This year we set out to top our previous annual all-team JB Ashtin summits. We had to, because this one was special. This one marked our company’s 25th anniversary.
Armed with a mandate of elevating our time and our team as high as we could, we laid out some guidelines:
- It had to reflect our value of collaboration, because collaboration is central to how we benefit clients
- It needed to include team building, because this is the one time every year that we all meet in person
- It had to include educational games and workshops, where we could learn while competing
- And most of all it had to be FUN, because creativity requires fun, and our clients rely on our creativity
Judging from everyone’s feedback, it looks like we outdid ourselves in historic Boston.
As in previous years, the energy and optimism among everyone was palpable. We kicked things off with a walking tour through the historic sites of Boston, and no they were not all Dunkin’s.
We designated a few people on our team as tour leaders, with each of them in turn assembling their group members for a fun afternoon. Miranda created the tour, and Ashley made the maps (left).
Boston may be about 50 square miles, but on our tour, you could hit the highlights in just over an hour. (We’re nothing if not efficient.)
A quick meetup afterward at the ping-pong social club SPIN let everyone meet each other as the groups came together. Working together every day via video from somewhere in the United States is one thing; meeting each other in person brings close relationships even closer and helps establish new ones as our company grows. We also had the opportunity to screen a video of congratulatory clips from many of our team and clients, dating back to our very first client, 25 years ago. Reliving our own history felt all the more special in a city of such significance.
The next morning, after a group breakfast and a slideshow recapping JB Ashtin’s history, we dove into a storytelling workshop. The workshop combined fun with learning as we stretched our creative muscles. A video presentation reminded us about the impact and importance of good storytelling — a point driven home by two presentations of the same material, but one with simply the dry facts, and the other with a narrative that demonstrated the dramatic difference vibrant storytelling makes.
Then we got to dig into the real fun!
We broke into small groups, with each team provided a fun (and made-up!) disease state and data packet detailing the malady. Each team then had to create a presentation on their assigned disease, laying out the case for the related treatment, and use storytelling to “sell” their investment pitch to an elite group of “investors” – aka our leadership and creative teams. One of the teams, led by Justin Loughrey, presented their investment pitch with creative drawings and a twist: Justin ended the pitch by surprising the investors that he suffered from the fake affliction.
There were lots of laughs and gasps of appreciation as one team after other cleverly regaled their colleagues about these nonexistent conditions.
Other lively team learning activities during our summit:
- A group scavenger hunt at the Paul S Russell Museum of Medical History and Innovation
- A happy hour at a rooftop venue with more in-person confabs
- And our final workshop, “Working Genius.” Small groups got the chance to design and pitch next year’s Summit agenda and location and shared how our different working geniuses played into the discussion and results. This served as a reminder of how differences make us stronger and how Working Genius helps with effective collaboration, since we bring our geniuses to everything we do!
As you can imagine, coordinating travel and timetables, scheduling and logistics for 34 people required a lot of planning. And budget. Why do this?
Because it was fun.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the past 25 years, it’s that fun is underrated.
Fun is the value that is the icing atop a cake of core values.
Fun allows us to be ourselves, to not take ourselves too seriously, and to make the best of difficult situations. It also makes it a joy to work with each other, because we all know that when we get on a call, we are generally in great spirits and ready to collaborate. Fun helps foster a sense of belonging. And fun is life-affirming, which is also what our work is about.
We take our work seriously — very seriously, because people rely on the life-saving treatments our clients provide. But because we don’t take ourselves too seriously, we have an optimistic attitude. That sense of uplift and joy translates into effective storytelling, storytelling that’s driven to get a point across and make an impact.
And we find that our fun, upbeat attitude makes us happier as a team, and transfers to clients too.
The final fun thing? We bestowed upon each attendee a pair of custom-made commemorative Crocs, designed with our 25th anniversary JB Ashtin logo.
Now we’re starting to think about next year’s Summit. There’s no law that says that the 26th of something shouldn’t be even better than the 25th. That philosophy applies to everything we do: make it even better.