How long has it been since your last offsite meeting? For many organizations, travel is just now starting to resume, and it may be that two or three years have passed since your key strategic executives met in person to plan for the future.
As 2023 kicks off, there’s no better time than now to start planning an executive offsite. Your offsite should be more than just a chance to see colleagues and golf. Without forethought, you risk spending a lot of money on a meeting that doesn’t produce results. Here are six ways to ensure your next strategic planning offsite leaves a positive mark on the business.
1. Prepare, prepare, and prepare!
Most executives agree that a successful strategic offsite begins before the event. Often, however, leaders start with scheduling the meeting, inviting participants, and possibly securing an outside expert speaker in the hopes that getting the right people in the room will produce results.
This approach to planning a meeting is precisely the reverse of what should happen.
Planning a successful offsite should start with the end in mind, which means understanding where the organization is in the strategic process. Ask yourself these questions to frame your thinking as you plan the offsite:
- How far out should you look—three years, five years, or longer?
- Is the organization ready to make firm decisions, or is it still working on a high-level strategy?
- How many initiatives can your organization handle going forward—four, six, or more?
2. Determine objectives
Before you make any plans or set any goals, establish the objectives of the meeting. What do you want to accomplish with your offsite? Create a list of three to five objectives and share them with key executives. Have you missed anything? Is there an objective those other executives want to add? Your objectives will drive the meeting agenda and conversations.
As you establish objectives and agenda items, it may be equally helpful to determine what you won’t discuss. Limiting topics can help participants focus on the most important, urgent, or key objectives and help your team stay on track. Those items you set aside can be tabled for another offsite or handed to an internal team once you are back in the office, which can help ensure that they are aligned with and driven by an overall strategy.
3. invite participants
Allow your objectives to influence your participants. If your objectives require board input, make sure those decision-makers are involved. If your objectives need an outside facilitator, find someone who can help your whole team produce concrete results at the end of the offsite. Ideally, your offsite should have at most ten to twelve participants. This size group is large enough to offer a diversity of thought but small enough to ensure that everyone can have input.
Do ensure that you give participants enough time to plan to attend. You should begin planning your offsite at least 60 days before the meeting and invite participants 45 to 60 days in advance. As the event approaches, ask leaders to prepare reports or gather the information that will add detail to the meeting and assign any necessary pre-reading.
4. define success
What does a successful strategic offsite look like for your organization at this stage of its growth? You’ve already determined the objectives of the meeting. You should also define what success looks like. How will you know you’ve met your objectives? What goals or execution strategies will emerge from the offsite to show its success?
Your team should emerge from the meeting with concrete initiatives—four to ten is ideal. These initiatives should have a long-term impact on your business, even if they are short-term projects. For example, suppose one overall strategic goal is to improve customer experience. In that case, a short-term goal could be sending call center agents through additional training or implementing a new feedback tool.
5. set expectations
Start your offsite by setting expectations for meeting conduct and interaction. Dave Bailey, CEO of Founder Coach, recommends the following three questions to help define ground rules:
- What behaviors must we commit to so we all get the most from this offsite?
- Do we give each other permission to reinforce these commitments?
- How should we reinforce them?
Setting expectations at the beginning will create boundaries for engagement and give everyone permission to refocus the conversation if it starts to drift. In addition, setting expectations will improve productivity and provide those with different processing styles space to be at their best.
6. include social time
Focused meeting time is key to a successful offsite, but social time is almost as important. Be sure to build in time for leaders to interact without the pressure of a meeting. This kind of time is invaluable for creating a high-performing executive team.
Social time doesn’t have to be forced, though it can be helpful to include some gentle icebreaker activities if people don’t know each other well or haven’t seen each other in some time. Be aware, however, that some of the most creative people on your team may be introverts by nature, and icebreaker activities can feel like torture to such participants! Often, these people feel much more comfortable meeting and chatting through organic means—at dinner, in a lounge, or during casual activities.
When properly planned and executed, a strategic planning offsite can be a powerful way to align your executive team with the company vision and purpose, create leadership cohesion, and ensure that everyone is focused on the same strategy and goals. As your team moves into the next year and beyond, putting the time and effort intoplanning a strategic offsite meeting could be a valuable investment that will pay off for years.
Self-check:
- When was the last time we had a strategic planning offsite?
- Is our team aligned with overall strategy?
- Do we have an overall strategy?
