Lighthouse Communications of San Gwann recently held an intensive working weekend at the Excelsior Grand Hotel. The entire team, numbering over 30, spent a whole day together in a comfortable and secluded environment, focusing on the company’s achievements and aspirations, reviewing performance and business objectives for this year and the next, and exploring ideas and suggestions to improve work processes, efficiency and quality at all levels of the organisation.

Roderick Muscat Monsigneur, Lighthouse MD, took the introductory session, which started straight after an early breakfast on Saturday. The team was presented with the vision for 2008/9, and a motivational AV presentation.

Alfred Debattista then took over to lead the workshop segment. The group received briefs and was split into teams. Each team worked separately analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of company resources, work methods, communication and efficiency, and was tasked to produce innovative proposals on how the agency could best exploit opportunities and prepare for threats it could encounter. Market trends, client profiling, creativity and quality management were also tackled. The three teams then presented their analysis and proposals before breaking for lunch by the pool.

The afternoon segment was an open floor session where various ideas and proposals were discussed and filtered in order to extract issues of higher importance and prioritise them.

The Lighthouse team reconvened later in the evening accompanied by their families and partners for a poolside barbeque.

The management team, HODs and senior members of staff, spent the night at the Excelsior together with their families, hosted by the company.

Next morning, it was back to work after a lavish buffet breakfast. The management group worked on the previous day’s results, taking them to a higher level. Project leaders were assigned pilot studies to devise solutions to address the most important aspects that emerged from the previous day’s collective brainstorming. The weekend came to a close with lunch in a private dining room.