Small Team Offsite

What (not) to expect: This is not your typical corporate offsite with contrived, big team building exercises, bland catering and stuffy workshop spaces. No way. Not on my watch..

What to expect: High quality time time with 3-4 of your team, curated + novel experiences in nature, podcasts and books by the fire, unstructured time for reflection and growth, beautiful home cooked meals and some of the best coffee, pide, pastries and ice-cream NSW has to offer. We can also curate Misogi or “misogi like” experiences in nature including:

  • cold water immersion (best from April to October);

  • overnight hikes - fasting can be included;

  • diving for sea urchin (where they are damaging kelp systems), followed by processing and eating;

  • long days working by hand - weeding, shovelling, cutting wood, carting wood and soil;

  • long days kayaking, swimming, and hiking.

These experiences emphasise:

  • the ritual of preparing for, and experiencing something difficult together;

  • simple experiences that are difficult to glorify within or outside the group;

  • novel experiences that are difficult to train for.

Itinerary:

  • Be picked up in a Tesla model Y from a central location, Thursday 12:30 (e.g. Sydney CBD, Wollongong, Gosford, etc… depending on where you are coming from);

  • Stay 3 nights, spend 2.5 days ‘wondering’ in nature, observing, reflecting, listening, discussing and ultimately deepening how you and your team understand your work together;

  • Get home Sunday night in time for dinner at home.

The process:

  • When you book, I will spend up to 2 hours with you, to build an understanding of why you are coming and what you hope to achieve. I will also spend up to an hour with each of the people you have nominated to come. This will inform opportunities to curate some experiences including a podcast lineup, a reading list, and productive work we can do together in nature.

  • Each day that you stay will include at least one physical experience outdoors, and if you’re game, these can be quite demanding. There is an orchard to maintain with regular pruning and picking, a wetland ecosystem to manage and document, a fledgling nursery for a niche forestry enterprise being built, firewood to collect and chop, drip lines to weed and mulch, or just good old bush walks, beach walks and cold water swims.

    • I will come up with an itinerary that suits your group, so you can confirm it is right for you before we go ahead - it is critical we spend time in nature together doing productive work. Why? It’s hard to know exactly why, but trust me, it will make sense afterwards

  • On Sunday we sleep in, go for a morning swim, have breakfast out and let the experience wash over us before we leave. If helpful, we can do a focused 1.5 hours before leaving to capture critical insights and next steps for your group

  • I strongly recommend all participants leaving behind work email, social media, and news feeds - use a device to contact someone, or be contacted, in an emergency. But that’s it.

Why this experience?

  • So often, it is the conversations we have when we stop thinking about work, that are so important to working effectively together. More so, being in a new space helps us let go of thought and behaviour patterns, leaving us open to a reset and feeling refreshed. An offsite should not feel like a work space, at all.

  • Being in nature, and really connecting with the natural world around us, is proven to drop stress markers that otherwise overwhelm our ability to be creative or productive. And heck, it just feels damn good in the moment - hello dopamine!

  • Because after 15 years working at the leading edge of sustainability and innovation, I can see that something has to change. There is something deeper within us all, than we are typically willing to look... I’m not just talking about values and attitudes on the surface level, I’m talking about finding and releasing what holds us back from being deeply effective together, even when we are aligned on values and attitudes.

The cost: $1,500 for accomodation, $400/pp for all meals (breakfast/lunch/dinner) including beer and wine on request, $4,500 for my time.

Experience types

FUNGHI FORAGE:

  • Be responsible for raising, planting and maintaining a foraging forest of walnut, chestnut, oak and other deciduous species, inoculated with funghi spore;

  • Learn about the essential role funghi has played in making diverse life on earth possible, how it builds ecological relationships, and its diverse applications beyond food;

  • Experiment with inoculation techniques, watch mycorrhiza networks form in the wild, and in ten years time, come back to enjoy the fruits and nuts of your labour.

LAND OF GIANTS:

  • Be responsible for raising, planting and maintaining a forest of fast growing, giant tree species - sequoia, mountain ash and bunja pine;

  • Learn about the role of top predators in the landscape as ecosystem keystones, the importance of species mobility in climate adaptation, and trees as ecosystem engineers;

  • Dream of one day being hoisted 50m high in a human scale nest to breath air with the sea eagles, or simply stay grounded to walk amongst the giants.

WETLAND STEWARD:

  • Be responsible for enhancing wetland ecosystem by clearing weed and planting seedlings - help us dream of and plan for a 1m+ sea level rise ecological succession to mangroves;

  • Learn about the role of brackish wetland ecologies along the NSW South coast, their role as breeding and feeding grounds, and how they might evolve over time;

  • Document wetland health metrics - water quality, bird species, frogs, and (mind the) snakes. Paint in water colour, draw, photograph and record the seasonal meanderings.

About me:

  • I have worked at the leading edge of sustainability and social entrepreneurship for over a decade;

  • I am an ecological optimist - I believe all of the solutions to the great ecological challenges of our time are available to us now, if we have the courage to pick them up and experiment with putting them together;

  • Seeing the solutions clearly, imagining how they might fit together and ultimately finding the courage to build is not easy. We are often too busy to think deeply or clearly (cognitive deficits from information overload), we tend to defer to maintaining status quo out of fear of failure (fixed mindset), and then of course there are the life basics to look after - a career, a roof over your head;

  • Spending time in nature is a proven mind clearing, anxiety reducing, thought inspiring, thing to do;

  • I have consistently found that being productive in nature, and being a part of an ecology, provides a long lasting refresh and becomes a catalyst for sense making - as you work in a landscape, and become part of its rhythm, it is incredible how often life’s complexities start to make sense and a path ahead becomes clear;

  • It is my hope that these experiences live up to their promise for all who participate, and is an experience in keeping with our human and ecological needs.