About v-Fluence

Our DC-Office Retreat

This week, our DC office held a retreat of sorts, and headed to a house on the Severn River (pictures in the last blog posting). Not only was it good to get out of the city for a couple of days, but it was a great opportunity to get some face time with one of the recently hired members in our DC office.

One of the great challenges of working for a virtual company is dealing with the lack of face-time. This can be particularly difficult for younger staff, because it places a much larger onus on independent learning, which is not always an easy function.

Yesterday evening, after we had finished working for the day, one of the associates and I headed out for a kayak trip on the Severn. During the kayak trip, we became engaged in a work-related discussion and I realized just how valuable face-time can be, even for established employees.

In the brief exchange that ensued, I found myself not only questioning my own understanding of a particular concept; but also found myself faced with vocalizing and explaining my view of it. After the exchange, I found myself with a much greater appreciation for the importance of this concept and I largely attributed this phenomenon to the face-time that had transpired.

This situation caused me to reflect on numerous incidents in the past, in which one of my co-workers or I had submitted an idea to the company via e-mail in the hopes of sparking an open-ended discussion, only to be met with silence. The conclusion I've drawn, is that electronic media is not the forum for a dynamic exchange of ideas.