Without the in-person team rooms and connectivity events, you might wonder if client teams are lacking their usual camaraderie and closeness. In our experience, they are quite connect even with colleagues working at home and using tools like Zoom and Slack. One team that is distributed throughout the East Coast of the US and San Francisco challenged each other to a bread baking contest. Here’s how they did it:
“We hosted a Zoom for our team to bake bread,” says Carolina, associate in New Jersey. To make it happen, Rob, an associate based in New York, (who has a bread-focused Instagram called @crustfund) sent a beginner-friendly recipe in advance so colleagues could get ingredients together. During this challenge there was a lot of laughter. Janette, an associate in New Jersey shares, “I struggled making my very first dough in my life. I did not have the appropriate kitchen tools like a kitchen scale. I made soupy dough and kept adding flours…not to mention the saga during Part 1 of our bread adventure trying to figure out if the yeast I was using was still alive. But it all turned out well thanks to Rob’s careful inspection and guidance.”
“The event was split into two parts,” Carolina explains. “We started in the afternoon to make the dough and returned a few hours later (allowing time for it to rise) to shape and bake the bread. Every loaf came out great and just in time for dinner—nothing beats a fresh loaf of bread!”
The team nominated Chetan, a business analyst in San Francisco, to be the judge. Chetan shares what the scoring dimensions were, “First was recipe adherence - how closely did they follow Rob’s recipe, and if they did make changes, how did those modifications turn out in the end. Second was visual appeal, how mouthwatering did the bread look; perfect circles, good brown coloring, straight lines in the bread (this was very subjective). And lastly, Zoom “plating” or presentation… how well did the baker frame the bread in the camera, use lighting, and their talk-track to describe their bread.
And the winner was New York Digital Labs specialist, Joe!
Learn more about McKinsey opportunities (baking skills not required).