A Day in Spoten Starts With You
The morning begins and it is time for the Spoten team to join in the first online meeting of the workday. While everyone gathers around to listen to the business’s objectives and the goals to be met by the end of the day, the most important part of the meeting is far different from checking a business task list. Instead, that first meeting targets just one thing: ourselves.
As crazy as it may sound, we decide to spend the first minutes of our morning talking and sharing stories between ourselves. Being a well-rounded team, with members from different backgrounds and cultures has allowed us to be diverse and unique in every way. This is precisely why every morning Spoten develops an activity called “you-day”. Every team member has a scheduled “you-day” in which we can share whatever we can imagine or anything we have on our mind. Whether it’s a song, video, story, anecdote, drawing, or even nothing, I have come to learn that the “you-day” has been a catalyst not only for getting to know my teammates better, but also to cherish that diversity and uniqueness that represents us and to take advantage of the amazing opportunity that we have of working together. Above all, the “you-day” makes us reflect and constantly ask ourselves; what are we trying to build here? Where do we want to go? Why are we doing this?
So far, with my team, I have seen drawings of the ancient Brazilian myths, I have watched Ted talks about resilience and hard work, I have learned about our members outstanding talents and I have heard one of our members sing and play the guitar just as he used to do back in his old band days, and with every meeting, I learn even more about this amazing team. Which finally brings me to the realization that not only as a team we go beyond the regular business meeting, but we have created something beautiful within our culture: cohesiveness.
Even though we are far apart and spread all over different countries in America working from the screens of our computers, we have achieved an amazing chemistry and an incredible sense of companionship along with accountability. Finally, what then is more important than building teamwork and connectedness in the current times our world faces, when despite all of the technology and science, we still face a pandemic crisis that forces us to work from home and contemplate the idea of a face-to-face encounter as something intangible.