Solita Cloud Platforms’ Recipe for Successful Gathering
Kirjoittaja:
Ok, I admit that there is nothing revolutionary going on with our Recipe for Success here. Just well planned and organized stuff anyone can apply to their meetings and/or workplace culture. Adding these elements worked for us, at least:
- Dozens of Cloud People
- Meaningful presentations
- Group discussions in unofficial environment
- Knowledge sharing; Delicious food and drinks
- For ultimate perfection: Local hockey team to win quarter semifinals.
It’s a tradition
Solita Cloud Platforms had traditional (second time) annual Summer Grilling and Chilling meetup in Tampere. The majority of our Cloud personnel gathered there to spend an afternoon and evening with each other. Many of us saw each other the first time ever, thanks to our growth with hybrid working culture and the possibility to be recruited outside office locations in Finland. We also had our Estonian team members with us.
Things you probably didn’t know
The presentation and knowledge-sharing part of the program included something regular, something new and something across Solita. Focusing in customer projects or whatever you’re dealing with on a daily basis easily creates cozy bubbles around us. Therefore it’s essential to slow down for a moment to see what’s going on elsewhere.
Cloud people are well kept up-to-date on what’s happening in our business unit. A bit about the near history, a bit looking at the Crystal Ball and sharing our situation for everyone working for Cloud Platforms including a lot of comments and questions from the audience. We are in this boat together.
Our offering is developing further all the time, so this was a great moment to share the new highlights for everyone. What kind of new abilities we are building, who are the people involved and how this might affect to anyone in the room – how I could be the part of this journey? The presentation seemed to cave new pathways to our career landscapes.
While Solita is growing and we’re now a community of communities consisting of approximately 1700 people, there’s a lot happening and change is rapid. In Cloud the work is all about lifecycle management of the services, but it’s not limited to us. The business is evolving on Solita level too and we discussed about our transformation from project house to life-cycle management provider.
So you want us to go to pub to discuss? Can be done.
After a few hours sitting and listening and discussing, Cloudians were let loose to have group discussions. We were divided to several groups of about 5 people, and the commands were “find your group – choose a pub – discuss about meaningful work“.
Meaningful work has grown to be a prioritized subject in our employee satisfaction queries and also leadership priorities. People are focused and willing to do their best but expecting that the targets are impactful and work meaningful. Of course one can have effect on themselves 0r the project they’re working with, but also the meaningful work needs to be recognized.
In our smaller groups (yes, in public houses, with refreshments) we discussed around these questions:
- What is meaningful work for you?
- How we as a project group can do work more meaningful in our project context?
- How can I do work more meaningful for me?
At least the group I was in had really lively and (enough) philosophical points of view and we ended up making the world a bit better place through our concrete answers. And the landscape over Tampere was rather awesome too. Most of all this exercise influenced our thinking and yet again helped smashing the cozy bubble around us.
Afterwork with delicious food and drinks
Continuing towards the evening and the local hockey team game against Canada, we headed to our penthouse office with roof terrace to spend an evening afterwork. The best party always happens in the kitchen (or in corridor)!
The main events (excluding the Cloud People) were the food and the drinks, which both were on decent awesomeness level. The afterparty kept going on when the hockey game started – and I’ve heard some rumours that it continued late after the game too…
Although Finland did not beat the old nemesis this time, people had the smiles over their faces the next morning too. This was a successful gathering!