Firefish Virtual Focus Day!

Our Focus Day last Friday was a little different to the norm this time!

As you may know, we have Focus Days every six months where the shoal gets together to set our objectives for the rest of the year.

It’s hard to believe that just ten days before lockdown in March, the Fish were all together in the Aquarium then headed off to hurl axes!
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Virtual Focus Day 2020

Food for Thought

One of the things we particularly love about Focus Day is getting together for a tasty brunch, and we were feeling a little sad that we couldn’t do that this time around.

But the day before, we all received a mysterious red envelope in the post. Inside, we found a Firefish bag that contained a branded face mask and the famous fish sweets…and a couple of rolls and a packet of bacon!  

So we got our rolls after all (although some of the more adventurous amongst us used their bacon to make fancy pasta sauces!).

We all love our Firefish masks, but we’re sure you’ll agree that Marvin is the most stylish of the shoal:

Groups for Greatness

One of the biggest changes we made when we started working from home was the introduction of our Focus Groups.

Each Focus Group consisted of Fish from various teams who wouldn’t usually work together, but who had set objectives to achieve to ensure that we adapted our product and services in line with what our customers need to be successful both in the current climate and long-term.

The success of these groups was astounding:  the shoal pulled together incredibly, so much so that the Focus Groups are here to stay, and we now set our company objectives through these groups instead of our functional teams!

Find the Fish Facts

Focus Day arrived and we all got together online.  We were a little uncertain about how well our day would translate from being office-based to virtual but we’re an open-minded bunch and were determined to throw ourselves into it!  

After a quick overview of what we’d be getting up to we got into our Focus Groups and set off on a scavenger hunt. The answersto the questions could all be found on our website, and it’s clear that we’re all Firefish experts as we ended up with all four teams scoring full marks!

Brainstorming & Updates

Once it had been announced that we’re all winners (not that we ever doubted that!), we went back into our Focus Groups to brainstorm our objectives for the next six months. There were so many amazing ideas, but we set ourselves realistic goals that we know we can deliver.  

Following our (very animated!) brainstorming sessions, we heard an update from each Focus Group on what they have achieved over the last six months, and what their objectives are for the next six months.

This is where the competitive side of the Fish really came out: the presentations were brilliant! Some used hilarious gifs and memes, one had some definite fighting talk (boom boom pow!), and Chris even spent an entire weekend learning how to be a TV editor just so that he could show off his group’s presentation would look amazing.

The Fin-omenally Focused Fish Awards

The final virtual part of our Focus Day was to announce the winners of our Fin-omenally Focused Fish Awards.  Each Fish voted for the person who theybelieved made the most positive impact in their Focus Group.

With so many ofthe Fish doing such wonderful work it was a close call, but in the end there was a clear winner in each group:

Natasha won as without her, we would not have achieved half of the things we did and she delivered an amazing new product that we know our customers are going to love!

Scott Banner showed great enthusiasm each andevery week and proved that he’s the Lord of Data by putting processes and packages in place that will really help our customers.

Scott Sorbie was the captain of his team and was a driving force in the success of the group.  His leadership was key to the group achievingtheir goals and he even took over projects that were outside of his remit toensure that objectives weren’t just met, but exceeded.

A huge well done to our Fin-omenally Focused Fish!

The Fish Always Bounce Back

The most difficult part in planning the day wasworking out how to bring everyone together to do something fun, but to keep socially distanced.

On previous Focus Days we’ve been white water rafting, climbed walls, gone go karting, played crazy golf and run around Glasgow solving mysteries, but none of these were appropriate options. However, the Fish will always manage to find the fun and we definitely had lots of it at Bubble Football!

It has to be said that bouncing around in an inflatable ball is much harder than it looks, and it was hilarious seeing theshoal get stuck on their backs, fronts and, in Wendy’s case, her head…twice!  

Considering we hadn’t seen each other for almost seven months it was lovely to see how quickly we felt like we’d never been apart and had no qualms about running into each other with the sole aim of knocking one another over.

It was truly amazing to see everyone in person and although there was no post-activity pub stop this time, we kept the chatgoing into the evening in our company WhatsApp group where we compared drinks -and injuries! – while looking forward to the positive impact that we’ll allmake over the next six months.