In July, The Scott Partnership Holdings Group had our annual Away Day, an important time when we step back from daily business activity, regroup and focus on the year ahead, and beyond. This year we visited Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford-Upon-Avon and with a ‘Shakespearean Sports’ theme (that’s our creative minds at work!) we took 24 hours out of the office environment to focus on how we function as a team, overall business as well ourselves in our day to day roles.
As a rapidly growing group of businesses we work across multiple locations and to get everyone in one room at the same time is a great accomplishment and hugely valuable opportunity. But also the process of physically removing everyone from the daily working environment ensures that minds are all focused on the key objectives and aren’t distracted by daily tasks (go on, admit it, how often are you tempted to check your emails during a meeting).
While an Away Day sounds like an out-of-office jolly (and it is good fun) it’s actually a highly valuable opportunity. We spend our lives focusing on our clients’ strategies and ensuring the tactics that we implement for them effectively meet their objectives, but we also need to practice what we preach. How can we advise on a strategy if we don’t have one in place ourselves? How can we continue to deliver innovative sales and marketing programmes if we don’t step back and evaluate what we’re doing? We’re in an industry which is competitive by it’s very nature, as such we are constantly striving to better ourselves and deliver the best for our clients. The task of analysing and evaluating ourselves allows us to ensure we’re achieving the best but it is also something that needs doing continually, to ensure that the overall objectives are met.
We would never work with a client without regularly reviewing our strategy, tactics and processes; this to us is common sense but also best practice. And that’s why we need to do the same internally.
Now, let’s be honest, it wasn’t all business and strategic planning, we had fun too! Being in a new environment is a great way to encourage team bonding, which is a key success factor for any business. As Simon Sinek said, “People who love going to work are more productive and more creative.” If you’d been wandering the streets of Stratford-Upon-Avon that July day you may well have seen a number of teams looking for historical landmarks and delivering the ‘Robot’ Dance outside the home of the RSC.
Want to regroup and ensure you’re hitting the right mark for your business? Contact TSP for how we can help inform your strategy and develop an innovative program of activities via [email protected].
Jen Husdan, Account Director at The Scott Partnership
