11 August · From the studio · 1 min read
A team outing that actually sticks
Twenty colleagues from an agency in Amsterdam, a Thursday afternoon in June, and nobody who knew each other well outside work.
Most groups come in with a plan that is not about cooking. Something has to happen about the way people work together, or there is a farewell, or it is simply December. I usually let that plan go. What works is a task nobody can fake: you stand at the workbench and the knife is in front of you.
Within ten minutes the pecking order falls away. The intern who cooks at home explains how you halve an onion, the director listens. Not because anyone meant it that way, but because the task decides.
At the end I sat next to someone I have been mailing for two years and had never spoken to.
What I would change
One thing I do differently from three years ago: no round of introductions. It costs twenty minutes and gives you nothing the cooking does not do by itself. We start with aprons on and hands washed, and getting to know each other happens in between the work.
And: eating at one long table, not in little groups at your own workbench. The difference is bigger than it sounds.