Published March 2005

Building your work team
outside of workplace

The federal government’s Bureau of Prisons has decided to end its “boot camp” program for inmates. By the end of June, its Intensive Confinement Center camps in California, Texas, and Pennsylvania will be shut down.

Closing the programs will save about $1 million, but the decision was less about money than effectiveness. Even though the boot camps weren’t all that expensive to run — at least by government standards — a federal study completed in 2003 found that they didn’t have a significant effect on whether an inmate would return to criminal behavior after release from prison.

Prison boot camps were probably doomed from the start, but not for the reasons people were concerned about. When the first camps got started, there were genuine worries that we’d be dumping the same criminals back on the street — but now they’d be tougher to stop because they would be in better physical shape. But there is no evidence that this happened.

The fatal flaw of the program was the backwards timing. They copied the military model (thus the name) but missed one key aspect: The military services use boot camps at the beginning of your military experience, not the end. Boot camp is an orientation, an introduction to what military life is like and what it will demand of you. When it comes time to be discharged from military service, there is no comparable boot camp to re-orient you to civilian life.

The federal program’s camps were only a small part of the boot-camp craze that began in the 1980s and still grips America. We still have inmate boot camps at some state prisons; we have boot camps for teens with criminal records and teens who are just contemplating acquiring them; we have boot camps for graduate students; and we have boot camps for business workers and managers. Boot camps have been a growth industry.

From our standpoint of business management, though, the federal government’s decision to drop the boot-camp program does raise the question: Are boot camps an effective business resource?

The answer is a qualified “yes.” And there are several qualifiers.

The first issue involved is timing. If you use some sort of boot camp as an orientation to what things are valued in your organization and the kinds of demands that will be made on people who work there, there is a good chance that it will be effective.

At the other end of the spectrum, if you are sending people to some sort of boot camp because they are the misfits, deadbeats or otherwise poor performers in your company, they will come back with a sunburn, some flea bites, and the same bad habits and attitude that they had before.

The second issue is the degree to which boot camp can first reflect and then strengthen the values of your organization. Boot camps are not good at everything. They are best when the goals are narrowed down to furthering personal responsibility, breaking down communications barriers and developing teamwork. There simply isn’t time for civilian boot camps to achieve the major behavior transformations that 17-week military boot camps strive for.

The third issue is whether boot camp is the right resource to use to achieve your objectives. If you believe that your team could use some time together outside the structured work environment, there are other options that are often less expensive.

A company-sponsored charity activity, for example, can build teamwork, too, especially if it involves physical work like mowing, painting, sanding, scrubbing and schlepping. It doesn’t build teamwork in quite the same way as a boot-camp experience, but its effects can be equally as lasting. And, these activities have the advantage of periodic reinforcement, in contrast to boot camp, which, however memorable, is an experience that most people would prefer not to repeat.

The good news for managers is that if you are determined to try a boot camp, unless you mistakenly sign your finance team up for the wrong program — a boot camp for meth heads, for example — the experience is not likely to have any negative effects on your people or their productivity. How much it helps to build teamwork and raise productivity is another matter.

In today’s world, people put up a lot of mental and emotional barriers that get in the way of honest communication and teamwork. As a manager, it is your job to find ways to overcome those barriers to the extent that will allow individuals to reach their full potential. There is no substitute for creating a workplace environment that inspires trust, but if you feel that some time outside the organizational structure helps your team to develop that trust further, then go for it.

James McCusker, a Bothell economist, educator and small-business consultant, writes “Your Business” in The Herald each Sunday. He can be reached by sending e-mail to otisrep@aol.com.

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