Advance Your Business with a Great Retreat!

     by Don Blohowiak

Your colleagues (or clients) want you to help them go off-site to think great thoughts at a retreat in a beautiful resort setting--or perhaps at a non-descript meeting room in a local hotel.

Either way, the actions you and the attendees take ahead of this important, and very visible-to-top-executives event, determines whether your organization squanders the time and investment or makes it some of the most productive work that your senior managers will do all year.

Here’s a rundown on how you can make the most of the event.

Create the agenda starting at the end. Define what a successful off-site meeting will have accomplished. Any confusion or uncertainty about the objectives before the meeting will be magnified to an embarrassing, time-wasting degree during the meeting. And create resentment among participants after it.

Here’s a way to think about clearly specifying the objective: Assign a percentage value (0 to 100) to each of these possible retreat purposes:

•  Resolving. Are there contentious interpersonal or business issues that need working through? Plan for small group breakout sessions and reflection/cooling-off periods between intense sessions with a skilled outside facilitator (see below). Don’t be surprised if an unscheduled evening session suddenly needs to be accommodated when rancorous participants sense that progress is at hand.
•   Imagining / Exploring. Creative activities may require extra space, unusual props and a looser agenda with flexibility in the schedule. (Sometimes the muse runs long.)
•   Deciding. The quality of a group-mediated decision is predicated on a few factors:
  o Quality data. Ensure that retreat attendees do their homework before arriving at the event. The off-site’s effectiveness is directly proportional to the planning and thinking that all attendees put into the meeting before they arrive.
  o Diversity of perspective. Arrange for small group breakouts with flip charts
  o Interaction between all participants. Make sure the main meeting room has either a boardroom style table where all attendees can see each other, or is large enough to accommodate a U-formation of tables with sufficient room for presentation projectors, screens, flip charts, white boards, etc.
•  Bonding and Socializing. Plan interactive activities at facilities that provide opportunities for small group interaction or intimate conversations. Structure events so that people who don’t ordinarily interact day-to-day have an opportunity to become better acquainted and share perspectives. Keep the pace relaxed. People don’t bond when the agenda is jammed.
•  Recreating. Build ample time for pure fun with a healthy percentage given to the individual attendee’s personal preferences. Mandatory events are work not play.
•  Celebrating. Make sure celebrations don’t become tedious. Keep it light, festive, and the formal remarks brief.

Remember to build in some time for discussing important issues that arise during the retreat, but weren’t on the formal agenda. And be sure to slot an hour for summarizing and evaluating the event before attendees depart from the retreat.

Use an independent facilitator. Even a highly skilled internal employee cannot be completely dispassionate or detached from issues where the stakes include personal gain or one’s political standing.

An effective outside moderator will add far more value than merely filling flip charts with scribble. He or she focuses the discussion (especially when it inevitably strays wayward), keeps to the timetable—adjusting with good judgment, and makes sure that all attendees are participating—and constructively.

A good moderator can deftly deal with the biggest, toughest and loudest egos in the room. And comes with both strategic insight and operational savvy that enables the adept probing and challenging that marks a truly valuable facilitator.

Following the off-site, the independent consultant also can help ensure that those action items that sounded so good away from the office actually get implemented there.

In selecting a prospective facilitator, here are some questions to ask:

•  What preparation work do you do in advance of the retreat? Ideally, your facilitator will seek significant involvement in crafting the agenda by collaborating closely with the people responsible for the event. The facilitator should also provide services such as surveying retreat attendees on issues relevant to the upcoming retreat to aid agenda planning.
•  What is the process you employ for handling participant conflict? If you expect an intense or heated discussion, ask, “Can you tell me about some experiences where the interaction became over-heated or out of control, and how you handled those situations?” Facilitators who say they avoid or prevent conflict in truth likely steer away from dealing with the most important issues—producing a rather meaningless retreat with no lasting impact.
•  What role do you envision playing after the event? At the very least, your moderator should provide a written recap of the discussions with special attention focused on the decisions reached, the tasks and responsibilities assigned to specific individuals, and the related due dates. (This wrap-up report should be provided to all participants with the thanks of the most senior executive for their stimulating participation.)

In addition, some facilitators can add much more value after the event by following up the retreat and helping to ensure that the work begun there stays on track and makes a lasting contribution.

Circulate a proposed agenda, soliciting reactions and suggestions. Ask people to reply anonymously—it encourages candor without self-censorship. Once set, the agenda should be sent to attendees well in advance of the off-site meeting to aid their thoughtful reflection and preparation.

Invite people, other than the senior executives, who can make a meaningful contribution to the discussion. Junior managers, professional staff and even outsiders such as key suppliers or customers may enrich the interplay of ideas.

If you invite spouses or guests, set everyone’s expectation as to the amount of time they’ll actually have with their meeting-bound partners. Provide optional (no implied obligation) activities for them. And if you expect the retreat to delve into serious or contentious business matters, consider not having spouses/guests attend. Either they’re going to be ignored or the important business issues will be short-changed at the expense of the social obligations (where the retreat attendees will not be very good company anyway).

Structure the agenda to take advantage of the great surroundings. If you’re not going to do that, save your money, avoid a pricey resort setting and book a meeting room at a local hotel. Get an early morning start; wrap up late day discussions before pushing people to numbed exhaustion.

Make clear, in advance, to your attendees the expenses the company picks up and those for which individuals are responsible. Will you pay for golf? Cart rental? A massage instead? Clarity before the event spares confusion and anger after it. Consider a flat recreational and incidentals allowance.

Schedule a post-retreat follow-up meeting with your outside facilitator about five weeks after the event to assure your investment by renewing participants’ commitment to completing actions conceived far from the stress of pressing matters.

By taking a serious, process approach to retreat planning, you assure that your organization or client will receive an impressive return on the time, energy, and, most importantly, the thinking invested in this very important event.
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Don Blohowiak delights in preparing, facilitating, and following up his Designing the Future Retreats.™

Lead Well® helps organizations to improve measurable results by developing their current and future leaders. For more information, please contact us. By phone, toll-free in the USA: 1-888-LeadWell (532-3935), or 1-609-716-9490. By email, Info@LeadWell.com.

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Don Blohowiak, a management consultant and popular conference speaker, is the author of several business books. The executive director of the Lead Well® Institute in Princeton, NJ, he may be reached at http://www.LeadWell.com/.

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