Greetings from sunny Malta.
I’m here for our annual team retreat with my business StoryLearning.
It’s the same playbook as ever:
- Find a great villa
- Find a great chef
- Fly in the team
- Have a great week!
It’s hard to underestimate the importance of team gatherings, especially if, like us, you’re fully remote.
People sometimes ask how I justify the cost. (Which runs into multiple $10,000s.)
And indeed, if the question you’re asking is:
“What’s the hard ROI on a team retreat?”
…then you won’t get any good answers.
But I like to flip it around and ask:
Which version of your business do you think performs best?
a) The version where you only ever see your colleagues through a Zoom screen?
or
b) The version where everybody hangs out, breaks bread, shares jokes, learns what each other does, asks questions, quizzes the founder, understands the company vision, shares random customer stories, gets a fancy foreign holiday bought and paid for, occasionally gets lost and causes a panic?
Is it a big leap to suggest that version b) of this team might perform at least 10% better?
It’s not going to be 0% unless you believe people are robots.
(Spoiler: they're not)
And what if it’s a lot more than 10%?
On a $1m revenue business, that's a pretty good return.
If you're still not convinced by the performance argument...
Well then, how about retention?
Do you think people might stick around for longer when they have a meaningful relationship with colleagues and feel truly appreciated at work?
What value do you place on retaining team for longer?
Have you thought about the immense cost of employee turnover on your business, or the price you pays when 5 years of institutional knowledge walks out the door?
We have team members who have been with the business for 10 years now.
Almost as long as me!
And I can't even begin to tell you how much that means to me, irrespective of the "value" to the company.
Now, I'll grant that the cost only starts to make sense from a certain level.
If you’re making $100k AR, then spending $20k to fly people around the world doesn’t make sense.
But if you can run your retreat for, say, 2% of AR, then it’s an absolute no-brainer.
But, to be honest, I don’t really think much about ROI on this.
For me it’s about something else.
I’m from the hire-from-within, select-for-aptitude, build-the-culture-you-want, against-maximisation, enjoy-life-while-you-can school of entrepreneurship.
And what this says for me is:
I don't want to run a business where we don't do this kind of thing.
I didn't always think this way.
Before our very first retreat, I'm not sure I would have seen the value, especially given the cost.
But having done it for many years in a row now, taken my team to many different countries, stepped away from the "office", gotten to know everyone so much better, had all kinds of breakthroughs, some commiserations, weddings and births (not between team members... yet)...
I just wouldn't want it any other way.
Namaste,
Olly