All the staff at the Mirozdaniå Group of Companies are like-minded and working to achieve common goals. We are a team. We hold regular corporate training sessions to strengthen the bonds between us and get us to understand our colleagues better.

On the eve of the company’s rebranding, a number of structural changes took place in the Mirozdaniå Group of Companies. New people came to take up positions from project manager to commercial director. Within the confines of a single office, there were people who had worked more than ten years for the company together with staff who had joined the team less than a month previously. The tasks facing the company are of different kinds, people are all completely different. Training helps staff members know where they stand in relation to the team...

The company held two away training courses. The first lasted two days and took place at the Atlas Park Hotel in the Moscow Region. Staff on this training course were divided on the basis of a simple test into ‘reds’, ‘greens’ and ‘blues’, and given instructions concerning each of the types.

This kind of classification made it possible to structure relations within the team. Now no one tried to give one of the ‘blues’ – whose work time was planned a week in advance – the kind of task that had to be completed in an hour. A ‘blue’ had to be approached well in advance. A green had to be frequently given words of encouragement and smiled at. As for a ‘red’, no one will try to convince him that they are right, but use roundabout means to get him to draw the necessary conclusions...

The second training course was held in Tallinn and all members of staff had four days off work to attend it. It’s worth pointing out that the decision to travel there and back by train was not taken by accident. Nothing brings colleagues closer together than being forced to spend time in a confined space. And this time was not without its extreme moments, since the team remained confined in a ‘hard’, if somewhat playful situation.

The key procedure in the training course was what was called the ‘Escape from the Concentration Camp’. Probably the most unpleasant moment was when everyone was standing in the corridor and awaiting announcement of the rules of the game. There was even the worry that some would have to play the part of the prisoners and others the part of the guards.

But everything turned out OK. They were all packed behind barbed wire right in the sights of the trainer – who played the part of the camp guard. The group had to make a collective escape. Touching the barbed wire that was stretched fairly high off the ground had the effect of paralysing the player. Any unintentional violation of the harsh regulations meant that the player would be struck dumb (and, incidentally, all the top people in the company were deprived of speech for a fairly long time)... Jumping over the wire could be done by only one player; the rest had to be passed by hand. Several times the team had to start right from the beginning again. The last few had the most difficult time of all. There were three of them - the PR director, the finance director, and the owner of the company. Then the two directors managed to escape - and the president was left alone... The team had a choice: either to shoot the man left behind, or he could commit suicide, or... The head of the company took off his shoes, took a run - and leaped in the air letting out an absolutely delighted shriek. He joined up with the team. The team had won. “We were faced with the task,” said Igor Branovitsky, President of the Mirozdaniå Group of Companies, “of uniting the team so that it could achieve a successful joint solution for problems that concerned everyone. After attending training courses of this kind, staff relate to each other much better and put their backs into their work, as they did in the extreme situations they found themselves in on the training course.”