Headway Team Week July 2018

Setting Our Foundation Through EOS

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If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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As a part of our culture here at Headway, three times per year we take a week away from client work. Team week gives us an opportunity to pause, come together as an organization, and align on where we have been and where we are going. The benefits of these weeks reflect not only upon our crew but also on the work we do for our clients.

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At our team week this past quarter we had a few goals as an organization: increase our collective knowledge within design, development, and strategy, and begin laying the foundation of EOS.

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EOS to give our ship guidance

The Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) was created by Gino Wickman as a framework to help businesses run more efficiently through specific tools, practices, and procedures. Our people make Headway what it is and EOS gives us the opportunity to make sure everyone has a voice and is contributing effectively. As Headway continues to grow, our processes need to grow along with it or we’ll inevitably reach a ceiling.

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Throughout the implementation of EOS, we took a step back to cement our vision and share it with the team to get feedback. The response has been extremely positive, and we’ll be publicly sharing Headway’s new mission, vision, and values in the coming months. We can’t wait to see the impact it has on us and our clients as we keep growing.

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Exploring a product idea with a design sprint

During the week the design team also took time to explore a product idea that we have already been testing internally. Task management across multiple tools can be overwhelming and to-dos can be forgotten or lost. To practice what we preach to our clients, we approached this product idea with the same approach we use on every project in the idea phase.

Through a 4-day design sprint, the design team explored a refined design of an aggregated task management tool to see if other agencies or freelancers would find the product helpful and would consider paying for it. We also researched competition within the current market, possible business models, and what kind of marketing strategies could prove to be helpful to get the product off the ground. Stay tuned for more on this!

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Refining internal development tools

At Headway, we already have some incredible tools and processes in place for jump-starting projects and setting ourselves up for success. These tools reduce production time, increase our quality of work, and allow us to focus on problem-solving and consulting as we build products. We took the time to make some improvements to our current tools and even explored new options for product testing. Creating tools that can scale with our team will be a vital part of Headway’s growth.

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There’s always time for VR

Between all of the discussion and focus for the week, we found time to share meals together, catch some standup comedy, and even head to Edge VR Arcade. We already have our next team retreat lined up in October where we’ll be spending more time together to pause and reflect, build camaraderie, and celebrate this year’s success.

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