Retreat!

“There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry.”- George Armstrong Custer

“… never retreat, never retract... never admit a mistake.” -Napoleon Bonaparte

It can be easier to criticise than to try to understand something, which at the outset manages to be both familiar and yet disconcertingly unlike previous experience. As I approach the 6 month mark of my volunteer assignment- I find I’ve unconsciously developed some judgements and assumptions that are flawed. …by contrast to the conscious effort I made to keep an “open mind” in a strange environment. (Excuse me for a sec- I’m going to delve very briefly into my work here…)

The Annual Staff Retreat is a relatively common business practice here for those organisations which can afford it. In the case of my employer/partner organisation, it entails some 23 staff; everyone from the receptionist and driver to the CEO; spending 2 nights and 2 days, all expenses paid, at a high end resort….contemplating the next annual business plan, and “team building”.

Forgive me if that sounds like a junket…

It also sounds very similar to what any large Aussie or Kiwi corporate might do once a year….inadvertently connecting an annual planning event to a conference, dinner and more often than not, an excuse to get pickled, before going on to tell the people you work with “what you really think”, then passing out in a resort garden while your immaculately made up bed lies untouched, and your roommate for the weekend throws up in the shower…all before waking up with a monster hangover to contemplate the financial goals of your employer for the next 12 months, having blown a significant amount of the previous years profit on the bar tab (all of which has mysteriously been charged to the head of the IT departments room number, even though he doesn’t drink).

But that isn’t what happened his weekend.
Instead- we spent 2 days working and 2 nights laughing.

Ok- so the day 1 agenda was meant to start at 10, and actually started sometime around 12…that sort of time lapse isn’t inefficiency, it’s just Samoa. After brief introductions and a break for lunch- sometime in the early afternoon the show got on the road. Without getting into detail- a framework for a plausible annual business plan was developed in under 4 hours, genuinely incorporating the thoughts of 23 people. It was effectively captured, communicated, agreed and recorded… professionally without fuss, or stress. It was, in a word- efficient.

For a quasi-governmental agency (buy yourself a development dictionary), which by its nature is meant to assist in the establishment, development and support of pisinisi (business)- it was pretty bloody business like….and a massive relief.

After 5 sometime on day 1, as I was beginning to think pretty hard about the resort pool and the bar.. instead we got a 1 hour workout session on the lawn with three of the fitter management members leading a sweaty, fun, loud, inclusive training session. It’s followed by another hour of staff frolicking in the pool, all without alcohol, unimpaired and uninhibited. It’s after 7 before I shower and head for dinner and a beer- feeling satisfied, healthy and enjoying a work day which I dreaded here, and would have actively avoided if I could at home…

Sheraton Aggie Greys is a brochure reflection of every island resort in the Pacific. At $12 tala a beer, and a dinner menu that starts somewhere around $50- it’s exorbitant in local terms, but divide that by 2 for a tourist’s exchange rate and it’s not too bad. Our staff dinner and drink costs are covered, but are kept to a strict budget at the low end of the menu- and the bar tab is closed at 10, after I squeeze away 3 cold ones. 

I’m happy and tired, hoping for an early evening, but my bedtime plans are scuttled by an impromptu speech contest which takes place after dinner. While the speech contest is planned and compulsory, the rest of the floor show is not. Court jester, fa’afafine, head trainer (no pun intended) and all round odd fellow, Santy hits the dance-floor like a big pink and brown energiser bunny…calling up his colleagues one by one to siva to the island tunes of a surprised but accommodating restaurant musical trio. One moment Santy is singing and dancing- and the next comparing the speech contest…from television compare, to drunken self-heckler…it’s like watching a broken television set flicking stations…moments of a foreign film, current affairs, a glimmer of “Next Top Model”, interrupted by “So you think you can Dance”...all delivered with a nail-on-blackboard pitch of girlish giggles…to a receptive and highly participatory audience of workmates.

Day 1 finishes close to midnight, and Day 2 starts with an early morning- but after a ta’ele (swim) and buffet brekky, I feel up to the task. There’s a sold day of work before winding up in the evening after 6, for another team physical session- this time water-polo. 

By now, there’s a 5 year plan and budget based on pretty detailed divisional tasks and strategies, and an updated set of company policies and procedures on the directors table. The longest discussion all day was related to meal allowances when away from home and staying with aiga…topics inordinately close to the Samoan heart (just like a surgical stent).

Dinner is somehow a typical street-type bbq of moa, pusi, taro & salads, delivered to the function room. Drinks have been delivered in crates from outside the resort at a ¼ of the cost of buying them at the bar. Karaoke and a talent quest follow, and it’s somewhere around the time that we claim our prizes (shortly after peeling off my shirt, yelling “chahoo” and diving chest first at the floor to become a footstool for the big finale of Santy’s Gangnam Style siva) that I realise I’ve had more than I intended to drink, but I’m enjoying myself greatly.

Throughout the days and nights- I speak to more people for longer than I can or would at work. I learn a lot, laugh a lot, sleep very little and find some more work which I’ll be able to help with over the coming months. It develops both my sense of inclusion, and of purpose.

I’ve probably taken too long to say it- but here’s the point. Was it a typical corporate retreat?...all thunder and no lightning…well, no- instead, it was simple, professional and effective. 

Was I expecting it to be a useful, enlightening experience? Well, no. 

Could it be done differently? Maybe…but I can’t criticise either the budget or the facilitation. It was organised in 2 days, and executed in the same amount of time. Some of the our employees are on salaries which equate to roughly a 10th of what I can earn at home, and other than this weekend won’t get to go to a resort for leisure- ever. Without attending, I would have been quick to judge this a waste of time and money…just because, I thought I had enough experience of similar events to know they don’t normally produce results which aren’t predetermined. 

So, any mild lingering guilt over a resort weekend is taken in the context of- “this is the job, and the organisation for which I work- and this is their method of achieving their planning requirements, bonding their team, and rewarding their people”…and it works. 

Perhaps there is no sin in the occasional privilege- except to squander it.