English poet John Donne said, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent."

More than 350 years later, his words still hold true. It takes more than one focused employee to have a successful company. Each individual must be committed to a group effort for a company to work and work well.

And there's nothing like teambuilding to instill the importance of working together. “Are we having fun yet?” Do we understand the true meaning of meetings yet?

Not only does having fun help to reduce stress, it loosens us up and gets our creative juices flowing. Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence , writes: “Good moods enhance the ability to think flexibly and with more complexity,

thus making it easier to find solutions to problems,

whether intellectual or interpersonal. … Laughing, like elation, seems to help people think more broadly and associate more freely, noticing relationships that might have eluded them otherwise — a mental skill important not just in creativity,

but in recognizing complex relationships and foreseeing the consequences of a given decision.”

THERE'S EVOLUTION IN THE AIR for the meeting and corporate travel industries.

Leading companies are consolidating meeting and travel departments, and that is changing the way meeting planners do their jobs.

Many companies with focussed meetings have realised the need of the same, as a result, are saving about 5 percent on their total spend each year.

The right hand needs to know what the left hand is doing. A growing number of companies are doing the same thing, but they aren't necessarily approaching it the same way.

Some have brought the two disciplines together under the authority of a meeting professional.