We are all back in the office from an incredible company retreat. These retreats are something I started about 4 years ago at MindComet and I have to say that this was the best one I have been on yet. This years theme was Revolution.
Friday started at 8am with my keynote speech. I spoke about the prior years accomplishments, the challenges we are facing as a company and the focus of this retreat. Travis and crew put together a video that chronicles the past year and I used it in my presentation, he will be uploading that later today.
Dan Rua and Jim Boyle were kind enough to join us for a little Q&A from the investors point of view. Our team members were able to ask them questions about why they invested, what they look for in a company and where they see opportunities for us.
Tom Monahan of Before and After then joined us for a 3 hour session on Brainstorming and Creativity in Business. I saw Tom about 8 years ago as the keynote speaker at the HOW Design Conference in Dallas. He was incredible when I saw him the first time and even better in a smaller group. I had an idea in the brainstorming session that you will see included in the Argus release. He asked us to think about things that have to do with the ocean, then design a car with those things in mind. That little exercise, though completely unrelated, spawned what will become an incredibly powerful new feature. Crazy, I know.
Randy, Pete, Karen, Shaun and David then gave presentations about their respective departments and Randy and Joe gave the capabilities presentation that they show our potential big name advertisers.
Pete and I then showed off Argus and unveiled the feature set to the company for the first time. There was a mix of excitement and nervousness that filled the room. It is going to be a pretty big change for us and there is still much to do between now and the unveiling at PostieCon.
We ended the night with a giant Postie Patrol style Scavenger Hunt. You guys are going to love the videos from this one. Here is a little sneak peek.
Dan, his wife Melissa and Jim joined us. If you are an Entrepreneur looking for an investment team that really gets behind the companies they invest in look no further than Inflexion.
Here is one page from the clues list. It was a pain to come up with some of this stuff so if you want to do your own Postie Patrol style scavenger hunt you can download our list here.
Saturday morning kicked off with a company wide DISC assessment with guest speaker Annetta Wilson. We learned about our own communication styles and how to best interact with each other. Annetta was fantastic and offered a tremendous amount of insight. She had a great attitude and made the session fun and engaging despite the fact that we were dealing with some pretty sensitive topics.
If you know what the DISC is I am a Di, my classical pattern is Results Oriented.
The DISC was followed by 3 breakout sessions where each department was able to interact with each other in smaller groups.
The day ended with an awards ceremony. The Awards were based on blind poll within the company. Here are the winners:
Revenue : Joe
Empowerment : Karen
Vision : Pete
Opportunity : Caroline
Leadership : Randy
Unity : Priscilla
Technology : Daniel & Trevor
Innovation : Marty
Optimism : Veronique
Nimbleness : Luke
Dray took home Team Member of the Year and will have a sweet $2k bonus on his next paycheck. Congrats to all the winners, you guys deserve the recognition.
All in all it was a memorable and enlightening weekend.
