.

  8. Both (brilliant on your part; stupid on the corporations that pay you). You’ve entered the Dogbert zone.

  13. During the team building effort of assembling your IKEA furniture, if nothing goes wrong such as a furniture block accidentally falling on someone head and causing a concussion, then this is a “brilliant” idea, otherwise …

    … this is not on the job injury, nor it is part of the job requirement for your team (aka employee).

  14. I’m skeptical that the mid-level execs who aren’t smart enough to find a way out of a “Corporate Team Building” exercise could possibly assemble Ikea furniture correctly.

    In the end you’d still have to hire a couple of Central American day laborers to do it right, and you’ll probably have more than a thousand bucks worth of damage to the furniture they’ve gotta fix too.

  15. I’ve long wanted to rent some acreage on Sand Hill Road, populate it with backhoes, bulldozers, all sorts of heavy construction equipment, self-driving cars, mechas and power loader and hosted similar team building exercises.

    This team builds a house, that team is tearing down last week’s house.
    This team works on a 5 story structure, that team is explosively demolishing last month’s 5 story structure.

    Beer flows freely in the afternoons and everyone wears retro sexist gaudy shirts.

  17. Another vote for the Big Green Egg — I have an XL version and will be cooking our Thanksgiving turkey in it again this year. You can do the standard grill thing, or pizza with a pizza stone, or vertical roasting turkeys. Very versatile, and really retains heat for baking, roasting, or smoking.

    http://www.biggreenegg.com/

  18. I have nothing to say about your idea for a business but I do have something to say about Ikea furniture: Don’t buy it. My Jamaican carpenter always tells me “the cheapest is the dearest” [meaning most expensive]. Because you will buy the cheap item twice – once when you buy the junk [from Ikea] that resembles a real piece of furniture and later (in the not too distant future) an actual real piece of furniture when the junk falls apart.

    That being said, I HATE, HATE, HATE shopping for real furniture. Furniture salesmen are even worse than car salesmen. At least with cars you have some rough idea of what the item is worth and how much the dealer paid, whereas furniture shopping is designed to be totally opaque and as far as I can tell, the markups are obscene so that even when you are getting the item for “50% off” that means that the vendor is selling you the item for double his cost rather than the usual triple.

    So I understand why people go to Ikea where you don’t leave feeling as if the salesman’s slime has rubbed off on you and the prices seem to be somewhat fair, but don’t do it – at bottom they are selling you compressed sawdust in the shape of furniture rather than actual furniture. Buy the meatballs and maybe some houseplants but don’t buy the furniture unless maybe you are a poor college student and don’t plan on keeping it for more than a couple of years.

    Real furniture (made of solid wood with dovetail joints, etc.) will outlive you (and maybe a couple of generations more), so in a sense it’s impossible to overpay for it. Go to a place like Pompanoosuc Mills http://www.pompy.com/showrooms/boston/
    and your family will be fixed with furniture for the next century or so.

  19. Brilliant… To your average HR person. We had to build some pyramid thing in our corporate orientation when I hired on. I stood aside and told others not to do it a stupid way and the organizer marked me as manager material for my keen insight. IKEA furniture would have been just as good and more useful in the end, but not as portable for her next pupils.

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