The 2024 AMSG Annual Leadership Retreat ran from Monday, October 21st through Wednesday, October 23rd. On Monday night, the team assembled in the bar/lounge at their home base, the Eaton Hotel in Washington, D.C.
Things started off with a BIG surprise … a surprise birthday party for CEO Jim O’Farrell.
For the record, we got him good!
Tuesday morning kicked off with breakfast at the historic Bowen Building in downtown D.C. The space, graciously provided by our partner JP Morgan Chase & Co., would be our meeting facility for the two days of leadership enhancement training.
The workday began with a session featuring Executive Coach Karen Shrum. Her focus was explaining AMSG’s Strategic Plan to the Project Managers and Team Leads in attendance. Shrum adroitly demonstrated how understanding our Strategic Plan and operationalizing that knowledge will facilitate continued growth for AMSG, better teamwork as AMSG employees serve their clients, and ultimately enhancing customer satisfaction.
Through a combination of Shrum’s presentation and then thoughtful discussion of real-world tasks during breakout group sessions, Team AMSG focused on strategic thinking and detailed execution, while practicing collaborative cooperation skills. Shrum was able to masterfully communicate to our team how having a deeper knowledge of AMSG’s Strategic Plan could become a direct benefit to our clients. She also reinforced AMSG’s “6 Cs” – Competence, Courage, Compassion, Character, Communication, and Community.
The team walked away from the morning session with a deeper understanding of AMSG’s Strategic Plan, how to disseminate that critical information downstream to our contracting teams, and why it will benefit our clients.
After a hearty lunch, Blayne Smith, U.S. Army Special Forces, and Major Matt Kress, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.), representing Applied Leadership Partners (ALP) took the stage. They brought their (literal) boots-on-the-ground perspective and experience about “Leading Through Uncertainty” and defining your core values to our team. Their blend of battle-tested cerebral practicality was appreciated by the 90% of our team with prior military service, just as much as it was by the 10% of our civilian AMSG PMs and Team Leads.
ALP’s belief system, forged on the battlefield, yet extremely applicable to the corporate government contracting world, was a revelation. One of the most important lessons that ALP stressed was the importance of “unity of purpose.” This guiding light can keep individuals and teams focused on the mission when unexpected, yet inevitable, hurdles and challenges materialize.
The interesting thing here is that AMSG’s O’Farrell often espouses a very similar principle. In nearly every meeting with the full AMSG team, O’Farrell talks about the importance of being a part of something bigger than our individual selves. That’s one of the reasons why AMSG puts so much time, energy, and money (yes, AMSG’s own money!) into non-contracting/non-income generating activities. These activities range from supporting causes like the Armed Services Arts Partnership, giving AMSGers the opportunity to build schools in Honduras, or a myriad other programs. This corporate side dedication to “doing good,” instills in AMSGers that our company is different and that we can make a difference both in the office and outside of it.
AMSG’s stated mission of “Forging Solutions for the Missions that Matter,” is not just a tagline, it is a representation of a company credo that runs deep and gives us common unity of purpose. We know that our work for our U.S. government clients (and support of worthy causes elsewhere) are important and matter.
Wednesday morning introduced a different type of cerebral analysis. This session was led by Matthew Brown, Commander, U.S. Navy Reserves, and Leah Blain, Ph.D. clinical psychologist, from Chimney Trail Health. Their focus was to challenge the team’s own thoughts by introducing cognitive behavior theory into our process.
As a company, Chimney Trail Health specializes in making people aware of unhealthy thoughts and thought patterns that can lead to poor outcomes, and then provide them with the tools to make positive changes.
Some of the major takeaways were related to discussions about “System 1 thinking” (fast, subconscious, everyday decisions, that are sometimes emotionally charged) and “System 2 thinking” (slower, deliberate, complex decisions that are usually more logic-based). Most of us toggle between the two systems of thought, based upon the situation we are currently facing and other factors. From an evolutionary (and modern day) standpoint, both have their advantages, but some experiences can lead to cognitive distortions where misinterpretations of incoming information or stimuli can trigger inappropriate reactions — and even cause extremely unhealthy and detrimental thought processes.
The tools that Matt and Leah introduced to the team had to do with “catching” an emotional state that had been triggered, “checking” on its validity, and then “changing” the thought pattern or behavior that was manifesting. The team was fascinated by the window into our own individual thought processes and many remarked how participating in the session was like having a lightbulb turned on for them.
After lunch, ALP returned for a second session. The next few
hours were an outside-the-classroom team-building exercise, with a focus on “exercise.” AMSGers were broken into multiple teams and tasked with accomplishing a multi-objective mission which included (but was not limited to) building a small, yet complicated Lego toy with specific restrictions, talking to a Veteran at a war memorial, and photo documenting your team as it reached as many of the listed waypoints within the allotted time as possible.
The teams ended up walking between seven to nine miles to complete their missions!
Wednesday night, the full AMSG team attended the ASAP Armed with the Arts annual gala at the Capital Turnaround. If you haven’t been, you should check it out.
Team AMSG came away from our 2024 Leadership Retreat with a renewed sense of purpose and focus on our core values and exceeding our clients’ expectations, and we’re looking forward to operationalizing what we all learned!
Written by: Douglas Bradshaw