Great Wall Used To Assist Clear Vision

Published on: 13 Jul, 2012
Updated on: 13 Jul, 2012

Great Wall of China

By Gill Perkins

Blindfolded you take the last few steps. Only when you’re precisely positioned are you allowed to see the breath-taking view across the mountains. Before you is the Great Wall of China. That’s what is in store for delegates who take advantage of a Guildford firm’s management course.

Alliotts, based on the High Street, is an accountancy and business advisory practice, is always looking for new ways to inspire and motivate business leaders and is taking a group to the Great Wall of China in October, following a very successful trip in 2011.

The Leadership Skills and Strategy Course devised by Alliotts, aims to establish a new clarity about business and personal plans. The idea of revealing the view from the Great Wall is to ensure maximum visual impact which is mirrored by similar revelations about your real aims and goals in business and life.

Alliotts delegates working at the Great Wall of China

Better than a Heathrow Hotel!

The course is led by Chris Cairns, a partner at Alliotts Guildford, who says it is a revolutionary way to give leaders a new perspective. “There are no classrooms or formal presentations, but group work, discussions and quiet thinking time. We want to strip away all the extraneous rubbish that people may have in order to attain total focus and clarity.

“We travel more than 5,000 miles to the biggest man-made barrier in the world so that we can ask our entrepreneurs: What’s the biggest barrier to your business and to you personally? There’s a real inspiration in being there and that incredible view from the Wall. It just doesn’t work at some hotel at Heathrow!

“At Alliotts we decided that you had to do something radical to get blue sky thinking and you may think accountants are boring, but we’re convinced that you have to do things differently to be original and effective.”

The core of the course is something discovered by the co-leader, Anthony Willoughby, and called territory mapping. This is based on strategies evolved by Maasai tribes in Africa, with whom Willoughby has lived. The strategies centre on respect, which has to be earned; empowerment; focus and clarity.

Refreshing and Innovative

Simon Wyatt, director at Contamac Ltd was an attendee on last year’s course, enthuses: “Our time on the Wall allowed me to think – a remarkably refreshing experience. The opportunity to really consider the current state of my life/business, my aspirations, and then, importantly, how best to achieve them was not just welcome, but in fact essential.”

An Alliotts client, who had previously gone to The Great Wall, Alec McQuin, MD of Rocare Management Group Ltd, says: “This was perhaps the single-most unusual, innovative course I’ve ever attended.”

Your turn?

Guildford business leaders can experience the course for themselves in October this year – contact chris.cairns@alliotts.com or call Guildford 508514 for more information.

What’s the most unusual leadership or team-building course you’ve been on? Tell us in the comments box below.