Our team has been putting together some plans for a day out of the office. I’m not talking about taking a day off and getting together as a team to see a movie, but rather going somewhere to talk strategy and best practices. We’ll be working, but it will be a laid back, day-long discussion and brainstorming session.

Why not just have a meeting in a conference room? Even have the caterers bring in lunch? Because sometimes, it’s helpful to get in a different environment even for one day for a fresh perspective on things. In my opinion, if you spend day after day without any changes, you’re less stimulated. Your brain runs the same circles, and it’s hard to take a fresh approach.

We have a weekly team meeting that lasts about an hour, and we only scratch the surface of the things we talk about. We need a day to explore and bounce ideas off of each other. Our team is young enough that we still have the freedom to decide how we want to do things. Many teams don’t have that luxury—the upper levels drop some requirements and constraints down to the technical communicators, no questions asked.

Can you imagine spending an entire day inside a conference room that you probably already associate with drawn-out meetings? I doubt that’s the best approach for getting good ideas.

Another element of an offsite event is some kind of activity. Grown-ups need to have fun sometimes. And an activity could have some relation to the rest of the day—don’t you have to employ some strategy to get very far in lasertag?

We haven’t decided on a location or activity yet, but we have a good list of topics to discuss. I’m looking forward to exploring. We have some great brains in our team, and I expect we’ll get a lot done.

Does your team have offsite events? If so, what is involved?

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