The journey was designed to be a slow-burn transition. Before we even looked at a check-in desk, we made a tactical stop at Sestri Levante. For a team coming from the shadow of the Alps, the first sight of the Baia del Silenzio acted as a collective exhale. We sat by the water and shared our first meal: authentic Ligurian focaccia, famously the best in Italy. It wasn't just lunch; it was the first "nudge" to get the team to look up from their phones and at the horizon. Our destination was a deliberate choice. We wanted intimacy, not a sprawling corporate hotel where the team would drift apart in a sea of tourists. We found it in a secluded agriturismo perched on the Ligurian hills—a rustic, refined resort that offered the silence of the countryside but kept the Mediterranean firmly in view. It was the perfect "home base": far enough from the coastal noise to allow for focus, but close enough to smell the salt air.

By Day 2, the team was "primed." The "state" was right. We returned to our sea-view hub for the final formal session: the 2026 OKR Presentation. Because we had invested so much in connection over the previous twenty-four hours, the rollout of the new year's objectives felt like a shared victory rather than a top-down mandate. To give those goals some literal perspective, we spent the afternoon hiking the famous Carrara marble mountains. Trekking through the massive, blindingly white quarries—the same stone Michelangelo chose for his David—provided a sense of scale and history that no office could ever replicate. We ended the night as all good stories should: gathered around a campfire with drinks in hand, letting the day’s strategic clarity settle under the stars.

The drive back to Turin was no mere commute. We turned the return leg into a grand finale in Genoa.The team split to navigate the "Caruggi"—the city’s labyrinthine, ancient alleyways—and to master a culinary challenge.In a hands-on masterclass, half the team crafted traditional trofie pasta while the other half prepared authentic pesto using Carrara marble mortars—a tactile callback to the mountains we’d climbed the day before. Success depended entirely on synchronisation. We eventually converged for a final feast under the Italian sky, eating the very meal we had prepared together.