CORPORATE
GRIEF.
A team building format built around the emotional experience and satire of the modern workplace. Because someone, eventually, has to say it out loud.
Not a wellness day, strategy offsite or another round of trust falls.
A structured, satirical experience that lets your team laugh at work — and mean it.
THE MEETING
YOU NEVER
GOT TO
HAVE.
Work is a lot. The restructures, the away days, the strategy pivots, the unspoken pressure to insist that everything is fine. The manager who left and took half the culture with them. The project that quietly died but still comes up in meetings. Everyone in the room knows. Nobody says it.
Corporate Grief is a team building format that takes all of that — the accumulated absurdity and genuine feeling of modern working life — and gives it a structured, satirical space to exist in. With other people. Out loud. Possibly with a flipchart.
It’s funny because it’s true. And it’s useful because laughing at something together, properly, is one of the better things a team can do.
WE CALL IT
CORPORATE
GRIEF.
Because that’s what it is. The unacknowledged emotional residue of working life — the things that happen inside organisations that everyone feels and nobody names. The format turns that into material. Satire with genuine feeling underneath it.
The restructureThe one that was communicated via a 40 slide deck. With a Q&A that definitely wasn’t recorded.
The strategy pivotSix months of work. A new direction. “Nothing changes day-to-day.” Everything changed day-to-day.
The project that diedStill in Notion. Nobody archived it. Nobody talks about it. It had a very good name.
The manager who leftFine. Totally fine. The team is absolutely fine. The team is not fine.
The culture shiftHard to describe. Definitely happened. Nobody wrote a postmortem for the vibe.
FUNNY.
AND ACCURATE.
The satire works because the observations are real. The format surfaces things teams already know about themselves — just in an environment where it’s finally acceptable to say them. That combination of recognition and release is what makes Corporate Grief land as both a comedy format and a genuinely useful team experience.
RecognitionPeople spend the whole session nodding. The format holds up a mirror to working life that is accurate enough to be uncomfortable and funny enough to be bearable.
ReleaseLaughing at something together changes the relationship with it. The things that felt heavy in isolation feel different once a room full of people has acknowledged them out loud.
ConnectionShared irreverence is one of the fastest routes to team cohesion. The format creates the kind of in-jokes that persist well past the session itself.
Honest conversationThe satirical framing gives people permission to say things they’d usually soften. The format holds enough structure that it stays useful rather than becoming a vent session.
Something to show for itCorporate Grief ends with output — not just feelings. Teams leave with shared language, named experiences and a slightly different way of talking to each other about work.
STRUCTURED.
SATIRICAL.
GENUINELY
USEFUL.
Corporate Grief is a facilitated group experience designed to be run with teams, departments or whole organisations. It has a clear format, a defined arc and enough structure that it doesn’t collapse into chaos — while being loose enough that the genuinely funny moments can happen naturally. Which they will.
Facilitated group format. Led by a facilitator who holds the tone — dry, warm, precise. The session has a shape that participants can relax into rather than having to manage themselves.
Designed prompts and frameworks. Participants are guided through a series of structured exercises that surface the material — nobody needs to arrive with anything prepared.
The Grief Inventory. Teams identify and name their collective corporate experiences — the things that happened, the things that were said, the things that are still sitting there. Given the satirical framing, this is considerably more enjoyable than it sounds.
The Ceremony. Selected experiences are formally acknowledged — with the same energy a bad decision deserves. There is a trophy. It is both funny and earned.
The Forward Brief. The session ends with the team articulating what they actually want — informed by what they’ve just laughed at together. The output is real and usable.
ANY TEAM
THAT HAS
BEEN THROUGH
SOMETHING.
Which is most of them. Corporate Grief works wherever there’s a shared experience that hasn’t been properly acknowledged — and a group of people who are ready to be honest about it, given the right conditions.
Post-Restructure
The change has happened. The dust has settled. Nobody has actually talked about it yet. This is exactly what Corporate Grief is for.
Away from Desks
A genuinely different alternative to the standard team building format — one that produces real connection rather than a shared memory of a poorly facilitated workshop.
Culture Reset
Teams that have drifted and need a shared reference point to reset from. The satirical inventory gives them one — and something to laugh about on the other side of it.
Leadership Onboarding
A new leader wants to understand what the team has lived through. Corporate Grief surfaces it faster, and with considerably more honesty, than a standard listening tour.