In 2012, Education Opens Doors launched when Jayda Batchelder, our founding ED, quit her job and started planning from her living room how she would scale the Roadmap to Success program to more students in Dallas.

Seven years later, we have 12 team members and a brick and mortar office– but we’re still striving to innovate. We’re committed to staying creative and innovative so that we can perform our mission to its fullest potential!

Here’s a couple of our innovative team practices that help us be our most creative selves:

Shout outs

In our weekly team meetings, we build in time to recognize the work of our colleagues. Everyone on Team EOD works incredibly hard, and in a fast-paced organization shout outs help us remember to recognize each other. We read shout outs in the team meeting and select a random winner, who receives a prize from our infamous treasure chest.

Teambuilding

While we see each other every day in the office, we believe it’s important to continue to build our relationships outside of traditional work, which is why we host quarterly teambuildings. Team members pair up and take turns planning teambuilding events which has been a great way to host a variety of activities! Past teambuildings have included an escape room, a calligraphy/ lettering workshop, a yoga class and most recently a trip to the zoo.

Exploration Days

A new practice in 2018, Exploration Days are exactly what they sound like – they allow staff to spend 8 hours exploring something outside of their day-to-day responsibilities. Team members have used this time to dive into professional development, read books or articles, or start projects. An Exploration Day can be unrelated to your daily job, so long as it relates to the organization. For example, a leadership team member used one of their exploration days to read articles on management best practices. Exploration Days occur every few months, and staff come back together a few times a year to share learnings.

What practices does your team use to stay innovative? We’d love to hear from you! Tag @opening_thedoor on Twitter to join the conversation!