After having a fantastic time previously, this year we returned to Nick Nairn’s Cook School in the peaceful Port of Menteith for our annual Strategy Day, where we were represented from all four offices; Glasgow, Riga, Gdynia and Liverpool.

Strategy day is a great way to bring all our offices together to assess how we have done over the last year and what we can do to develop CMR.

On arrival we were treated to tea, coffee and bacon sandwiches. Afterwards, our Managing Director, Ian Livingstone, gave a presentation on how the business has done over the past year. We were then divided into 3 groups at random which meant we were working with people we wouldn’t normally see and work with on a daily basis.

To warm up, we played a communication game in our groups of “Who am I” afterwards within the same groups we were to design Newspapers of where we saw the business in 2 years’ time.

Each group then spoke about their newspaper and where they saw the business going. Some key themes of areas where we could improve upon were picked up and a discussion took place of how to solve or avoid problems in the future.

We then stopped for a quick tea and scone break before we headed into our cooking session with Nick Nairn.

As with each Clyde Marine Strategy Day, we had a friendly competition.

This year we were tasked to make Breast of Corn Fed Chicken with Stornoway Black Pudding Mash, Crispy Pancetta and Red Wine Jus. Our dessert was Vanilla Panna Cotta with Marinated Strawberries which had already been made for us.

Before we headed to our stations we were taken through the recipe by Nick, who also gave us a quick and insightful lesson on how to de-bone a chicken.

After our lesson we headed to our stations to get cooking.

By the end the meal we had all created was delicious and well worth it.

This years wooden spoons went to Kinga, the Director of Clyde Marine Poland and Gordon, our Marine Projects Adviser. The winners were Linda a Recruitment Consultant from our Latvia office and Nina, our Marketing Coordinator.