Stan Friedman, CFE

Experiential Team Building

Subarctic Survival Exercise

When Stan Friedman, 22 year franchise industry veteran, directs the Subarctic Survival Situation at the beginning of your annual event, your franchisee’s take home value from the entire event will increase exponentially.  Through this extraordinary process your franchisees will overcome differences, bond with each other and your staff and learn to appreciate and recognize that with team work and appreciation for each member’s contribution, nothing is insurmountable.

Don’t just open your annual franchising conference with blah, blah, blah.  Treat your franchisees to a perspective changing, attitude shifting “interactive” exercise that they will talk about for years to come.

The Situation

“It is approximately 2:30 p.m., October 5, and you have just crash-landed in a float plane on the east shore of Laura Lake in the subarctic region of the northern Quebec-Newfoundland border.” Your task is to rank 15 items salvaged from the plane in the order of their importance to your team’s survival. Set in an unfamiliar location, this simulation takes the participants outside of their organizational roles and areas of expertise to a situation where only their synergistic problem-solving skills will help them to survive.

Team Synergy

The Subarctic Survival Situation™ (by J. Clayton Lafferty, in consultation with the Canadian Para Rescue Squad) provides a unique opportunity to quickly and objectively measure how well and if, your group is achieving synergy — as well as demonstrate this otherwise elusive concept. Under Friedman’s direction, your group will undoubtedly prove to themselves, that the value proposition of your franchise system hits new peaks, when the group synergizes and works as one.

Synergy occurs when the interactive efforts of two or more people produce a solution that is superior to their independent solutions. By measuring the quality of both individual and team performance on a single task, this simulation allows groups to quickly calculate the extent to which they are fully utilizing their resources — and doing so in a way that achieves new levels of synergy, while having lots of fun.

Here’s what franchisors have to say about Stan’s masterful facilitation of Subarctic Survival Situation:

I have had the opportunity to attend two sessions with Stan Friedman facilitating the Survival Exercise to large groups.  First and foremost the exercise itself is a great way to pull a group together to not only work better together as a group, but to respect the diversity of opinions during follow up sessions.  Second, Stan’s ability to facilitate this session, with large groups, is focused, engaging, structured and actually fun.  Stan not only engages his audience, but makes participation fun for the group.  I highly recommend Stan and this exercise for large groups to set the ground work for important conferences.
— Jon Jameson, Founding Partner, Bellwether Food Group

Stan facilitated the Survivor exercise at our annual Franchise Convention. All of our support staff and franchisees participated in this unique team building exercise. The Survivor exercise was a unique opportunity to facilitate team problem solving, in a serious yet imaginary context. Stan is an excellent facilitator that successfully led us to a better understanding of the value of team work and new views of ourselves in a group setting.
—Bette Fetter, Founder and CEO Young Rembrandts, Inc