Office of Financial Management and Budgeting (OFMB) Employee Retreat at the Division Of Aeronautics (DOA): Sharing Innovations
Written By: Rebekah Roux, Intern - Office of Process Improvement
January 13, 2023
A main factor in encouraging innovation is sharing ideas with others. Celeste Kopperl and the Office of Financial Management and Budget (OFMB) understood this and made innovation the focal point of their summer employee retreat. Their idea was to have innovation speakers and ice-breaker projects to bring the team together in an innovative mindset! The OFMB had previously worked with the Division of Aeronautics (DOA) and was familiar with some of their more notable innovations like the Colorado Remote Tower Project. This innovation would allow cost-effective and remote monitoring of airports. After Celeste expressed her interest in having members of the DOA team speak at the retreat, we were able to get in touch with David Ulane, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) aeronautics director, where he not only offered to have his team speak at the retreat, but he also offered to host it! Prior to Covid, David and his team hosted other sessions for people and their teams interested in DOA initiatives almost on a weekly basis and would make a barbeque lunch for the visitors.
After a wonderful PowerPoint presentation from the DOA team highlighting their innovations, the OFMB team and myself were broken into groups for a series of ice-breaker activities. The first activity involved creating a definition for a made-up word. It was interesting to see that each group came up with different definitions for each of the words given! From there the entire group could see how each definition compared to the others. This related to innovation because it allowed us to see that each group had a different interpretation of the words given. The next exercise was to make a tower from string, tape, and uncooked pasta that would stand up straight on its own with a marshmallow on top; whoever had the tallest tower won. Each team had about 10 minutes to make their towers and it proved to be a lot more difficult than anyone expected! After these activities and a delicious lunch, we were able to see a hand-made award-winning plane! We were able to see the plane up close, and learn about the innovations that made it so renowned!
Overall, this was an incredible experience, and I’d like to thank the OFMB and DOA teams for inviting me to participate in this with them! Innovation is all about bringing people together and sharing ideas, and this retreat fully embodied that.