It’s funny how the rituals we create at work can start to feel a lot like the ones we have at home. They sneak up on you, what starts as a temporary solution or a good idea in the moment becomes something we come to rely on. And just like the bedtime routines I’ve developed with my twins (the books, the songs, twirls to ‘Let it goooo’), the rituals we’ve created at work have evolved, sometimes slowly, sometimes all at once, but always with intention.
How Rituals Take Shape
At our company, we’ve always believed that how we work together matters just as much as what we’re working on. That belief showed up early in how we structured our time and interactions. When we were smaller, we held daily standups with everyone in the company. It was a way to stay connected, build alignment, and see what work was moving. But as we grew, that rhythm started to feel too rigid, and, if I’m honest, a little exhausting. So we shifted to standups three times a week, still regular, still grounding, but with more space to actually do the work in between.
Eventually, even that rhythm started to feel like it needed a refresh. So we introduced Basecamp, a new weekly ritual that gave space for people to share what they were working on, demo new features, or talk about challenges in progress. It wasn’t just about status updates anymore. It became a chance to celebrate progress, share ideas, and connect across teams. What started as a response to a scheduling need turned into something more meaningful, a ritual that helped us stay curious and connected.
That spirit of curiosity is especially alive right now as we navigate the evolving relationship between humans and agentic systems. As we explore large language models (LLMs) and agentic tools, our team is experimenting not just with what these systems can do, but how we work alongside them. We're asking new questions: What decisions can agents support? Where do they enhance our thinking, and where do they fall short? And how do our human rituals, our check-ins, demos, retros, and knowledge sharing, need to adapt when we're collaborating with more than just people?
Making Space for Curiosity
Lunch & Learns have become one of the key spaces where we hold those questions out loud. At first, they were sporadic, weekly, then biweekly, then whenever someone had something cool to share. But recently, we found a groove: 30 minutes on Thursdays, just long enough to share something interesting without blowing up your calendar. We offer $25 for lunch through DoorDash if you join (a small but appreciated perk), and the content is always a nice deep dive from one of our peers.
Some weeks, it’s a technical deep dive or a dry run for a conference talk. Other times, someone shares what happened in a kickoff from a recent project. And then there are the weeks where someone talks about their love for rowing, or how baseball data inspired a side project, or what AI in movies gets wrong (and right). There’s even been a dance-themed session or two.
Learning to Work with Agents
Recently, we’ve seen a surge in talks focused on agentic development and the growing LLM ecosystem. We've hosted walkthroughs of agent orchestration frameworks, unpacked the implications of evaluation driven development (EDD), and shared learnings from pairing with AI tools in real time. It’s not just about staying current, it’s about shaping a shared mental model for how we, as a team, approach the shift toward human + agent collaboration.
These sessions, and the rituals that support them, are helping us do more than keep up. They’re helping us build fluency. Just like pairing helps engineers deepen their thinking, these moments of reflection and exchange are helping our whole team, technical and not, understand what it means to work with intelligent systems, not just use them.
Rituals as Living Systems
What I’ve learned, both as a parent and as a people leader, is that rituals matter, but only if we’re willing to evolve them. The moment a ritual becomes sacred for the sake of tradition alone, it stops serving the team. Just like our bedtime routine had to shift once the kids stopped needing bottles, our company practices have had to flex as we grow.
There’s no perfect structure, no one-size-fits-all playbook for company rituals. But what has worked for us is creating space to reflect on them, just like we do with our projects. What’s working? What’s not? Where are we just going through the motions, and where are we creating real connection?
This retrospective on our own rituals isn’t just a chance to look back, it’s a reminder to keep adjusting. To stay intentional. To recognize when something we created with care has outlived its usefulness, and to be brave enough to try something new.
Because in this new era of human + agent collaboration, the best teams won’t be the ones with the most rigid routines. They’ll be the ones who treat their rituals like living systems, evolving alongside the tools, the people, and the possibilities ahead.
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