Office Hack #11 — The Ping Pong Boardroom Table
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Picture this: you’re in an office boardroom. The situation is tense. The air is thick. The stakes are high.
…and so are the paddles.
Today’s Envoy Office Hack: The Ping Pong Boardroom Table.
When Rethink Communications first started out, like a lot of new companies they had more debt than available cash. So when it came time to purchase a boardroom table, they looked for something that would not only be affordable but could also have dual functionality.
Little did they know at the time that their thrifty purchase would later become the basis of their company’s theory of communication.
Sitting around a ping pong table instead of a more corporate boardroom table inspired many an idea. But perhaps the most befitting one of all was the company’s own belief in effective communication. The Rethink Ping-Pong Ball Theory suggests a clear, single thought is easier to get across, and be received, than multiple ones.
“A lot of clients come in with a brief and they’ve got three or four ping pong balls… ‘So I want to talk about my product, I want to talk about the price, I want to talk about this special feature, and I want to talk about where it comes from.’ And we say back to them, well it would be like me throwing FOUR ping pong balls at you and chances are, you wouldn’t catch one of them. And we say to our clients, only have ONE ping pong ball that you’re trying to get across.” Tom Shepansky, Co-founder
It’s not all serious though. The boardroom table gets its fair share of table tennis matches. And as it turns out, the benefits of playing aren’t restricted to morale boosting and camaraderie. Ping pong has been shown to be an excellent exercise for the body and the brain.
How to hack it
If you’d like to incorporate a little sport into your office boardroom, here’s what you’ll need.
Ingredients
- Ping Pong Table ($380)
- Paddles ($17)
- Extra Ping Pong Balls ($7)
- Bucket ($6)
- Total cost — approx. $410
Listen & Subscribe
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