Crowley & Co. News
The Braided Retreat
We provide customized staff retreats that offer a highly effective and unique combination of teambuilding, strategy and visual tools to address specific client needs.
Time and time again, managers planning a retreat are forced to make a difficult choice between two things:
- Devoting their offsite time entirely to strategy; or,
- Providing fun, experiential activities for their teams as a means for renewal, insight, and reward.
At best, one day may be devoted to teambuilding and then the next to strategy but rarely are the two linked in a meaningful way.
Managers no longer have to choose between the two! Crowley & Co., in partnership with Gooseworks Consulting, is now offering Braided Retreats to clients; a weaving together of strategy with teambuilding activities along with visual tools to support the group process.
Our customized retreats engage participants in a variety of activities that alternate between "The Work" and "How We Work".
"The Work" gets at establishing a compelling vision for the organization and at a strategy for achieving it.
"How We Work" places a focus on team dynamics, patterns of communication and personal patterns of high performance that will support the larger, long-term goals of the organization.
Photos from the Maga Design Staff Retreat - July 2007
About Gooseworks Consulting and Philip P. Kiracofe
Philip P. Kiracofe is Founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Gooseworks Consulting, LLC, a consulting firm based in Baltimore, Maryland that designs and facilitates experiential workshops for corporate and university clients.
In seven years in the industry, Phil has positioned himself as one of the leading teambuilding specialists in the Baltimore/Washington, DC area. He has worked with a wide range of corporations including AOL, Sprint/Nextel, Morgan Stanley, Redpeg Marketing, and the Nature Conservancy. His university resume includes Towson University, Salisbury State University, Loyola College, Maryland Institute College of Art, Villa Julie, and Wesley College.
Phil has worked with over 200 companies, schools, and organizations to strengthen teams, improve effectiveness, and develop a more productive work environment. Before starting GOOSEWORKS, Phil held a directorship position at an experiential education facility, designed and facilitated experiential counseling sessions for a juvenile detention center, and led adventure programming in the US and abroad. His variety of work experience has allowed him the opportunity to work hand in hand with some of the leading minds in the field.
Phil currently serves as a Program Coordinator for the Chesapeake Sustainable Business Alliance cultivating relationships and facilitating educational initiatives with locally owned businesses. In his free time, he instructs a Job Readiness course for the Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship Program in West Baltimore and serves on the Safety Advisory Committee for the Arc of Howard County. Phil graduated from The College of William and Mary with a self-designed interdisciplinary degree in alternative education, is a certified Wilderness First Responder and a member of the Association for Experiential Education.
Contact us if you'd like more information about how this retreat can meet your needs.
Services
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Want to Meet Us?
We love what we do and we enjoy speaking with others about it!
We are happy to speak with you about our services, point you in the right direction toward building your own graphic facilitation and recording skills, or to help you reach other people within our network.
Please contact us with your questions and comments.
"Deirdre was terrific and helped deliver a very successful retreat for the Columbia University Student Services team.
She was a pleasure to work with and was able to familiarize herself with our world quite quickly. It was also a good opportunity to introduce some people to graphic facilitation and I suspect that some folks will reach out to Deirdre in the future, having experienced first-hand its benefits. It really made the retreat the success I hoped it would be."
Joe Harney
Columbia University
