How the Swift Kick Team Made the Company Values Picture Perfect

Matt and Nicole did not know what to expect when they entered a near empty office building at 55th and Lexington for their first Quarterly Retreat with Swift Kick. I highly doubt they would have guessed they would put their directing and acting skills to the test.

After lunch, Tom, Matt, Nicole, and myself (Sabina) each picked a company value out of the following list:

• Play to Win – Maximize resources to finish what you start and exceed expectations.
• Raise the Tide – We’re in this together so contribute to the greater good of our whole community.
• Open Doors Open Hearts – Share your work and emotions and know that through openness comes trust, respect, and growth.
• Feed Your Butterflies –  Explore your un-comfort zone for growth and creativity. 
• See It Through Their Eyes – Through compassionately understanding someone else’s perspective comes clarity.

We each had to direct the rest of the team to take a photo or video to best illustrate the core value we chose.

Tom came first with Open Doors Open Hearts. He went for the literal approach of open doors, smiling faces, and ended with Matt in a #FreeHugs shirt, ready to give Tom a big hug. AW!

Then Matt directed us into a See It Through Their Eyes photo, where Tom and I peeked out from our work world to see Nicole doing yoga, another form of “work.” And if you look close, there’s a man at the next building doing some construction work too! It’s important to observe things from others’ points of view.

Nicole then took her turn as director for Raise the Tide. As Tom struggles with the very heavy door, Matt and I jumped in to help him succeed in his goal of pulling that door shut!

Finally, Sabina helped the rest of the team Feed Their Butterflies  by getting them to take a ride to the creepy basement in the creepy elevator. Clearly, they had to jump into their un-comfort zone as they had no idea what to expect – Tom didn’t even know a video was being taken!

But what about Play to Win? There weren’t enough members of the team, but we didn’t forget about this value. We ended the retreat with Escape the Room, an awesome NYC experience, where we followed the clues to find the key to unlock the door in 45 minutes. That definitely exceeded expectations – we were given a whole hour and maximized our collective team smarts to get out 15 minutes early.

These core values guide everything we do at Swift Kick.  It was pretty awesome to re-visit them with our new interns.

Wanna know more about how our Q3 Retreat went? Come back to the blog in a few days for a full re-cap.