I like thinking about how curated environments can induce certain desirable behaviors from people - and one such case is how to create spaces that encourage genuine human connection at seemingly super speeds.
This is a living document of thoughts related to this subject.
Q1 2025 Team Offsite
If you’d asked me if I was close with my team a few weeks ago, I probably would have shrugged and said something along the lines of “we’re a distributed team, I don’t get to see them much”. But after just this one week, I’d say I’m at least 3x closer to my team.
Here’s why I think this week was successful:
- Booking the same flight - having to sit in the same plane with them forced conversation to happen, albeit a little awkward for the flight there since we were still warming up to each other, but it got the ball rolling
- Booking the same hotel - this was key. It made it so that we always met in the lobby and walked together everywhere we went. Those extra 20 minutes on top of whatever was already part of the official schedule substantially increased our surface area for good conversation. It’s like being in the same car to drive to retreat (iykyk).
- Arriving a day early - there was no work done that day. 10% laptops open, 90% yapping.
- Eating every meal together - this included breakfast (since we walked together) and some dinners/post-drinks. And we took our time to eat and chat
- Everyone always ordered a drink - alcohol is pretty good at getting people to talk, and having everyone on the same page with drinking made it so we always matched each other’s energy.
- Organized team-bonding events - these are honestly less effective than sheer exposure (see above), but they can be good for getting to know the tangible details about each other.
Overall, I think the key was just sheer persistent exposure with a splash of consensus on social vibes (we all were down to drink a little).