Companies paying $100K for intense ‘Top Gun experience’ to help build teamwork
Bosses looking for an edge in the post-COVID remote work era have turned to a militaristic approach to team building — with some paying upwards of $100,000 for “Top Gun”-style simulations to rally their troops, according to a report.
The C-suite executives — from companies as varied as Nike, Pepsi and Bank of America — who “feel the need for speed” can adopt their own Maverick or Ice Man call sign and engage in missions “to rescue your teammate and bring them home,” The New York Times reported.
“If you lose sight of the airplane you’re fighting against, you lose the fight,” said Christian Boucousis, the CEO of Atlanta-based Afterburner. “We use that as a metaphor — if you lose sight of your business objectives, you’re not going to achieve them.”
Boucousis’ firm employs a team of former pilots, Navy SEALs and military commandos to train corporate executives to “execute with the same precision and accuracy as elite military aviators and special operations teams,” according to the company website.
Its “Top Gun Experience” training starts at $10,000 for a small team and can climb to $100,000 for a larger one, according to The Times.
“Bring out your team’s inner jet fighter pilot,” one of the company’s promotional videos states.
Afterburner offers companies “experiential team building” exercises that include “fighter pilot simulation” designed to “help your team strengthen relationships, build trust, and improve communication.”
Team members “adopt a real-life, fighter pilot call sign” while taking on roles such as “squadron commander” who are thrust into challenging scenarios that sharpen their decision-making acumen.
Afterburner is part of a trend of experiential trainings that lean on military precision as companies adapt to the work-from-home phenomenon sparked by the pandemic, experts say.
Another management training company based in the Financial District, The Squadron, uses advanced F-35 flight simulators — usually reserved for to train Israeli air force pilots — to teach corporate executives about business and life lessons.
The trainees have come from companies that include Coca-Cola, Microsoft, and Google, as The Post previously reported.
“Leaders are trying to regain a sense of control they feel they’ve lost over the last few years,” Cali Williams Yost, a workplace strategist, told The Times. “They’re searching to reassert control and power in a way that feels familiar.”
The lessons aren’t limited to metaphors dealing with flying at Mach-1 speed.
Over the Wall, a company founded by former NASCAR pit crew coach Andy Papathanassiou, charges at least $10,000 to train corporate teams to replace tires on a race car as if they were manning an actual pit stop at a NASCAR event.
Papathanassiou said the aim is to inculcate an “over the wall mentality” that aims to develop “the cognitive building blocks of what athletes are.”
Testimonials posted on the company website by CEOs who have had their teams participate in the drills report that it helped improve “communication, collaboration, teamwork, and strategic thinking.”
Kris Kovacs, the CEO of fintech firm Constellation Digital Partners, told the Times that his 30 employees were made to simulate a NASCAR pit stop in the company parking lot.
“It sounds silly for me to say, but the hardest part is actually getting the tire on,” Kovacs told the Times.
“What that teaches you is you’ve got to preplan. Hard things, if you practice at them and preplan, become easier and easier.”
