Our 14th birthday
Last week, 10 Degrees celebrated our 14th birthday.
It’s really hard to believe it’s 14 years, in some ways it feels like we’re just getting started and in other ways it feels like we have decades under our belts!
Our birthday is one of the two points in the year (the retreat being the other one), where we take some time away from the day job to spend time as team and focus on the big picture. This year, the agenda was comprised of four parts:
1. Goal setting
As well as our birthday, last week was also our financial year end. So it is a great point of the year for us to take stock and plan our goals and objectives for the year to come. We reviewed the plans we set for the previous year, discussed what went well and what didn’t – and most importantly, why not and what we can do better this year.
We had some really good team collaborative discussion on what our goals should be this year. The next step is to now break those down into tasks for us to complete in the first quarter and into specific objectives for each team member.
Setting company, team and individual objectives in this way means everyone is bought into what we are trying to achieve as a team, everyone takes ownership and accountability for their part in achieving them and they are not a set of instructions ‘cascading down from above’.
We’re all in this together.
2. Lunch and walk
No 10 Degrees social would be complete without food! After a pub lunch, we all set off on our first team training walk for the charity walk challenge we are taking on in September. This was our first 6.5km walk, as we train our way to 22km on the actual day.
It was wet, windy, muddy and also sunny! During the walk I posted a video explaining what we are doing and, most importantly, why. We also took the litter pickers out with us for a tidy up along the way.
3. Lightning talks
Refreshed and re-energised after our walk, the team each did a lightning talk on a topic of their choice.
An eclectic mix of topics, covering everything from AI (pitching ChatGPT vs Bard for the best results) to taking us through a guided meditation.
4. Escape room puzzle
We’ve always enjoyed an escape room at 10 Degrees, but this time we opted for a letterbox puzzle and did the game in the office at the end of the day.
Whether it’s escape rooms, jigsaw puzzles or client technical challenges – this team really do love problem solving!
Another great birthday and team day completed. Next up is our social calendar is our summer family day in July.
We would be incredibly grateful for any donations to our JustGiving page to support the amazing First Days Children’s Charity. We really need the encouragement and motivation to get out for more walks too!!
The Author
Lynda Harvey
Managing Director. Leading our business strategy and culture.
The 10 Degrees Team