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Organizational collaboration and alignment are key to healthy team dynamics and overall success. It can be incredibly tempting to rely on in-person interaction to drive progress in these areas, but today’s remote and hybrid work environments often require a more creative approach. In this month’s edition of Working Visually, we give you a look inside our own company all-hands and how we turn a 3-hour meeting into a unique combination of skill development and relationship building.
How do you get everyone to crack a smile, fire up their brains and feel excited for a large meeting? Give them a fun place to start. At Throughline, our virtual all-hands is dubbed the Idea Architects Summit and this year the theme was National Parks. The moment Throughliners joined the call, they created their own Idea Architect character before joining leadership on a custom park map that guided the flow of the event. Everything from the agenda to breakout group objectives was presented as part of a journey through the map. This approach prioritizes employee experience through:
The Idea Architects Summit is about more than hearing from leaders—it’s about learning new skills we can harness to better serve our clients. The diversity of our work means an equally diverse, organic set of experts. Who better to teach us than expert Throughliners themselves? This year, eight team members created four interactive training sessions to share their expertise with the rest of us. True to our National Parks theme, these breakout training sessions were:
Each session included expert insights, interactive digital activities and digital takeaway resources to continue building skills beyond the event. By learning from fellow Throughliners (spread across the world), everyone is consistently engaged, feels comfortable asking questions and leaves with a tangible improvement in their skills.
After building skills in the digital breakout sessions and earning their badges, the team came back together to convene at the summit. To celebrate the accomplishment, designers revealed hidden easter eggs in the event map, team members announced our yearly Guiding Principles Award winners and leadership set the scene for the next year.
Bringing your team together should be exciting, not a calendar invitation they dread receiving. By adding a visual story to align your organization, you can take an all-hands from information sharing to relationship building no matter how dispersed your team.
Have a big event coming up that needs something special? Let us know! We love creating tailored solutions to bring teams together.
‘Til next time,
Myrthe Doedens, Principal Content Strategist