What our Clients Say About Our Programs
Corporations & Non-profits
Our group workshops and narrative-based exercises help your team fully comprehend what complex set of decisions go into making a business work. We work alongside your team, guiding them through a structured program. Our programs can deliver value as a team-building experience and can rapidly improve the business decisions your teams make – leading to better collaboration and business results. If you offer internship programs, enhance your offerings by giving participants actionable workshops that teach them foundational business principles. These programs enhance their contribution to your business during their internship, as well as reveal important character and behavioral traits.
GlowPoint, $26M in Revenues, 130 employeesI was CTO for a small publicly-traded company that was having difficulty and in 2006 I took over as CEO and had to make drastic changes to stop the bleeding and turn the company around. Interestingly we had invested the prior year in the Team Business Program where we cycled all of our employees through the program. The BOX+ experience gave the employees an understanding of the challenges and decisions that must be made to drive business and more importantly the ramifications of those decisions. When it came time to right-size the staff, our employees understood that it was to save other jobs and help us focus on fixing the company. We were successful and the company still exists today because the team pulled together and leveraged things they learned in the program.
From Michael Brandofino, Former CEO GlowPoint
Aluminum Manufacturing Company from the CEOWe were a business that was in financial trouble – when we engaged Team Business, there was a strong chance we would go out of business or into Chapter 11. I needed a tool to help my staff think like real business people – understanding the implications of each decision they were making. I needed creative ideas and solutions to be brought to the table - fast. Team Business’ program, BOX+ helped my staff think across the whole business and not just in their functional silos. At a time when my leadership team was under incredible stress, the Team Business folks brought solid business thinking, a tremendous amount of fun and engaged my whole team in becoming a part of the solution.
Hospitals & Healthcare
Hospitals employ staff that are talented medical professionals – they likely lack business acumen knowledge and experience. With the dramatic changes taking place in the hospital industry, business skills are now a critical factor for a hospital’s profitability and viability. Our business workshops fast track business acumen learning through hands-on, group-based experiences. In one day, medical staff can learn business concepts and begin to deploy them to their individual challenges, as well as those of their hospital. When Team Business workshops are deployed across departments and roles, it results in stronger collaboration, driving better patient care and financial results.
$30B in Revenues, Global Healthcare Solutions CompanyTeam Business was engaged to run the Value Based Management (VBM), experiential learning workshop to address the enterprise-wide objective of increasing business acumen competency across all staff levels and disciplines. Our staff is comprised of talented engineers and technologists. We needed a tool to help our specialized practitioners understand the end-to-end business impact of the decisions they were making.
Historically, our product leaders focused on developing innovative, life-saving devices where we surpassed quality targets without exception. As we expanded our market reach and moved into new products and therapies, our staff struggled to shift their mindset to the new products and markets we were serving. In addition, while our focus had been so product intensive, we now needed our staff to think more broadly to incorporate markets, customer needs and expectations, competition, opportunity identification and cross-business unit collaboration.
Team Business’ Value Based Management helped us to shift our mindsets and equipped us to be more strategic in how we achieve our multi-level objectives in the one program, in just two days. We could bring cross-business unit staff and teams together to experience the Value Based Management simulation. The simulation created an environment of collaboration, taught solid business acumen and encouraged cross-role thinking. Following the simulation, the program then turned the discussion to real challenges in our business and the teams worked towards identifying ideas and deploying solutions to meet these objectives.
Learning and Development Organization
Multi-regional hospital, $1.4B in revenuesI design curriculum for our high potential medical professionals and administrators running multi-million dollar business units. These are very talented medical professionals with limited business experience – I needed a tool to rapidly teach them business. They needed to understand their business drivers and constraints and to uncover what to do about them. Team Business provided them with business tools and theories to structure their thinking.
Our high-potential leaders gained perspective on the Classic 10 business theories, and directly applied that knowledge in strategic action learning projects that benefited our organization. The facilitated discussion of the Team Business Classic 10 theories helped the group make strong connections from the practical application in the simulation to how our business operates. That segment was rated highest out of all the ones we had at the two-day leadership workshop.
Both André and Lara explain finance, accounting and business management concepts eloquently, and with a delightful bit of humor. They make the business theories come to life through excellent real-world examples.
The Box simulation was fun! All the participants had a great time getting to know each other as they were “running their businesses.” The simulation had a dual purpose for us: it served as a team-building exercise, as well as a way to teach the group about financial and business management concepts that can be applied in our organization.
André meets the participants where they are. We had several medical and health care professionals in our group, and they were able to understand concepts quickly, so André adjusted the content in the moment to reflect the fast pace the participants wanted.
It is also so easy to work with Lara and André to customize the workshop and materials for the needs of our learners.
Learning and Development Organization
Universities & Colleges
Team Business offers team-based, experiential business workshops to Universities and Colleges. Our workshops give faculty and students a hands-on experience that enriches their education. The experiential and highly interactive nature of our programs provide the added benefit of rapid team bonding and the opportunity to observe personality traits in a safe environment. We are not a replacement for the lessons learned; we augment the classroom with practical and fundamental experience-based examples that help to make the curriculum real.
Wharton Leadership ProgramI run the Wharton Leadership Fellows Program. Leadership Fellows are charged with providing every first-year student with the opportunity to enhance their leadership potential through the development of practical tools and concrete strategies applicable in every area of their lives. The Leadership Fellows act as mentors for the incoming class. It is critical that we recruit the best talent to fill this role.
We engage in a rigorous application and interview process to find the best talent. We brought in Team Business to run a program as part of our selection process. I needed a tool to see how our candidates behaved in a team and pressure-cooker environment, so I could understand their leadership and coaching traits and their temperaments. We have been working with Team Business for over 14 years. The energy around teamwork generated by the simulation is electric and I believe that the students have a great deal of fun while also learning valuable insights about how to work together effectively in teams, despite the fact that they are being evaluated. To me, that is the unique factor that Team Business brings - the students are so engaged that they forget they are being evaluated!
LYNN KRAGE, DIRECTOR, WHARTON EXECUTIVE COACHING AND FEEDBACK PROGRAM, WHARTON LEADERSHIP PROGRAM, LECTURER, MANAGEMENT DEPARTMENT
University of PennsylvaniaI manage the Management and Technology Summer Institute (M&TSI). M&TSI is an extremely rigorous, non-stop, fast-paced college course for 60 high school students. The program introduces students to the fundamental knowledge and skills necessary for successfully linking technology and management concepts in just three weeks.
Since the program is only three weeks, we needed a tool to help the students bond fast so the rest of the program is more effective and productive. Another objective is for them to learn about leadership and business in an experiential and hands-on, interactive way. We have been working with Team Business for over 14 years. Their simulation is an integral part of our program because the students always enjoy it and remark that is a highlight to not only the beginning of the course but also a healthy introduction to working together in groups. Teamwork is a big part of M&TSI, not to mention their final grade, and the Team Business simulation helps our students get to where they need to be, in the shortest amount of time possible. Plus, working with Lara and André is a delight!
JAIME L. DAVIS, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR – THE MANAGEMENT AND TECHNOLOGY SUMMER INSTITUTE THE JEROME FISHER PROGRAM IN MANAGEMENT AND TECHNOLOGY
Tuck Business SchoolTeam Business and the LEAD program at Tuck Business School worked together for over 5 years. Team Business’ involvement in getting our students the basics of accounting and entrepreneurship has been a game-changer for our elite program and what our students take-away with them in terms of business nomenclature and exposure to financial accounting concepts and running a business. Our students use the learning from Accounting Comes Alive and The BOX Game to aid them in their capstone project, at the end of their 3-week program each group of 5 must professionally present or “pitch” an original business idea to a “board” and a winner is chosen based on their presentation, financials and feasibility of the enterprise.
Lara and André are easy colleagues and the students totally dig André’s style and he can connect with that young adult demographic in a way that few people can. Their international experience and cross-cultural exposure allow them to be “real” with our students, the majority of whom are African American, Native American and Latino American high school students. There’s nothing we’ve asked that they haven’t done for us including being our go-to 4th and 5th of July academic programming. Most importantly, their sincere affection for our students is what seals the deal for me.
DIA DRAPER, DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC INITIATIVES
Denison University's Organizational Studies ProgramThe program includes a four-week summer session designed to help students appreciate the many applications of their liberal arts education to real-world work settings and challenges. For the past several years, the talented people of Team Business have used creative and highly engaging simulations to help our students understand the strategic thinking necessary for managing a business from its inception through divestment.
In the process, students test and develop their skills in negotiation, leadership, and teamwork, and come to appreciate more fully the roles of individuals and teams in effective organizational functioning. The success of Team Business simulations is due in no small part to the wit and wisdom of facilitator Andre van der Bergh. He develops a rapport with students that promotes extensive interaction and active learning. Student evaluations of Andre and his work fall somewhere between awesome and mind-blowing.
DAVID PRZYBYLA, PH.D., DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC INITIATIVES
High Schools
Team Business offers team-based, experiential business workshops to public and private high schools. Our workshops give teachers and students a hands-on experience that enriches their education. The experiential and highly interactive nature of our programs provide the added benefit of rapid team bonding and the opportunity to observe personality traits in a safe environment. We are not a replacement for the lessons learned; we augment the classroom with practical and fundamental experience-based examples that help to make the curriculum real.
The Kent School, Summer High School ProgramKent’s SEEK summer program consists of engineering and entrepreneurship programs for high schools students. We needed a tool to give our students a good understanding of the fundamentals of business, as they work toward developing a new product idea and presenting how they plan to go to market. The Team Business workshop promotes teamwork and our students find it captivating. It is an enjoyable and useful tool.
BEN NADIRE PH.D., WENTZ PRE-ENGINEERING PROGRAM DIRECTOR THE JUDITH B. WENTZ AND HOWARD B. WENTZ JR. TEACHING CHAIR IN INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES
The Harker School, Private High School in Silicon ValleyAlong with teaching principles of business, I also direct our business and entrepreneurship programs at The Harker School. In the summer, I offer a multi-week summer intensive program, where students innovate a new product or service and then develop a “pitch presentation” to a panel of investors. I include Team Business programs so that I integrate hands-on, learn by doing instruction in my curriculum. I have found that students best learn beyond just through lectures – having something dynamic and exciting to keep them engaged and energetic is what makes the best experience possible!
I engage Team Business because their programs teach great lessons first hand about business, all the while combining competition, negotiation, teamwork and many other essential soft skills that can’t be learned in a textbook. Team Business is a great team to work with, can customize to your specific dynamics, are very responsive, and their facilitators (André and Lara) really help make the group experience one to remember! I highly recommend Team Business for any of your business educational and/or team building needs!
JUSTON GLASS, MS, CPA, DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS AND ENTREPRENEURIAL PROGRAMS, BUSINESS AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP (BE) DEPARTMENT