Erika Jones, CFO, CCTAProfit First Professionals · Certified Fractional CFO and Profit First Professional

Company Retreats: Work-Play Balance Secrets

19 Jun 2026 · 1 min

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In this informal conversation, two speakers reflect on a recent company retreat, emphasizing how retreats help hybrid and remote teams reconnect. They discuss the intentional balance of work and play, highlighting a series of humorous, competitive games they dubbed the "Dumb Olympics," such as an Oreo-on-the-forehead challenge and a whipped‑cream‑bubble‑gum race. A recurring anecdote centers on a former colleague, Lisa, portrayed as extremely competitive, whose fierce participation both entertained and underscored personality dynamics within team‑building activities. The dialogue showcases the retreat’s role in fostering camaraderie, revealing how playful competition can surface individual traits while strengthening group cohesion.

Chapters

The good thing about our retreats is though, like, as you said, the retreat gives companies who are doing a hybrid or a remote location thing an opportunity to get themselves back together again. But it also, within the retreat themselves, there's this balance of work and play, which, okay, so there's our play with the Blaze and the game with Liz and her not getting the answer right. I laughed so hard that night. I found out what kind of person Lisa was. Our old colleague Lisa was at that one and she's the most competitive thing in the world. And she was teamed up with me, the least competitive thing in the world. I had tears pouring down my face. Was this the— was this the dump? Was screaming in my face like a Marine drill sergeant. That's Lisa.
And so supportive too. We did the, I called it the Dumb Olympics. Yes. You came up with these things. And so one was put an Oreo cookie on your forehead and get into your mouth. Yeah, yeah. And Lisa, like, I am owning this.
Yeah. And she did it. She won everything. I think she took it all.
There was another one like with whipped cream.
Yeah, getting the piece of bubble gum in the bottom of a pile of whipped cream and chewing it and getting a bubble blown first.
That's right, right, right, right. That was the race. I remember like an hour or two later, I'm like, I was like, what's that smell? It's like bad sour milk. My stink beard. And I thought I washed it out because, you know, everyone wash your face. I didn't use soap. Oh my God, it was rotten. Rotten. So much fun. It is.