Bringing the Team Together for a Culture Event

This past week was busy around the office, but the biggest highlight was getting both of our teams together for a culture event on Friday.

We held events at both our Georgia and Charlotte offices, giving everyone a chance to step away from their normal responsibilities, enjoy some food, and spend time together.

With everything that goes on during a normal workweek, it was good to slow things down for a little while and focus on the people who make the firm work.

Bringing Both Offices Together

Friday was centered around our culture event at both locations.

The Georgia and Charlotte teams each got together for a cookout, dinner, and some time away from the normal office routine.

There is always plenty happening at the firm. People are helping clients, working cases, answering phones, meeting deadlines, and handling all the other responsibilities that keep things moving.

That makes it easy to spend most of the day focused only on the next task.

Events like this give everyone an opportunity to step away from that for a little while.

Instead of talking only about work, people can sit down, eat together, laugh, and spend time with coworkers they may not get to interact with as much during a normal day.

From everything I saw and heard, the teams really enjoyed it.

Why Culture Matters

As a business grows, culture becomes something you have to pay attention to.

It is easier when everyone works in one small office and sees each other constantly.

Once you have multiple locations, different departments, and more people doing specialized jobs, you have to be more intentional about creating opportunities for everyone to connect.

That is one reason these events matter.

You want people to feel like they are part of the same team, even when they may work in different offices or spend most of their day focused on completely different responsibilities.

Culture is not built through one event, but events like this certainly help.

Sometimes sharing a meal and spending an hour together can do more for relationships than another formal meeting.

A Busy Week of Filming

Outside of the culture event, I also spent some time filming videos from home.

We had our lights set up and were working through a teleprompter and recording app.

As usual, there was a small technology problem to solve first.

The app only allowed the primary person on the account to start the recording, so we had to find a workaround.

Once we figured that out, everything went smoothly.

There always seems to be something slightly different to troubleshoot when filming, whether it is lighting, audio, cameras, or software.

Fortunately, this one was pretty easy to solve.

Luna Has Become My Office Assistant

Luna has also continued spending more time with me when I work from home.

I will be sitting in my office, look up, and suddenly she is lying beside me.

She seems to have gotten used to having me around in the afternoons.

Now, when I am at the office, I think she notices I am gone.

She may not contribute much to the actual work, but she is good company.

A Board Game Night at Home

We also had some people over to the house for a game night.

We played Zombicide, a cooperative board game where everyone works together against zombies.

We had a good time.

Luna was less enthusiastic.

At one point, she was upstairs looking down at everyone playing.

By around 10:00, I think she had decided we had stayed up long enough and everyone needed to leave so she could go to bed.

Apparently, she has become the person in charge of enforcing bedtime at our house.

Sam Heads to Las Vegas

Sam spent the weekend in Las Vegas with some of his fraternity friends.

It sounded like he had a great trip.

One of the biggest highlights was attending a UFC event at the Apex.

That is one experience I was a little jealous of.

I have wanted to attend a UFC event there, but the timing has never worked out.

Because the Apex is smaller than a typical arena, Sam said the experience felt much more intimate and close to the action.

It sounded like a great weekend for him.

Holly did get stuck in quite a bit of traffic when she went to pick him up afterward, but overall everything went well.

A Little Time to Recharge

While Sam was gone, Holly and I had a relatively quiet weekend.

We had the Zombicide night with friends, went out to dinner another evening, and otherwise spent some time relaxing.

After a busy week, it was nice not to have a complicated schedule.

Sometimes a quiet weekend is exactly what you need before heading back into another workweek.

Final Thoughts

The biggest part of this week was definitely seeing our teams come together for the culture events in Georgia and Charlotte.

As the firm continues to grow, I think it becomes even more important to create opportunities for people to spend time together outside of their normal responsibilities.

The cookouts gave everyone a chance to eat, talk, relax, and enjoy being around the people they work with every day.

The rest of the week included filming, a game night, Sam's trip to Las Vegas, and some quiet time at home.

But Friday was the real highlight.

It was a good reminder that while businesses are built around systems, processes, and work, they are ultimately built by people.

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