Hi, Amanda here from the Think - team!
Remote working has been quite a journey for many of us, especially for the ones who are setting it up! Aside from working in the think-team, I’m also helping overall company operations such as automating processes, organizing databases so that none of us have to spend time finding what they need. It gets interesting and tiring at times, but that’s not all, I am learning so much from organizing our first virtual company retreat! I’m so excited to share with you all.
su-re.co has a tradition of gathering somewhere as a time off work, to bond, have fun, and reflect. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, it’s not ideal for us to meet together in our office at Canggu, Bali. However, I find it rather meaningful to see this company grow with more and more people from different places, such as Balikpapan, Jakarta, Tokyo, and Nagoya. In a way, the pandemic has allowed us to be limitless, and it certainly won’t stop us from having a company retreat!
As some of you may wonder "what do you actually do in a retreat?" So far, we’ve done two online ones and one coming tomorrow. We take about 2 - 3 hours of work to look back and look in to move forward. It’s time for us to redefine, realign, and reposition our vision, mission and values to achieve the sustainable future we desire. As our CEO always say, “we often overestimate what we do in one year, but underestimate how much we do in 10 years.” During the retreat, we envision how su-re.co looks like in 2030 and we’ll draw the pathway to reach that. This is called backcasting, a method we use to be intellectually optimistic with our goals. Interestingly, this is how President Kennedy actually made it to the moon back in 1969! If you are interested to delve into backcasting, it is available in our online training check that out!
On top of deep discussions and collective envisioning, we also play a bunch of ice breakers to get to know each other better. With this remote working condition, who would have guessed that one of the giftmakers has a blackbelt in Taekwondo, or cook the best brownie in town!
“We often overestimate what we do in one year, but underestimate how much we do in 10 years.” - Dr. Takeshi Takama, CEO and Founder of su-re.co
Truthfully, I think anyone should do a retreat, individually or collectively. Especially with the bustling hustling working culture and the influx of information in the media that our brain receives on a daily basis. Everyone needs a break. I don’t mean to fully stop, but to pause. People sometimes confuse this with hesitation and doubt, when in most cases you can’t really go forward effectively without ever going inwards. It’s like driving a car for a long road trip without checking your gas, breaks, and engine; you’re not gonna have a good time when the car breakdown or crashes.
I hope you see the value in slowing down to speed up. If you’re anxious about the pandemic and its effects on many lives, know that we’re even more connected than ever!