Payments design team offsite
Pre-planning
I was part of a 4 person leadership team who defined and facilitated the two day agenda for a team of 30 designers. In pre-planning, we defined goals for the offsite then designed and prototyped the activities to work out any kinks.
Offsite goals
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1. Get to know each other
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2. Get to know ourselves
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3. Have fun
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Day 1: Get to know ourselves
I was excited to facilitate and drive the Values activity within the “Get to know ourselves” module. Years ago in a manager training course, I participated in a similar activity that I thought would be a perfect fit for achieving this outcome. I had prototyped an adapted version of the activity with my direct reports so I was confident with a bit more tuning, it would scale for the larger group. In an effort to provide a best in class, immersive, and memorable experience for all, I created custom card decks and worksheets to serve as a souvenir for the attendees.
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Day 2: Have fun
Like many designers I know, I’m a big fan of unstructured time as a way to refill my creative bucket. In pre-planning for Day 2, I advocated for some pure maker time with enough structure to create focus, but not so much that attendees might feel constrained. We ultimately ended up on this prompt: spend the morning making something to represent how we we feel or something we learned. This activity was a huge success, after three hours everyone was smiling, engaged, and chattering away. During the gallery walk, I was absolutely in awe of what was made, we’re so lucky to have such talent on our team!
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Mission accomplished! We got to know each other, ourselves as designers, and had fun
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We got to know each other
I was surprised by the emotional intelligence and vulnerability demonstrated by the attendees in their willingness to share personal anecdotes, strengths, and opportunity areas broadly with the group. I can't help but take this as a nod to the ability of our leadership team to create the emotionally safe conditions for this to happen. |
We got to know ourselves as designers
One of the the most rewarding aspects was to see that at the end of two days, each attendee had a personal thesis to take back to their managers as a foundation for career and personal development focused conversations. |
We had fun
At the end of the day, it's so nice to unplug once in a while from the stresses of our daily work to connect as a group and just enjoy each other as humans. |
March 2020, blissfully ignorant of what the world was about to throw at us