What Were the Dormer Days?

Every team has a story about the best job they ever had.

Mine came back to me years after I’d moved on. People I’d led — good people, scattered to new companies and new cities by then — were still talking about the years we’d worked together. They had a name for it. They called them the Dormer Days.

It was their shorthand for a time when work was fun, structured, and genuinely enjoyable. When people didn’t just do good work — they loved doing it. When expectations were clear, trust was real, and you could do work you were proud of.

I think about that a lot. Because here’s the thing: I didn’t set out to create “the Dormer Days.” There was no culture transformation program. No engagement initiative with a clever acronym. No offsite with trust falls.

What there was, I believe, came down to three things. They’re the same three things I build every engagement around now: people, trust, respect.

People first, always.

Policies serve humans, not the other way around. That sounds obvious until you watch a company tie itself in knots enforcing a rule nobody remembers the reason for. We made decisions by asking one simple question: does this help the people doing the work? If the answer was no, we didn’t do it.

Trust is earned, not announced.

You don’t build trust with a value statement on the wall. You build it by saying what you’ll do and then doing it — especially when it’s inconvenient. My team knew where they stood with me, good news or bad. That honesty went both ways, and it made everything faster.

Respect belongs to everyone.

Every role, every voice, every person in the room. The person running the camp kitchen got the same respect as the person running the company. When people feel respected, they tell you the truth — and the truth is the most useful thing a leader can get.

None of this is complicated. That’s the point. The Dormer Days weren’t magic. They were what happens when a leader decides that “fine” isn’t good enough and does the unglamorous work of being clear, being honest, and giving a damn.

Fun without structure is just chaos with snacks. Structure without fun is a grind. The combination is what people remember.

And it wasn’t all warm feelings, either. The Dormer Days were structured. People knew what was expected, knew how their work connected to the bigger picture, and knew someone would notice — in a good way — when they nailed it.

Here’s what I’ve learned since — from greenfield sites to camp operations to growing companies: great workplaces don’t happen by accident. They don’t happen overnight, either. They’re built — deliberately, by leaders who refuse to leave culture to chance.

That’s why I started Dormer Days Consulting. Not to bottle nostalgia, but to build it again — on purpose, in other companies. To help founders, executives, and boards create the conditions where people are trusted, respected, and actually enjoy the work.

Because work shouldn’t be something you survive. It should be something worth remembering.

My vision is simple: a world where nobody dreads Monday.

If you’re building something — a new operation, a growing team, or a culture that needs attention — I’d love to talk. Visit dormerdays.ca to start the conversation.

Let’s make every day a Dormer Day. 🦩