SPANNER TRAINING

The questionable, subtle part of our performances can also be incorporated into spoof training sessions, where we affect individuals and groups during the working day of your training programme or conference.

The idea is for us to perform a series of 'Happenings' throughout the day and at the end of it in an 'open mic session' ask a few questions about what the delegates had noticed, how much information they could recall, but more importantly how had it affected their thinking.

Syndicate Room Stunts

Apart from complaining to our undercover duty manager about the drilling outside their syndicate room, will they remember the ridiculous reason our workmen gave for all the noise?

Our waitress will arrive with tea and coffee but she is five cups short, after a head count she announces "that five more cups are needed." The answer we were looking for was five.

A car make, colour and registration number is read out in each meeting room with the message that its lights have been left on. Can the delegates remember it's colour?

A flipchart is delivered to a meeting room by a member of our bogus venue staff which has a series of boldly written buzz words from a previous client on the front page. Could they name two of the buzz words?

A telephone call to the meeting rooms asking if Mr Bradbury's laptop case has been left behind, after searching under tables of course in one room, it had, but what was so different about the case?

Arrival and Car Park Stunts

On arrival vehicles are stopped by our undercover parking attendants and asked for the names of the passengers and the vehicle registration. The attendant then issues the driver with a parking pass that MUST be clearly displayed and directs them to park in the designated parking bays miles from the venue. This works really well if it is pouring with rain.

At our manned registration desk, delegates are told that the badge making machine has broken down. Some people are issued with a posh badge, some with a badge with their name spelt incorrectly, others with their name crudely handwritten in crayon and some are not even on the list and had no badge at all.

To really get their day off to a flying start, at our manned refreshments table, delegates requesting tea are handed coffee and vice versa to see the level of "Oh don't worry about it" responses. The results are always astonishing.

'Customer is King' Lunch

As an alternative, we can perform our comedy waiter routine over lunch to hammer home the 'Customer Is King' conference theme and launch the afternoon sessions with a discussion of how in today's competitive markets customer service determines winners and losers.

These are just some of the training ideas we perform. Written down, you may think they seem a little obvious but, in situ and spread throughout the morning/afternoon or a whole day they appear to be just normal everyday occurrences in the life of a busy conference venue.

More ideas that can be implemented into your training programmes:

• Car park attendants
• Disorganised delegate registration
• Conscientious cleaners
• Undercover Conference & Banqueting Manager to field complaints
• Friendly window cleaners
• Spoof waiting staff for tea and coffee breaks
• Bogus builders/gardeners for maximum noise and disruption
• Spoof venue staff delivering/collecting items from meeting rooms
• Comedy waiters during lunch
• Fake presenter for a "There Is No 'i' in Team" type session
• Spoof delegates
• Hilarious team building exercises - 'Decorate a potato', 'Paper plane flying' or 'Mime your own business!'

Although playing with peoples perceptions of how things should operate in a perfect world is a lot of fun, we also realise that, in some instances, there is a very serious message to deliver.

Please call us for a chat about how we can put a Spanner in the Works of your next meeting/conference/training session.



Previous clients include: British Airways, The Financial Times, National Grid, B&Q, British Telecom, Openreach.