Whistle, huddle, and plot the course

Jake Nickell
Make Great Together
3 min readJan 21, 2016

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Photo by Craig Shimala

Every week, the heads of each department at Threadless meet for an early breakfast. Afterwards, we share an email outlining everything we talked about with all of the directors in the company who then share bits of it to the rest of the team. It’s super simple, and it’s the best thing we’ve done in our history to keep us all tight and moving in the same direction as a company.

Oak Island, home to many bears

“Whistle” became the name of our breakfast group. The inspiration for this came from a retreat a group of us took 2 years ago to the Apostle Islands in Northern Wisconsin. With our guide, we kayaked miles across rough Lake Superior waters to the unoccupied Oak Island. We spent two nights exploring the island, chopping wood, talking around the fire, watching beautiful sunsets, and goofing around.

The most challenging part of the trip was getting to and from the island. When crossing the channel over to the island, the waters could get really rough and had a strong current. Our guide would tell us to paddle strong in a certain direction. Every once in a while he would blow his whistle.

When the waters got too rough or we got too far apart from each other, or enough time passed, our guide would blow his whistle. Then we would all stop and gather together to form a raft by holding onto each other’s kayaks. We’d talk about where we’re at, how we’re doing, and where we‘re going.

Rough waters — glassy waters

Those moments where we regrouped together became really profound. In looking back on the trip, we found it to be a great practice to adopt. We all went off on our own and got as far as we could within our departments. But when we got too far apart, or we’ve been working in our own bubble for too long, or things were getting tough, it was very helpful to gather back together, talk about it, and then set off again with a renewed, shared focus.

Photo by Mike Halgas

Spend time together with your teams.

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I've been making websites since 1995. In November of 2000 my life spiraled into crazy-rad-town when I made Threadless.com.