It also includes huge gains in employee on-the-job satisfaction which have translated into quantum leaps of the golden indicator: productivity. This includes everything from multimillion-dollar designs for company expansion to dashing in and demanding a raise. Enrollees find themselves submitting proposals for projects they would never have dreamed of in their pre-Outward Bound days. And the results, by most accounts, have scaled great heights. Cadets from the US Coast Guard Academy already have. The US Olympic volleyball team is slated to go through the managers' program. Such companies as Xerox, Dayton Power & Light, Martin Marietta, and Prime Computer have run groups through the new course. ''We've kept the essential OB course, but just tailored it to the demands of the workplace.'' ''No, this isn't an 'I'm-OK-you're-OK' pop psychology in the wilderness,'' says instructor John Spencer, who helped develop the programs. And ideas on stress management have come from Outward Bound research at Dartmouth College. But new ideas have been drawn from North Carolina's Center for Creative Leadership, a research foundation for executive leadership. The new course offers the same rigorous outdoor living as a means to develop self-confidence and teamwork. To the basic course of sailing, rock climbing, and obstacle courses have been added such concepts as group dynamics, stress management, creative leadership styles, decisionmaking, and goal-setting. Now Kahn's concept is being reworked to give ''desk jockeys'' a swift kick in their productivity. His learning-by-striving method has worked for over 80,000 students in seven US schools since 1962. He believed in overcoming self-imposed limitations, confronting new problems, discovering unexploited resources, and prevailing over adverse circumstances.
That is the maxim of Kurt Hahn, founder in 1941 of International Outward Bound (OB) survival schools. America's corporate image may have been given a karate chop by the likes of Japan and West Germany, but now many companies are fighting back under the banner ''Your disability is your opportunity.''
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