Interview Transcript Extract – The Department of Fun: Building Team Spirit from the Bottom Up – Fred Ortiz

Interview Date: 7/16/19

• Company: P2S Inc.
• Contact: Fred Ortiz
• Title: BIM Manager
• https://www.p2sinc.com/
• Founded: 1991
• Headquarters: Long Beach, CA
• Office locations: Long Beach, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Jose
• Number of employees: 230
• Specialties: Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing, Technology, Commissioning, Energy, Energy Studies, Feasibility Studies, LEED, Master Planning, Green Design Services, BSL, Cleanrooms, RO/DI systems, Port, Data Center, IT infrastructure, Airport, Gas infrastructure, and Central Plants

Dope Team was originally called the Spirit Team.  They rebranded when they started to lose momentum.  Dope stands for Department of Planning Events.

Fred originally got into the Spirit Team because the company was hosting many events and they wanted to form a committee to get help with it and build tasks.

P2S hosts after work events, short social events, and, before the Spirit/Dope Team was formed, Fred was usually one of the people that attended the events, had a good time and promoted the culture at P2S.  Being invited to join the Dope Team allowed him to give his input and his feedback on future events and past events.

Being a part of the Dope Team, Fred gets to be a part of all the events P2S holds that promote their culture, fitness and fun.  He likes being able to help set up, give his input on events and locations to hold the events.  He also gets to meet new hires and keep promoting the culture that way.

Fred finds it’s good for his career as well.  When they have annual reviews at P2S, they’re asked about their culture and being a part of the team and being involved in the events.  Fred finds being a part of the Dope Team looks good on his yearly tasks that he’s helping with, with the events and being social and promoting the P2S culture, which is really important to the owners of the company.

“Spending so much time on it and putting all my heart into it, it keeps my pulse to the current culture because things are always changing with new people coming in, so it keeps my pulse on the P2S culture, and it allows me to keep promoting it.”

On the other hand, the downside is spending too much time on the Dope Team.  Being in the engineering industry, their jobs are really demanding and they have a lot of project deadlines, commitments and meetings to attend.  So the downside is that they could spend too much time on non production tasks versus billable hours.

They recently had an employee that had too many non production hours for the Dope Team and he actually had to leave the group to focus more on his work schedule.

Also, it is a big commitment.  Fred says even if you’re not feeling well, if an event is taking place, you still have to be committed and show up.

The program is completely employee driven.  They meet once a month, come up with ideas and events that they want to plan.

In order to choose new members of the Dope Team, members discuss the person’s personality, their workload, and what group they’re in.

What makes the team work so well is the member’s communication and that they break into smaller groups – taking less time in the overall meeting.  Examples of smaller committees are happy hour committee, after hours social committee and charity committee.  These committees break into smaller groups, so it’s easier to tackle events.

Fred’s advice to anyone looking to start a similar group is to first create a group to discuss the events and make a game plan for the whole year.  Then creating breakout groups from there.  Breaking into smaller groups also allows new people to take the leadership role so there are always fresh ideas coming into the group.

When the group, then called the Spirit Team, first started, it was initially just one big group.  That made it difficult to drill down and put together events because there were so many people giving their input.  It was difficult to have broader ideas and they tended to repeat the same events over and over.

The team has a budget for each event so they don’t over or underspend on any events.

Fred is a big proponent of these types of teams:

“It does improve your relationships throughout the whole company, not just your particular group. It gives you an avenue to meet other people that you might not see on a daily basis and builds teamwork.”