Growth and Autonomy for the Remote Working Team in 2025
How a company retreat can become a strategic lever for team building and organizational development.
Table of contents
- Building Strong Remote Relationships: The Power of Team Retreats
- Team Building Through Theatrical Improvisation with Alfredo Morresi
- From Code to Vision: Co-Creating Strategy for 2025
- Pain & Gain with Letizia Sechi: Improving Content Design
- Agile Planning: How We’re Evolving Our Dev Workflows
- Culture & Connection: Special Toasting at Cantine Antinori
🇮🇹 Prefer reading in Italian? Here the Italian version.
Building Strong Remote Relationships: The Power of Team Retreats
What truly strengthens a remote-first team? Not just tools or shared projects, but authentic human connection. Time spent together, spontaneous chats, real laughter. That’s when something deeper begins to form, beyond work.
That’s the idea behind our retreats: regular in-person meetups designed to foster trust, collaboration, and strategic visioning, outside our daily tasks.
This belief is what sparked our three-days retreat in October 2024 in Florence, to share experiences, reflect, and co-design the future. It was a light blend of diverse experiences, from theatrical improvisation with Alfredo Morresi from Google to a wine tasting at a world-class venue, mixed with practical sessions on goals, direction, and how we want to collaborate better.
A memorable experience designed to nurture team growth and autonomy, starting with people, even before the projects.
Team Building Through Theatrical Improvisation with Alfredo Morresi
We kicked off with something unexpected: a full day of theatrical improvisation led by Alfredo Morresi, Developer Relations and People Manager at Google. A session crafted to push us beyond our comfort zones and rediscover the joy of learning through play.
Through exercises, games, and improvised scenes, we explored trust, adaptability, and listening, critical skills in agile teams and developer culture.
More than a team-building activity, it was a transformative experience, where we discovered new ways of connecting and collaborating with ease.
Our off-script journey ended with a light-hearted team challenge with spritz and lots of laughs. Doing absurd things outside our routines helped us see each other in a new light and brought us closer.
Spoiler: An exclusive interview with Alfredo is coming soon on the blog!
From Code to Vision: Co-Creating Strategy 2025
Some retreat moments leave a mark because they bring clarity to what’s already been brewing.
Emanuela Dal Mas’ talk, who bridges strategy, listening, and operational lead at Nephila, was one of those. A call to retrace our path: starting from daily work, highlighting shared needs and goals, and looking ahead together, with a collective vision for the future.
Rather than simply presenting a plan, she led us through a collective moment of awareness: strategy isn't just for managers, it involves every person in the organisation, from those writing code to those focused on daily operations, when we create space for shared understanding.
In a truly listening organization, every contribution can shape a shared vision. Individual awareness becomes the foundation for team growth and autonomy.
So, what are we bringing into 2025? Our three priorities:
- Continuous learning and open innovation
- Knowledge management and content operations
- Agile process optimization
Continuous Learning & Open Innovation
At Nephila, growth is part of daily work. In 2025, we’ll continue supporting people and teams with personalized learning journeys, strengthening individual and team learning culture by promoting feedback and active participation in communities.
Everyone is invited to attend conferences or even take the stage as a speaker.
With this in our culture, every new tech stack or methodology goes through testing, review, and real project validation. That’s how we define open innovation: shared competencies, with solid methods, and in a transparent way.
For us, innovation means evolving consciously, accordingly with open source values.
Scalable Knowledge: Sharing and Evolving Content Ops
Designing, optimizing, and documenting our processes is key to promoting transparency, efficiency, and informed collaboration.
In 2024, we began with pilot teams, focusing on restructuring processes and improving internal-external communication flows. Now, with enriched expertise and new contributors joining the company, we’re building a shared, cross-functional knowledge base, open and accessible to all teams. A digital space to navigate tools, processes, and content, supporting autonomy and collaboration across areas.
A foundational step to support both individual growth and the evolution of our workflows.
Pain & Gain with Letizia Sechi: Improving Content Design
Collecting information is only the beginning. To make it useful, you need clarity, accessibility, and sharing. Our knowledge base project started in the Marketing and Communication team and gradually expanded to include technical documentation, becoming a company-wide initiative.
The 2024 retreat offered the perfect space for alignment and exchange, guided by Letizia Sechi, a seasoned content designer and facilitator.
Letizia brought a human and strategic perspective, fostering dialogue and helping us build shared awareness by integrating different viewpoints with clarity.
Using the Pain/Gain matrix, we analyzed challenges and strengths, enhancing our understanding of how to manage shared knowledge and optimize operational flows.
Agile Planning: How We’re Evolving Our Dev Workflows
Right before the retreat, Iacopo Spalletti, CTO and dev workflow facilitator at Nephila, led a retrospective on the effectiveness of weekly sprints, about planning meetings, and team alignments.
At the retreat, that feedback became concrete action to make work (for developers and beyond) more fluid, sustainable, and aligned with our quality standards.
So each person can work with clarity and awareness, we:
- Reviewed project planning to improve task clarity and distribution
- Reorganized overall planning to enhance cross-team visibility
- Refined requirement formalization to better align technical and non-technical areas
Being agile isn’t about speed. It’s about staying open to change.
Our approach remains one of continuous improvement: small steps, iterative changes.
Culture & Connection: Special Toasting at Cantine Antinori
To wrap things up, we were surprised with a moment of relaxation in the Chianti Classico hills, guests of Cantine Antinori, where tradition and innovation have coexisted for 26 generations.
Amid wine, art, and architecture, we celebrated milestones and deepened our sense of belonging to a thriving team.
Inside this architectural gem, seamlessly integrated into the landscape, we explored winemaking techniques, admired artworks, and tasted estate wines over lunch at Rinuccio 1180.
A stunning view capped a memorable experience, meant not only to recognize our efforts but to embrace our approach to shared well-being, gratitude, and joy at work.
And yes, the breathalyzer challenge before getting back on the road was our playful finale and don’t worry, the driver was sober!
We also enjoyed some bonus fun with video game tournaments back at the office, Mario Kart, Wii Sports, and of course... Just Dance. No need to add more. Pictures speak louder than words.
