All Hands in for Agility in Action: A Look into Scout’s Spring All Hands Meeting

In late April, Scouts joined together in our Boulder home for this year’s first All Hands Meeting. At Scout, All Hands Meetings resemble more of an internal conference than the “meeting” its name suggests, and they’ve been an important staple of Scout since its inception. Held every Spring and Fall, “All Hands” sees all available Scout employees come together in the Boulder area to take part in three days of presentations, team-building activities, and process improvement. With a fitting theme, “Agility in Action,” last month’s All Hands focused on the importance of finding new ways for our now over 200-employee team to continue to grow larger while ensuring our work and our culture remain as nimble as ever.

All Hands on Insight

The first two days of All Hands take place at an offsite location with a stage, screen, and a perfect platform for teams to present to the rest of the company on their recent achievements, current initiatives, and progress toward their long-term goals.

To kick this off, every All Hands starts with a presentation from Scout Founder and CEO Michael Rucker, who focused this last meeting on the many challenges and opportunities we face as a company and industry as we scale to meet the increasingly complex renewable energy market in 2025 and beyond.  Following this, our slew of in-house subject-matter experts shared updates from their teams, diving into new initiatives in areas like drone technology, transmission markets, and infrared thermography.

Scouts also got to hear from our leadership team through a roundtable discussion that covered a wide range of industry topics like electricity demand growth, shifting political landscapes, and interconnection challenges.

All Hands on Culture

While presentations dominate the mornings, afternoons are dedicated to building and strengthening our culture and connection through a variety of activities throughout the Boulder area.

For instance, Scouts had the opportunity during last All Hands to choose between five Tuesday afternoon activities: restorative yin yoga led by one of our very own Scouts, volunteer trash pickup across the city of Boulder, touring nationally-renowned impressive agrivoltaics facilities, group hiking along the beautiful ridges of the Boulder Flatirons, and attending a birdhouse and bat house building workshop back at the Boulder office led by our Environmental and Permitting team. Whether through movement, service, or creativity, Scouts connected through activities that spoke to their individual passions.

No Boulder area event is complete without a stunning view of the Rocky Mountains, which we got during our team dinner at Stem Cider’s Acreage cidery in Lafayette, CO. The roasted beets with feta and new summer ciders were a big hit!

All Hands on Continuous Improvement

With everyone together, All Hands provides a great opportunity to organize productive sessions that improve Scout’s overall knowledge of the business.  This has led to the creation of our prestigious “Scout University,” comprising classes led by Scout subject matter experts that serve as 101s on the more technical aspects of the business. This year’s sessions covered Tax Equity, Power Market Fundamentals, and an overview of recent Power-to-X efforts. Other, more interactive sessions seek to brainstorm ideas for new efficiencies and process improvements, such as last month’s Teamwork and Leadership workshop. Scouts also take time to celebrate improvements implemented from previous All Hands meetings. This year, we celebrated the massive progress we’ve made in our company-wide Salesforce integration (known affectionally as the SLOT (single location of truth) Machine) by crowning SLOT Royalty and acknowledging those who have played essential roles in the transition.

When all was said and done, Michael closed our latest All Hands by reemphasizing major takeaways from the week and looking ahead at what we hope to accomplish by the next All Hands in Fall. As we entered May, Scouts are attacking as we do after every All Hands, with a better understanding of all corners of the company, a renewed sense of the importance of our culture, and with the energy, focus, and agility to improve the way we work together.