A two-day corporate retreat has successfully built trust among staff, primarily through their shared opposition to the activity designed to build it.

The activity involved rope, a blindfold, and a facilitator using the word “journey.”

“We bonded,” said attendee Fergus Lampter. “Not during. After. In the car park.”

The Institute for Enforced Cohesion reports this is the standard mechanism and has been for decades.

“The exercise never produces the trust,” said Institute director Dr. Priyanka Oduya. “The exercise produces a common enemy, and the enemy produces the trust. Organisations pay a great deal for this and would be alarmed to learn how it works.”

Day two featured a session titled Radical Candour, in which eleven people agreed that communication could be better and none identified with whom.

The retreat concluded with a whiteboard listing eight commitments. The whiteboard was photographed. The photograph has been shared. It is illegible.

Attendees report the most valuable portion of the retreat was the ninety-minute drive home, during which three long-standing problems were solved by two people who had never previously spoken.

Neither has been reassigned. Both have returned to their original floors.