There’s A Story To Be Told:
An Open Letter To My Team
Almost exactly one year ago on a Saturday in May, you received a mysterious surprise package delivered to your home. The sender was our heraldic animal, the White Rabbit. On an enclosed card – a TinyURL and a cryptic quote from Horace Walpole, a British writer, inviting you to a journey with an unknown destination.
Equipped within the contents of the package, an Oculus Quest VR headset. We set out a day later.
A few weeks earlier, like most people, Corona had separated us from our ordinary worlds and forced us into the isolation of our home offices. And then, all of a sudden, we found ourselves face to face around a blazing campfire somewhere in virtual reality.
I don’t know how you remember that evening. As for me, I was quite overwhelmed by how real our reunion felt and how close I seemed to be to you in that simulated environment. I still remember Marcus suddenly turning into a hot dog right before our eyes and how we laughed tears over it.
Looking back, I felt that this evening was an emotional, almost magical and certainly defining moment for us. It marked only the beginning of our journey. A journey where we reinvented ourselves as a team and found our roots: what makes us different and what our clients appreciate about us.
After more than a year, this virtual reality has become sort of a new home for us. At a time when there was no real place to come together, this new world not only pointed the way ahead, it has also been an anchorage for culture-building team experiences beyond video conferencing.
Not everything went smoothly on our path, but if there is one thing we do know, it is that there is no good story without drama. The fact that we were able to face the challenges is not only thanks to our loyal allies of many years, but also to the many new companions we have gotten to know and appreciate in the last weeks and months.
Maybe it’s just one of those coincidences, but it’s quite telling that almost one year to the day after our first legendary meeting around the virtual campfire, we ran our first major client event in VR. Presumably, Horace Walpole had it right, sometimes the biggest and most meaningful discoveries are made by accident off the beaten path.
I am aware of how great the effort was that each and every one of you put in to get to this point. For that, I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart. It has been a great pleasure to travel with you Stephie, Marcus, Caro, Jasmin, Thomas, Jan and Aram. I look forward to the next chapter.
Somewhere out there, there is already a new story waiting to be discovered.
Let’s tell it.
Yours,
Thomas