I brought my whole team to Normandy (PA that is).

This week was? Part and Sum 's 19th “Together” offsite.?Each of them has a theme, and this year’s was “Connection”. Here’s what we learned:

???? A super seamless, actually together Together, would be impossible without our experience ops lead Jessica Grasmann . She found the Normandy FarmHotel in Blue Bell, PA and naturally, we pretended to be in France.

?? Julie Babb shared our business health metrics and quarterly finances with the team. As we enter an economic downturn we’re feeling confident (not cocky) in our bathing suit.

?? And then dove into our approach to personal development (a constant for us) and project allocation.

?? “Stretch assignments'' are a big part of growth. As are being self-aware and advocating for yourself. We discussed our own tools (skills matrix) and added depth and nuance to how team members think about their own growth via a rose chart exercise.

Everyone completed their own rose chart and had 1-1 time with leadership within the offsite to discuss their own journeys (alternatively trajectories.).?

? Every quarter, I like to share our?What, How, and Why. A significant portion of my job is reminding us all of our first principles every chance I get.?

?? To support our theme, everyone read “Thinking in Systems” by Donella Meadows. It’s a fantastic primer for systems thinking and literally inspired our name. I’ve always been inspired by systems thinking.

From ecology to?game design, the ability to see the interconnectedness of things has always been a superpower I aspire to have. Elements of systems thinking have permeated so many of our ideologies. Our values contain phrases born from systems thinking and cybernetics.

The rules for “living within systems” overlap with our consulting and mindset practices super closely.

??? Clients pay us to go through “learning loops” with them, where our role is to explore a given system, map it for them, and look for points of leverage. We’re able to frame and map these systems by being playful with lumping and splitting.

It’s important to realize that systems are real, but maps, frameworks, etc… less so. They’re created by us and while they do reveal insights via the connections they illustrate…they’re also limited.

Sorting, organizing, and finding connections within information is?made up by the people who do it. “Cancer” is not a monolithic disease, rather hundreds of diseases classified as “cancer”.

At the same time we’re explorers within systems,?we’re also biased actors. It’s impossible to see them holistically, and without bias, which is often why they are so complex. We must be kind to ourselves, if we don’t see something in the system we’re in.

Through a series of activities we explored and mapped increasingly nested and hierarchical systems of our work together.

And even explored a way to see our own?growth as a system.

As part of our consulting practice, we’ve been working on distilling our POV on how to solve complex problems. We call our approach “figure-it-out-itude” and Leila and Audi are helping to turn it into a physical workbook (more on this soon!). They led us through and collected feedback on a few newly designed activities that might make it into the book.

Next up - Cecilia led us through a discussion on our SMB Partnerships, an important part of our collective identity Part and Sum. As we’ve grown, we’ve had to balance bigger projects with fostering these that?are core to our DNA.

And Kina, Leticia, and Asha led a conversation on how we can continue to build?the Part and Sum OS and our plans to think and learn in public.?

Beyond the worky work stuff, being together is really about connecting as people. We Zoom, we Miro, we Slack, we make stuff, but spending time together to just be people is the most important part. And we did a lot of that.

I feel so privileged to be to help lead an organization that values the time to think, laugh, talk, and live a little. The moment is fleeting and I’m already looking forward to the next one.

If this is your kinda thing, I geek out about any and all of it. Whether my teams’ brains are?right to help you crack your current complex problem, you want to push our thinking by adding your thinking to the mix, or just want to grab a coffee. I’m game - [email protected]