If you’re reading this on Friday, there’s a good chance someone around here is wearing the colors of their favorite college football team.
Every year on the Friday before Labor Day, we do something a little different at MillerClapperton.
We work through the morning, but around lunchtime, The Varsity food truck pulls up, the college football gear comes out, and we kick off our annual cornhole tournament.
It started simply because we thought it would be something fun and different to do heading into Labor Day weekend.
But over the years, I’ve come to appreciate another part of it.
The nature of our business means our people spend their days in a lot of different places. Some are in the office, some are in the shop, some are on jobsites, and others may be working hundreds or even thousands of miles away. We interact with each other every day, but most of those interactions happen because the work requires it.
Someone needs an answer. Someone has a question. A drawing needs to be clarified. Something needs to be fabricated. A schedule change. A problem needs to be solved.
That’s how we get things done. But it’s different from simply spending time together.
That’s part of what I’ve come to appreciate about this event. For an afternoon, it gives people who may know each other mostly through the work, a chance to interact differently.
Even the tournament itself has evolved over the years. At one point, partners were drawn out of a hat as a way to mix everyone together. Eventually, we landed on something that has been much more fun.
The office has its own bracket. The shop has its own bracket. As the afternoon progresses, each side produces a champion, and those two teams meet for the MillerClapperton cornhole grand championship.
It turns out that a little competition and pride can bring people together, too.
College football fans certainly understand that.
There’s nothing wrong with being proud of your team. The shop takes pride in what it produces. Our office teams take pride in the work they do. The same is true for our people in the field and across the company. There’s something healthy about caring about the group you’re part of and wanting that group to be great.
It’s also important to know the people beyond your own group.
Because when we come back on Tuesday after Labor Day, the questions, schedules, drawings, problems, and deadlines will still be there.
Maybe the person on the other end of one of those interactions will be someone you know a little better. Someone you ate lunch with. Someone you competed against. Or maybe just someone you gave a hard time about their college football team.
I don’t know how you measure the value of that.
I’m not sure you can.
But I do believe there’s value in occasionally stepping away from the work and spending time with the people you do the work with.
Sometimes the relationships that make the work better are built when we aren’t working.
Enjoy the Labor Day weekend.