Building the dream team
The Osper team went OOO (out of office 😉) for the day this week to spend some time reflecting on what’s to come this year.
We had a fantastic day courtesy of our hosts and later on, Pizza Express 😎 Read on to find out more.
Our big day out
At Osper we love what I like to think of as our secret escapes. Events that we hold are often planned in secret and the team are only told exactly what’s going on at the last minute. This OOO was no exception and, I for one, was very excited and curious to find out what we were doing and where we were going!
On the big-day, we were kindly hosted by Independents United, who have an absolutely amazing office in Fitzrovia.
Thanks to them for letting us use this space! Interestingly they have lots of bottles of spirits in their entrance foyer which are all innovative products that have been nurtured in some way through Distil Ventures, a spin-off from Independents United.
Reflections, plans and Team Dreams
As you may have seen from our previous blog post, we’re excited by the year ahead here at Osper, and discussions about what was coming up formed a big part of time spent.
Alick took us through upcoming plans and we all took time to reflect on ideas presented and to feedback into forming how those plans might evolve and to question the reasoning behind them, this is encouraged at Osper and is something that the team are not shy of doing. At Osper we do have company-wide catch-ups on a regular basis, but taking the best part of a day to get into the ‘nitty-gritty’ of things really was a worthwhile exercise and meant that we could delve more deeply into any concerns or ideas.
The day was punctuated by several exercises which broke us down into mini-teams, each team then fed back to the wider group what they had discussed. We then identified common themes that had been expressed and focussed on them.
Everyone made a big effort to involve themselves and to express thoughts on how we can improve what we do, both for our users and for ourselves in terms of culture. It’s important to recognise that, although things are often pretty sweet, there is always something that a business can be doing in terms of making the people that are a part of it happier 😊 ❤️
Drinks (with a twist) and a pizza surprise!
Concluding the day and before our evening even, Frank, one of our hosts, told us about some of the drinks that had been created in partnership with Distil Ventures, alongside some history about the business.
We then got to try some of the drinks ourselves, we tried, Belsazar, a Vermouth from Berlin; Starward, a Whisky from down under; and an interesting non-alcoholic spirit, Seedlip which was inspired, so we hear, around the occasion and enjoyment taken from drinking – but with a desire to avoid hangovers in mind – we all loved it!
We then moved onto Pizza making at Pizza Express! Our hosts had us create out own pizzas with a chef guiding us along the way – and then split into teams to creat the best Calzone, Team Olive and Team Tomato. Who won is contentious, the chefs were in favour of Team tomato, but I’m not sure 😉 Safe to say that we all enjoyed our hand-made meals.
We’d love to hear what you think of our day, or how it compares to out of offices that you have been on. Tweet us @osper 😉
Osper love ❤️