Reflecting On The Company North Star

By Erick Roder

One of the easiest things in the world for most ambitious people is to set a goal and then go heads down to get it done. We have built a craftsman culture at Codelation. When a blacksmith finishes a sword, it goes into the pile, and they are immediately onto the next blade. It’s easy to keep going and not stop to look at the great, giant pile of swords made. Our summer all-team meetings are an important time for us all to stop and look at the fact that we are more than halfway through climbing the 2022 mountain. We need to take a moment and appreciate how far we have come. It’s also an excellent time to adjust what we are doing and reevaluate how we get to the mountain top. Here is how I structured our all-team reset.

The first component of our all-team meeting was leadership updates. We have many new people. Having Josh hammer home our company North Star of building the best dev shop in our region is something we all have to keep in mind when we do anything. From there, additional leadership team members gave their updates on the status of their goals from last quarter and what they would like to accomplish by the end of quarter three. The idea for these quarterly meetings and leadership updates comes from the book Traction by Gino Wickman. The presentations concluded the necessary company updates to keep us all working towards the same company goal.

As the Director of People and Nerd Culture, the rest of the meeting had to flip the script and help our team achieve some of their personal and professional goals. We looked at what we had accomplished already this year and had Jodee Bock of Get REAL come in to facilitate a discussion around realistic ways to achieve our goals. Helping people level up their professional skills and achieve some of their outside-of-work ambitions is crucial to job retention. Jodee helped us get our minds in the right direction.

Our next speaker helped hammer home our new mindset. Saree Janz of Inner Spark Coaching and Hypnosis led us in a beautiful group meditation setting with success anchors in place for the rest of the year. Taking a moment to center ourselves and focus on our best half of business coming up was a great way to pause and appreciate how far we have come this year. It really helps us focus on the future.

The last component of our team building sent us off-site. We carpooled over to Pixeled Brewing Company. For those of you born in the 80s, Pixeled is basically every mall arcade from your childhood accompanied by beer. I love it! The team loved it! If you are looking for a way to work together and at the same time have a friendly competition, there is nothing better than their 10-player Killer Queen arcade cabinet. A couple of beers and a couple of devastating losses via the snail in Killer Queen was a perfect way to end the day.

These quarterly events are such a professional challenge for me. Finding meaningful ways to come together and build internal relationships while updating everyone on our goals is important. It’s so hard to stop working and smell the flowers. We needed time to reflect on how far we have come as well as look forward to a bigger, brighter future. These meetings are the most rewarding part of my job. I love my team and want to continue to help us get better every day. I will end with a question to anyone who made it this far. What is the favorite team-building activity that you have been a part of? Please reach out and share some of your favorite memories. Our next quarterly is always coming up, and there are always ways to improve and mix things up!