There are many ways to build community at a company but one of the best is definitely giving back to the community together. This is the second year we have volunteered at Second Harvest and, as last year, it was great fun. Bagging apples, boxing food and generally enjoying each others company doing something useful.
In keeping with the FirstRain culture of us competing as teams in athletic races – November 1st the FirstRain Gurgaon team took part in the Airtel Delhi Great Run & Half Marathon, along with 30,000 other runners.
The turnout of our team was fabulous, with 28 Rainmakers participating running, including David Cooke from our California office (the pale face in the blue hat below). Everyone met in a huge holding area prior to the run and the atmosphere was festive and exciting.
The run was organized to allow serious runners, teams and revelers alike the same opportunity to make the most of the day. Abhinandan and Ansuman wanted to see how fast they could run the course and so they worked their way to the front of the waiting starters.
Many of the runners were part of corporate teams or clubs, running with banners for their companies or for a common cause they were supporting. There was a sea of banners all around.
Once on the course the Rainmakers ran as a team.
Our banner was for FirstRain but also celebrated Delhi hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2010 which is a very exciting opportunity for the city.
As the team got to the start line to show our banners off to the various watching celebrities, Shah Rukh Khan (a HUGE movie star in India) appeared, and the mass of runners turned into a frenzy of excitement. The procession of runners stopped for several minutes.
As we ran local bands also provided fun entertainment and encouragement, as did the famous Kingfisher girls.
Great fun was had by all. The competing team felt that it was wonderful to be part of the team at such a lively, vibrant and health oriented event.
It was a first time out for many. Even so at the finish line there was heard talk that several may graduate to the half marathon next year.
Way to go Rainmakers – I am proud of you!
n.b. Cory from our New York office ran the full New York marathon on Sunday and we are all very proud of him too (and were supporting him as he limped around the office with ice on his knee on Monday)
A note from our Gurgaon office:
Diwali, the festival of lights was celebrated in the Gurgaon office in a colorful way. The dress code was ethnic Indian dresses as the “fun group” organized a bay decoration competition and also got a few stalls put up by the employees. The ambiance was fun-filled with good food around as enthusiastic team members came up with amazingly creative decoration ideas.
Our industry modeling team won by a slight margin over the source management team, with both depicting the various facets of celebrating the Diwali festival. The games put up and the stalls were equally exciting.
Overall, it was great to see the technology and research savvy team show off their creative and artistic abilities.
Regular readers of this blog may remember that the FirstRain team likes to take on physical challenges together – like last year’s AquaBike. Well this year (yesterday) ten of us completed the San Jose Rock And Roll Half Marathon and I am very proud of them all for taking it on and every one of them for completing the course.
It was a perfect day for it. The FirstRain team and 15,000 people lined up at 8am in downtown San Jose to try to conquer the distance each in our own way. Hats of to our controller Eugene who ran the race in 1 hour and 42 mins – we were still walking in the first half when we saw him running the last stretch and cheered him on from across the road. Also hats off to Ana, David and Dennis who did their best distances and times – very impressive.
A few of us walked it, some in more pain than others, and YY comically awarded me the “Stubborness” award for doggedly finishing with the slowest time of the team. After the race we retreated to BJs for much needed food, water and alcohol (purely for medicial purposes of course).
Next FirstRain race is a 7km in Delhi on November 1 – the Great Delhi Run. David is planning to be in Delhi that week anyway so he’s challenged a team from our Gurgaon office to run it with him. We’ll see how many sign up for it!
Now we have to decide what race we’ll chose for 2010 in California. Frankly I found the half ironman aquabike last year was easier to finish than the half marathon this year so I’ll be lobbying for something in the water next time.
Me leaning against the post for relief at the 9th mile marker
We just passed through our half year point at FirstRain and I brought the whole US company together here in San Mateo this week. My purpose was two fold – first for training on the new research engine, how to sell it, where to sell it, and what’s coming next – and second team building across the company and some celebration for the success we are already seeing with the new research engine – just a few weeks into it’s beta.
The second purpose was by far the most interesting and fun. I wanted to team build both at a professional level by working problems together and also at a personal level to develop stronger relationships between people who work in different offices and across different time zones. So Sunday was family bonding, Monday was training and planning, Tuesday was everyone team building.
Here’s an overview of the agenda – it really worked well.
Sunday afternoon – Bar-be-que at my house for all employees with families and swim gear. Food, wine, beer, music, swimming, teenage life guard, dogs overeating – everyone had fun.
Monday all day – Sales training
Each rep – present on 1H results, Q3 pipeline, key learnings, top 3 accounts
Marketing – training on market segments and how to work our value in each segment
R&D – next 90 days of product enhancements
Discussion – deep dive on a key capability sales needs and R&D is developing – ensure they are on the same page
Monday afternoon – Ops planning (separate from sales)
Ops team (R&D and analytics) working through near term and long term product and IP plans
Tuesday morning – Everyone together
1H review – financial results, major milestone – releasing the research engine
Problem solving #1 – teams of 2 – each speak uninterrupted to the other for 3 minutes about what is challenging right now
Problem solving #2 – group into teams of 6 – share what each heard – pull out the top 3-4 challenges we face right now
Problem solving #3 – new teams of 6 – chose 2 challenges to solve – bring back the solution
Long term technology and product vision – passionate and interactive discussion about where FirstRain is headed
Tuesday afternoon – Treasure Hunt in San Francisco
Tuesday evening – Dinner at Fior d’Italia – and awards
The whole session was great fun but the best part was the problem solving exercises. Everyone threw themselves passionately in and not only was it important to hear the challenges people are facing but it was also terrific to hear the ideas and solutions the teams came up with for some of our more pervasive challenges.
And the treasure hunt in San Francisco was absolutely fantastic. We broke up into 5 teams – each team was given a set of clues to solve and a map of the area – we did the hunt in North Beach. It was run by Mr Treasure Hunt and it was much, much better than any of us had imagined it would be. The clues were mentally challenging and winning took strategy and the willingness to hoof it fast around the city. Now maybe I enjoyed it so much not only because of the team building but also because my team won and brought all the right answers back 30 mins ahead of the nearest team – but I did have some big brains on my team (not including me)!
Finally dinner at Fior – the oldest Italian restaurant in the US (hard to believe it is in San Francisco and not New York or Boston but it is). We had created awards and plaques for all everyone who had worked so hard to bring the research engine out in June and made it such a hot product for us. Great fun, and much wine, for all.
The California team at FirstRain held a pumpkin carving contest again this year – following up from last year’s very successful competition. The challenge was to create a scary pumpkin. We had a bat and a blood sucking loan agent, but the winner was Sarah Palin – the scariest thing the winning team could think of this year (well this is California…).
This years carvers
The winning pumpkin: Sarah Palin
We’re developing an important new capability within FirstRain this month and there are many opinions and ideas knocking around the brainstorming meetings. As you can see here the ideas come in vibrant colors, and one of our lead researchers has come over from Gurgaon for a couple of weeks to play a key role in the design process.
Getting everyone’s ideas on the wall, organizing them into themes, and prioritizing the groups helps us build a richer product implementation. We believe you just get better products if you have a robust brainstorming methodology as a team.
