Office Talk

The Growing Years - Year 2

On Friday, August 25th, JR Direct closed its doors for the day for our Annual Strategic Plan Presentation Day and headed to a meeting room at a local hotel. The day kicked off with a continental breakfast followed by a presentation by Jim Ripplinger, Owner and Founder, and Tammy Thackray, General Manager.

Throughout the rest of the morning, each department entertained and informed the rest of us what had been accomplished in the previous year and what to expect in the year forthcoming. Here are some highlights of the morning’s presentation:

• DPS wobbled up to the podium dressed in hospital gowns and covered in bandages. They explained that they received their “injuries” from all the hard work they put in to accomplish all their goals.
• List Sales imitated a Management Team meeting with some key characters being Sammy (aka Tammy) and Gimmy with a G (aka Kris with a K).
• Consulting entertained us by hosting a mock Jeopardy! Show. Three of the newest consulting employees competed against each other to give the correct questions to the answers offered by the host Alex “Dominic Lee” Trebek.

Following the Strategic Plan Presentation, we were treated to a fabulous barbeque lunch of burgers and smokies on the patio at the hotel’s restaurant.

Afterwards, we all headed down to the beach for an afternoon of team building fun. Once again, we invited personal trainers PJ Wren and Erika Field of Muscle Memory to lead us through a Scavenger Hunt. We followed clues leading us through the park to find trivia questions that tested our memory of the strategic plan presentation earlier that morning. Throughout the hunt, there were a couple of pit stops for team building activities.

The first activity had teams of 6 working together to carry a pole a short distance to the finish line. Sound easy? Well, we were only allowed to use one finger and the pole could only be balanced on top of that finger. The difficult part was the pole was so lightweight that the slightest movement would throw the pole off balance. It was frustrating at first but in the end we came to work together and finish the task.

The second activity had us split into two groups of 15. This task was to create a star using a rope. Each group had a long rope that we could hold onto with one hand and couldn’t let go or change positions with another person. Surprisingly, this task was completed fairly easily by both teams.

In the end, the winners of the Scavenger Hunt (only because they bribed PJ and Erika with candy) were Jim Ripplinger, Christian Maudet, Ravi Maan, Maarten Koorn, and Linda Kohaly.

Visit the Photo Album for more pictures of the Strat Plan Presentation and Scavenger Hunt.