For four days, we imagined what this product might look and feel like. We were building a new kind of culture different from any of the teams we had worked on in the past. The offsites were about more than group bonding, however. We needed to reset our thinking. And by heading to remote locations, we were able to switch off and think about what features would be most important to enable virtual collaboration and communication. We were able to consider new approaches, not just to what we were building but how we planned to build it. EATING OUR OWN DOG FOOD Within a month of returning to headquarters, we had created a working prototype of our new software. It was a bare-bones tool, but we committed to using it as our sole teambased productivity app from then on. It was important that we lived with it day in and day out, in order to understand what needed to change and evolve. We experienced the pain " Resetting our thinking was critical. We were able to consider new approaches not just to what we were building, but how we planned to build it. " 24