What's a Wind Down? Inside Hologram's weekly team sync

What centers you? What helps you gather your thoughts, revisit your goals, and reconnect with what's most important to you? For athletes it might be a long run or an early session at the gym. Busy parents might say this looks like an evening out, without the kids. Small practices that remind you of the purpose, the end goal.

For Hologram, this practice is our weekly Wind Down. It's the one regular meeting where the full team gathers. It's a moment for all of us to learn what every area has been doing that week, hear directly and transparently from our CEO how the business is doing, and have the opportunity to hang out a bit and get to see teammates new and old.

Ready, Set, Wind Down!

Wind Down begins when we pile into a Zoom, usually with some upbeat music playing from Poolside.fm or a collaborative Spotify playlist we created earlier in the day.

While we jam, everyone shares their "Win" for the week in Slack. This starts the meeting on a positive note and gives us a few minutes to celebrate the big and the small accomplishments we've made over the past few days. Sometimes these are personal wins, like "We got a new puppy!" or business wins, like "We closed a huge deal!" All are celebrated!

If we have new Hologrammers who've started that week, next it's time to meet them. Each new teammate prepares a simple slide with some photos and fun facts we should know about them.

Then, our CEO Ben leads the team through business updates (a brief overview of metrics and growth). After that, each department head has a few minutes to give important notes from their world — issues from the week, big deals closed, relevant updates, new feature demos. Each department only has a few minutes, so updates are quick and strategic.

We round it out with some Q&A conducted through Slido. Questions can be serious or silly, and we usually have a mix of both.

How Wind Downs Have Evolved

The flow of Wind Down has stretched and grown with our team. Over the last ear we've streamlined our content — pruning anything that can be easily shared via Slack or email, so that only the top priority nuggets of info make it to the meeting.

Wind Down is not mandatory, but it's encouraged (and usually pretty fun!) If you want to be in the know and get caught up with the rest of the team, you make an effort to be at Wind Down. We also take notes that are shared immediately after the meeting for those who can't make it.

After every busy startup week, we prioritize the practice of Wind Down to connect as a team and re-connect to our purpose. While many businesses have company-wide updates, we at Hologram strive to make ours fun, transparent, and collaborative. By starting with wins and mood music, encouraging interaction throughout the meeting, and finishing with questions from the team, we create an environment in which Hologrammers feel ownership, because Hologram is our company.

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