The beauty of absolutely nothing... and the lessons learnt

So there we were... up at 5 am on Thursday and on our way to get onto the Gautrain and off to the airport to catch a chartered flight to Walvis Bay in Namibia.  The flight was suppose to leave at 10h00, but eventually we took off at 12h30 for a 2 hour flight aboard a very rowdy Boeing 767.

It is the first time I've been to Namibia (although we only saw 2 little towns).  I've seen deserts on TV and in movies, but to see it first hand is really an experience.

Just outside Walvis Bay, close to the famous Dune 7 we arrived for the commencement of...

It started off as quite a commotion! But the dust (literally) settled quickly.  We were divided into 5 armies (5 regions in the country) and each army was split into different platoons made up of +- 7 members each.  A list of instructions / tasks were handed to each platoon and different points were allocated for each task.

We had to build a tent from fabric, plastic pipes and rope that were provided and use these same materials to build a stretcher and carry an injured member of the platoon for at least 5 metres, find 2 ants, 5 different leaves and name them, run a dune, etc, etc.  I was leader of my platoon and in this photo I was caught trying to figure out a task where we had to build a bridge.

After a lot of running around and wasting a lot of time, the 2 hours we were given to complete the tasks ran out and we didn't manage to do all of them.  In after thought we realised that in stead of rushing out with the list and starting on the tasks in order they appeared, we should have sat down, read through all the tasks and checked for which tasks we would earn the most points and focus on them first.

This is so true in business as well.  When something goes wrong or even when a massive opportunity presents itself, we often just rush into the situation without taking the time to look through the facts and plan the approach.  We also learned that one should use the strengths of your resources to make tasks easier and also to enhance results.  This might seem as an obvious thing to do, but when you get into the heat of things, you easily forget the simple things!

We stayed at the Swakopmund Hotel, what an awesome place.

After having a quick shower and unpacking, we left on an 80 km drive in the dark. The convoy must have been about 30 mini buses long and we drove on a salt road.  When we got to our destination it was very dark and everywhere were candles in brown paper bags that showed us where to go.  The next moment big lights were turned on and there we were in dry river bed with huge rock formations on either side.  This would be the "venue" for our gala dinner and awards function.

Fantastic evening although I was one of the first to go back to the hotel.

The end of day 1!

In my next post I will share what happened on Day 2 as well as the lessons learnt.

Thanks for reading my post!

Francois