Blog post

OpenTent holds a yearly Team Advance: What is it and why is it important?

By 
March 24, 2022

“Here's the goal: new friends. Here's the output: a new and better to-do list.” - Seth Godin

We’re big fans of Seth Godin’s thought leadership about making work suck less. Seth has written about a ‘Team Advance,’ which is different from a Team Retreat in that it “advances” the work rather than “retreats” from it. 

You can read more about Seth’s vision here!

OpenTent is having our Team Advance next week, April 4th-7th. Some folks will be remote, and others will be together in our NYC office space. On April 8th we’ll take the full day off as a team in order to have a flexible buffer day before starting our first Iteration Cycle of Q2 the following week.

What this does for our team:

  • Reflecting on Q1 and preparing for Q2 
  • Creating time for a conversation about new company core values that will help guide the rest of the year
  • Gives us an opportunity to iterate and reset how we work AND remember why we are doing it!
  • Getting to know who is on our team (we are adding four new people!) and establishing real connections. We’ll continue to use the 5Voices framework to learn more about our individual ways of working
  • Sharing and celebrating the last quarter!
  • Chartering our project teams for the next quarter (led by Audrey, our Director of Project Management) Getting together in those groups and setting group norms, ways of working, agreements
  • Launching ClickUp, our new project management system! This will be led by Sara, our COO and will include training and lots of hands-on time
  • Share what's coming up for next quarter (client by client)

What this does for our clients:

  • Ensuring that we are working in the most efficient and effective ways possible
  • Building strong relationships internally to guarantee our best work
  • Making time to be fully trained on internal software
  • Creating clear team agreements and ways of working for sprints
  • Understanding and practicing our reactions and pivots as a unified team

We are excited to get together, have some fun, and learn and grow as OpenTenters! And then we’re looking forward to our Team Retreat at the end of October, when we’ll gather in person for more team building and reflection.

Interested in learning more about our movement to make work suck less? Get in touch here!

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