It is November and we start dreaming about the sunny outdoorsy summer days spent with our software development team! Given the fact that we have been online and remote since March 2020 here in Transylvania, Romania, we found it great to be able to meet again our colleagues when the weather was good and outdoor activities were back on the agenda! One would say that working in a global outsourcing environment makes it easier for people to accept remote work and online only meetings, but every coin has two sides. The joy of reconnecting, the richness of face-to-face meetings, the power of close teamwork and the curiosity to meeting live our new colleagues are indescribable!
Going outdoors with purpose
Since you all know that Codespring │ Softech is a very active outdoorsy community, we set up a few outdoor activities as a mean to get together but also help local communities restore during the pandemic. This is how we discovered Șăulia Campgrounds and Yuppi Camp team.
While our team was working remote around Transylvania, as did most of the European software teams this year, back country venues and NGO’s were struggling to survive and fulfil their purpose. That is why we decided to explore this remote location and let Yuppi Camp team support their cause by introducing us to various team challenges.
In multiple series, each micro team got the chance to schedule its outdoor activity and build new memories together. What a great way to embrace common values and contain the power of team spirit!
What did we learn more?
There is always so much to learn when you go outside and play! Testing and experimenting is part of our software developer lives. Yet, is also mandatory to keep communications running and to attune yourself in the team, to observe and give a hand when it is most needed, to understand priorities and aim to deliver at your best! To make a point of our entire 2021 Codespring Team Outdoor Series we listed a few major lessons.
#1 Do not believe everything you think
As proven during each challenge, sometimes it seemed almost unrealistic to solve some challenges, yet most of the people involved did! At the beginning of the box tower, of the climbing wall or archery session many of us were thinking they could not finish the assignment, yet everyone did one way or another.
#2 Invest time to know your team
Being stuck together in the same boat or tied in the same rope was great! That is when each of us realized who was they paddling or climbing with. We had these very effective exercises to understand why taking the time to know your colleagues is important: when you will have to go faster or higher you would then, know how to handle the brains and the muscles in the team.
#3 Cross the bridge when you get there
There is this good old expression “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it” which means that one should not worry about a possible future problem but should deal with it if it happens. In practice, worrying for various scenarios while other priorities must be solved, generates stress and lack of prioritization. The lesson learned is that long ways are actually walked step by step.
#4 Constant communication is essential
Be it verbally or non-verbally, team members needed to constantly communicate in order to be able to solve the given outdoor challenges. In a similar way, when we manage to communicate effectively with our colleagues and customers, the project gets a much clearer shape and the solutions surface in due time.
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Thank you everyone for participating at 2021 Codespring team outdoor series and sticking together during these strange times. We will be back with more cheerful moments from our 23rd year together as a team.
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Later edit: Enjoy these video moments from our 23rd summer together!
