At the start of the month, Isometric’s London and New York teams ‘met in the middle’ for our first ever off-site outside the UK, in Iceland. Our quarterly company off-site weeks provide rich opportunities to collaborate across teams, deep-dive into complex strategic decisions and align on our plans for the next three months. They’re also great for playing board games with colleagues, and in this case, seeing parts of a fascinating, unique country.
Getting into the science
First stop after getting out of the airport and having lunch was a visit to our good friends at Climeworks, whose Direct Air Capture (DAC) facility Mammoth is the world’s largest with a capacity of 36,000 tonnes per year when fully built out. We slipped on hard hats and high-vis jackets, and spent a couple of hours getting into the details of Mammoth’s direct air capture process, consisting of 72 stacked collector containers when fully built out that are connected to Carbfix’s storage hubs. As ever, the Climeworks team were generous with their time, providing an insightful, scientific and witty tour, despite the inclement weather.
Refining our strategy over liquorice
We spent two mornings doing a strategic deep dive, division-by-division, pathway-by-pathway, looking at how we can best support the carbon removal market to scale. There was also a ‘Hot Ones’ style Ask the Leadership Team Anything , where our exec team took turns to answer tough questions whilst eating delicious Icelandic salty liquorice.
This wasn’t an exercise in rubber-stamping a predetermined plan. Insights from across the Isometric team allowed us to make some vital refinements to the roadmaps we had previously prepared. Two key changes impacting my team were:
- Prioritizing the development of technology in pathways that are delivering now, before moving on to other pathways.
- Focusing technical bets on enabling faster verification and a better supplier and verifier experience
It’s not unusual that plans change at Isometric—we’re in a highly dynamic space and one of the things we pride ourselves on is our ability to quickly incorporate feedback from our customers and from across our team to recalibrate plans and push for better outcomes.
Team Bonding
There was far more to the week than just getting stuck into science and strategy. Each day involved activities, from hill-hiking to an off-the-beaten-track thermal pool (not everyone made it through the mud cleanly); an impromptu-guided tour of a waterfall or a focused and competitive game of Blood on the Clocktower. There was also plenty of down time to take a dip in one of the hot tubs in our hotel complex, or in my case, run the paths and trails of rural Iceland.
Each Isometric Team Week builds upon the last as our team grows and advances in our mission. I personally can’t wait for the next one—if you’re interested in being part of it, you can check out our vacancies here.
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Photo credits: Gunnar Bjarki
