How to Determine the Best Off-Site Structure for Your Goals
The unfortunate situation at the Coldplay concert is just one of many examples of a mission drift, where the repercussions permanently altered the state of the organization.
How did it get that far? How was a fellow employee coaxed into being there, and they never reported?
What happens when we get too close to a situation is that we can either begin to think too similarly to challenge it, or people feel there’s not the approachability to say something, and that quickly becomes dangerous territory for any organization.
That’s an extreme example, but no business is perfect.
Even the most seasoned leaders still have blind spots. Significant life changes in a leader or shifts in the team can alter the course or morale for an organization. Changes in a board or executive leadership team can make us a little complacent about growing and expanding the mission.
The best leaders don’t avoid hard conversations; they help facilitate them.
Strategy, retreats, and off-sites are business buzzwords these days. As more facilitators step into the space, it’s becoming increasingly more confusing to determine what effective facilitation is and how to maximize your team’s time.
Here are five questions to ask yourself to help maximize your next strategic planning session or leadership or team off-site.
1. What are you hoping to accomplish from the day?
In working with a number of teams, one thing that stands true is that if you don’t have a clear goal for the day, you will find the day gone without real traction. Great facilitation maintains a “parking lot” for ideas that aren’t pertinent to the day’s goals but are worth noting for follow-up.
Here are a few questions to help you set your target for the day. Are you looking to achieve:
Setting quarterly or annual targets as a leadership or individual team?
Clarity of identity as a team or organization?
Collaboration and ideation to expand your strategy, marketing, or research and development?
Reviewing annual employee or vendor survey data in a way that’s both fun and effective?
2. Who needs to be involved?
Speaking of goals and intention for the day, it’s wise to get clear about who needs to be included.
I’ll never forget being in an employee-facing role and advising the CEO that, given the content's nature, it would be best suited to executive-level staff only. We had just conducted our first annual employee survey and the results were telling. He assured me that they had included “rising” leaders, project managers, and senior-level staff from all departments in prior sessions and wanted to keep that same format. He was the boss, so the buck stopped there.
Unfortunately, we did, and it was awkward. While the surveys were anonymous, it was uncomfortable reading feedback from the company and from people who had said it or knew who did, while trying to play it cool in a room with 20 other people. Not only that, the employees who were left behind to hold down the office knew they weren’t identified as “leaders.” It was an unintentional hit on company morale.
There are times — like brainstorming, collaboration, or board sessions — where it makes sense to bring more points of view into the room. There are other times when it is best to maintain sensitivity.
Knowing what your goals are will help you discern who should be included.
Note, there are ways to encompass a broader scope of opinions and points of view without extending the circle so far that it becomes awkward. We’d love to help you achieve this balance!
3. What’s the right format for our team’s capacity?
When you know your goals and who needs to be involved, it becomes easier to decide if you can maximize time to get through the topics up for discussion in a half day or if more time will be needed.
Half-day or Full-day Sessions
Is the goal of the day to engage in professional development, team bonding, strategy, or a mix? Asking your team to do too much mentally, without some fun and breaks sprinkled in, will leave them utterly exhausted by the end of the day and leave them dreading future strategy sessions.
Decide what format best activates your goals.
Half-day session, typically between 2-4 hours.
Full-day session, typically between 6-8 hours.
Retreats
There are times when a conversation is bigger than what can be fit inside one day without completely depleting your people. In this format, you may find an overnight format the most productive.
Sprinkle in some fun adventures like a scavenger hunt, team cooking, ropes course, etc., to get to know one another better. There’s nothing like extended time together to help break down silos (if done well).
Quarterly Planning
Most strategic initiatives aren’t discussed once and then considered a success. It takes intentional, cultivated rhythms of accountability and conversation to achieve these goals.
4. What planning needs to go into making it effective?
There’s a flow to these questions because, as you know, your goals, structure, who is involved, and what mix of strategy and team cultivation you want included, will help you identify the ideal venue.
Here are a few aspects to consider:
How long will I need the venue?
Will we need to cater meals, or will they be included?
Will we need snacks and drinks throughout the day? (My suggestion is always yes, no matter the length of the meeting.)
Does the venue include on-site activities and the facilitation of those activities?
What fees are included with the venue (cleaning, catering, events, etc.)?
If you want more like this, access our strategy day checklist.
5. How will we implement and track progress?
The off-site can be invigorating! There are new ideas and a fresh wind of energy and collaboration, until you return to the office and step back into the whirlwind of meetings, emails, client needs, etc.
All of a sudden, the notes from the offsite are buried beneath a pile of more urgent to-dos and things to review. At first, a few days go by without action, then weeks, then months. And now, you’re another quarter into the year and no further ahead than you were on those strategic metrics.
You schedule another off-site and the team shows up with less enthusiasm and less engaged. Why? Because it’s another day with a free meal, some fun activities, feeling like their voices are heard and seeing no substantial change or implementation of what you all crafted together the last time.
This is the strategic graveyard. The spirit of collaboration is a slow death until the team stops contributing at the level you know they can and the organization stagnates.
How can you change that? Create a plan for implementing what’s discussed and stick to it!
Pick the top action items to prioritize as a team or organization.
Delegate where you can.
Measure it.
6. What would I gain from hiring a facilitator?
A third-party can bring a non-biased element to the day, allowing for more creativity, psychological safety, and collaboration. Who you hire to cultivate that environment matters!
We love the quote by Confuscious that says, “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.”
We believe each person has a voice and if they feel safe enough to share their honest insights, it can unlock the deepest layers of untapped knowledge or potential for change.
7. Can Emboldened Entrepreneur help me?
We specialize in reinvigorating your mission and strategically aligning your team.
We don’t have to know the nuances of your industry; our job is to pull the insights embedded in your team to the surface and create the engagement and camaraderie to reignite the spark to charge forward with more momentum.
We do so by leveraging our proprietary 7P’s (7 Core Pillars) Framework™, which focuses on identifying “opportunities” in your business model to recalibrate and anchor your business in a mission-fueled purpose and culture.
If you’re interested in booking a facilitation session, let’s start a strategic conversation! There, we’ll learn more about your goals and share more about our process, implementation planning, coaching, and support tools tailored to your intended goals and outcomes.
