Real togetherness!

Laptops. Inputs. Documents. Milestones. Meetings. Discussions. These are the words that are thrown around at least a hundred times every day of my work life. My team works on various projects and one or the other project will have a milestone. One major project had a resource crunch and was finding it hard to meet the milestone. The other teams could only sympathise because lending help meant drawing in more work, amidst piles of already existing work.

We had to get out of this rut. We planned team lunches, but none of us were free on the same day to synchronize and plan the same. We postponed, we ordered in, we tried to convince but nothing worked and the plan fell flat on its nose.

If going out for lunch was this difficult imagine planning for a team outing. The plan was postponed for a minimum of 10 times, until my Manager put his foot down and forced us all to cancel all our meetings and enjoy one day out.

We had been on an outing six months ago, most of the team members including me, were new, so even though we enjoyed the day outing, it was not really the best time we had. This also made us a little skeptical about spending an entire day out with the team, again.

However good a team is, there are differences between individuals and there are a lot of small groups within the team. We were sure wherever we go, we will end up spending time with our friends and nothing would change.

I am a part of the FUN@WORK team and I had to organize and plan everything for this outing. Even though there were good options for us to kill time in the resort we were going to, I was also not sure if my team would really enjoy.

The day finally arrived. The instant we got into the cars to head to the resort, all our moods became lighter and we started jibber-jabbering excitedly.

The rule of the day was to keep our phones away.

Upon reaching the place, we went around and decided to play Cricket. We split ourselves into teams. I was a little sick and I chose to sit out as I did not want it to get worse. Ten minutes into the game, I started noticing people who barely looked at each other in office, giving Hi-Fis. People cheering people they usually love gossiping about otherwise. I clicked pictures to mark these precious moments, unable to actually believe my eyes.

We then played a few other games and slowly there were no groups at all. We were talking, playing and mingling with every person in the team, just the same.

Post lunch, we played dumb charades and the team split this time was as random as it could get. No best friends were together, no enemies made faces. It was all too weird. But we had a lot of fun.

I think everybody had realized this after a point and insisted on playing cricket once again. The game only got wilder and crazier this time. We did not want it get over.

After refreshments, we managed to get the resort staff to play music for us. The FUN@WORK team was very sure that nobody would turn up on the dance floor, but we gave it a try and I am glad we did. We started dancing, slowly people started joining in and at one point the whole team was sweating, dancing, singing and shouting with joy on a tiny little dance floor. The whole day had left us exhausted but we still gathered all the energy and danced for more than an hour. We did not realize we had crossed the time we had decided to depart from the resort. After it got dark outside, we forced ourselves out and home.

Everybody agreed this was the best team outing they had ever had.

The next day at work was all about fun stories from the day out. The best part was, people from other projects volunteered to help the project with resource crunch and help reach the upcoming milestone. Within days the project is doing so much better. We are now one big, happy family, planning more fun and exciting things in the coming days.

Nothing brings to my mind togetherness like this team bonding.

For the longest time. Kissan has been spreading togetherness. I remember as kids, we bonded with other kids over jams and ketchup and red/sticky mouths. The new initiative to bring people together in person when they are connecting to each other over phones is beautiful. The below video is the kind that makes my heart melt into a gooey, sweet mass much like their delicious jams! :)