For many people, work takes up eight to ten hours a day, five days a week — as much as 45% of our waking hours during a typical week.

That’s a significant part of life spent at work and alongside colleagues.

Through years of attending meetings in corporate offices, we repeatedly saw something that stayed with us: people working in the same building — sometimes on the same floor — introducing themselves for the first time in a meeting.

They had worked metres apart, sometimes for years, but their roles and departments had simply never given them a reason to connect.

When so much of our lives happens at work, the people we spend that time with matter.

That’s the gap traditional team building tries to bridge.

But connection is difficult to build in a single day.

A packed retreat or team-building event can be memorable, but people often return tired — and before long, everyone is back with the same departments, routines and familiar colleagues.