Friendship Is Built in Hours, Not Emails
For years, Zynik has orchestrated an annual fishing trip for leaders & associates across the organization. Our annual fishing trip is the most vivid expression of a deeply held belief: high-performing teams are anchored in high-trust relationships, and trust requires quality time together—more time than a calendar packed with back-to-back meetings can ever provide.
Science agrees. A University of Kansas study quantified the hours it takes for human connection to deepen. Moving from acquaintances to casual friends requires roughly fifty hours together. Spending another forty or so elevates the bond to friendship. And surpassing two hundred shared hours finally yields the closeness people describe as deep friendship.
Crucially, the researchers at KU found that hours spent working side-by-side don’t carry the same weight as hours spent laughing, learning, or relaxing together. In other words, scheduling more meetings will never substitute for fishing the same waters together.
Our fishing weekend is designed to accumulate those friendship hours in the most productive way possible. When someone hands you a fresh lure after your line snaps, or when someone good-naturedly teases you for a modest catch, hierarchy dissolves, titles blur into first names, and by the time we all get to the dinner table, professionals who met over quarterly-review spreadsheets are swapping stories about childhood misadventures and “the one that got away.” Then, back at the plant or the office, those memories translate into swifter problem-solving, more candid feedback, and a presumption of good intent when projects inevitably hit occasionally turbulent water.
4 Parallels Between Casting Lines and Growing Business
Fishing is more than the setting for this transformational work. It’s actually a running metaphor for how we operate.
- Both require patience. Landing a trophy fish demands patience, the same patience we apply throughout our business processes.
- Both sharpen valuable skills over time that should be passed down through mentorship. Skill on the water is earned over seasons of practice and mistakes and skill across our organization is honed by veterans and experts who we count on to mentor the next generation.
- Both sometimes need outside expert guidance.An angler who wants to read currents hires a local guide. A business that wants to read shifting markets seeks thoughtful advisors, and we embed these kinds of expertise inside every company we acquire. And if we don’t have these skills in house, we go find them.
- Both require cross-functional collaboration and trust. Landing a big one takes coordinated hands and shouted instructions across a rocking boat, just as any complex business process demands.
The returns on these investments show up in metrics outsiders can see, but the first tangible dividends are cultural. In this strengthened environment, projects tend to accelerate as we now have colleagues who better understand each other’s communication rhythms. Psychological safety rises across our organization when people have laughed together around a table, making it easier to surface early signals of rough waters before they become costly problems. In these casual moment, leaders experience first hand strengths in teammates they might have previously known only through email threads. These are discoveries that can reshape succession planning and fuel internal mobility.
Our fishing trip is actually whole-person engagement in action where we can truly learn about each other beyond work roles. This is critical because we aim to hire, promote, and partner with human beings, not line items on a staffing plan. Contrast this kind of team building with the corporate standard of a two-hour trust-fall session wedged between expense-report deadlines. Unfortunately, many modern businesses too often optimize for transactions like quarterly targets, five-minute stand-ups, or instant-message threads while starving the very relationships that make those transactions sustainable.
Zynik chooses a different path. Because we hold companies for decades, not for the length of a fund cycle, we have the luxury and the obligation to invest in relationships that will last just as long. This philosophy is why our associates return from these trips with sunburned noses, a few fishing tales (of varying credibility), and a renewed enthusiasm for joint problem-solving that no amount of slide-deck motivation could replicate.
This year’s highlight reel captures the laughter when a line snaps at the surface and the moment someone lands the fish of a lifetime under a sky turning gold with sunset.
