Is Your Business Urgently In Need of A Strategic Retreat?

As the end of the year approaches, it’s that time again where organisations reflect, review what went well, what could have gone better over the last 12 months and plan for the coming years.

A common error I have witnessed working with clients is the tendency to prioritise budgeting over strategy. While both are undeniably important, in my experience, your business first requires clarity as to your future aspirations, how you intends to win in your marketplace, capabilities and systems required to win before we start talking about resources, which is where budgeting comes into play. So ideally, you should be clear about your strategy before going into your budgeting process.

History and statistics affirm that organisations can significantly improve performance by investing in corporate retreats. More recently, the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has inflicted systemic disruptions to almost every industry. Businesses that will adapt and emerge stronger from the disruption must be deliberate about investing executive time re-evaluating their business environment, refining their goals and clarifying/rethinking their strategy.

A retreat offers a unique opportunity to step back from the day to day whirlwind of activities, re-evaluate the business environment, review past results, engender creativity, plan for the future and devise steps to get there. Regardless of the size of your organisation, the bottom line is that bringing your leadership team together for a retreat is a critical investment towards the success of your organisation.

Retreats also offer the best platform for strategic planning and action-focused decision making to increase your sales, improve customer experience, control overhead, improve overall performance, and drive business growth.

The retreat should focus on galvanising a plan to get everyone moving in the same direction.

However, making these critical discussions happen within the leadership team of an organisation can be a hassle as we are often bogged down with everyday tasks.

Before pulling your team off work into a retreat, It’s important to first carefully think about the intended outcome from the retreat since this will be the foundation for the retreat design. It’s equally important to share these intended outcomes with participants to give them time to get the pre-work done ahead of the retreat. Generally speaking, the better informed and prepared the delegates are the more effective the retreat.

The best designed retreats typically adopt a question based approach that focuses on critical questions organisations must consistently ask themselves to drive the attainment of their corporate objectives. The better the quality of questions, the better the insight and decision outcome.

Jack Welch regularly insisted that his managers practice the “Reality Principle,” which he defined as “being willing to face the world as it is, rather than the way you wish it could be.” Important questions that should be addressed at a strategy retreat may include:

• What are the biggest changes taking place in our marketplace?
• How has covid-19 impacted our business, clients, employees, suppliers and partners?
• What new technologies are transforming our marketplace?
• Are we responding proactively to change?
• Where are our aspirations as an organisation?
• What is our current situation or reality (where are we now)?
• What were the factors and decisions that led to our current situation (how did we get here)?
• Where can (or should) we be?
• How do we get from where we are today to where you want to be in future?
• What problems do we have to solve or what obstacles do we have to overcome?
• What are the critical constraints or limiting factors for growth?
• What additional knowledge, skills, or resources will we require to achieve our strategic objectives?
• What additional competencies or capabilities will we need if we want to lead our field in the years ahead?
• What are our competitors doing?
• What are the three or four things that, if we accomplish them over the next twelve months, will make next year a phenomenal year?”

When effectively planned and executed, a retreat is an excellent platform for reinforcing leadership skills, brainstorming ideas, solving problems, stimulating teamwork, nurturing a sense of camaraderie, and clarifying and reaffirming your organisation’s competitive strategy.

It is also one of the best ways to create engagement around 2 important answers employees need to have:

1. What should we be working/focusing on?
2. Why is it important?

Who should be at the retreat?

Deciding who should be invited to the retreat is often difficult and can quickly become political. The rule of thumb is to invite a cross-section of your organisation — from the leadership team to some mid level/junior employees in critical roles, especially those who interact with customers. You would also need to consider the purpose and intended outcomes from the retreat.

For example, you can consider inviting:

• The core people you need to execute your strategic plan
• Senior executives
• Board members and/or advisors
• Key customers who can share their experiences
• New team members, as the retreat will get them up to speed quickly and allow them to develop rapport with their colleagues
• 1–2 potential future leaders who could gain valuable experience at the retreat

Ideally, between ten and twenty five people work best. Going beyond this number can hinder the free-flow of ideas.

If wider participation is desired, it is a good idea to get some professional facilitator help for the design or delivery stage, or both.

Can your retreat be successful without a facilitator?

Not in my experience!

While you can have either an internal of external facilitator, you definitely need a facilitator. There are clear advantages of having a neutral party, trained and skilled in facilitation techniques, guiding a retreat? Perhaps the most important is that he or she can ask the hard questions without fear and help the group work through them. As a neutral party, the facilitator can remain objective and stay focused on defining the issue, the differing points of view, and the possible solutions.

Whether you hold your retreat at a hotel, resort or a conference facility, getting away from the day-to-day grind of the office will help your team focus, think and develop valuable creative ideas.

If you don’t already have a date penned down for your strategic retreat you should start planning for one immediately.

Planning your next strategic retreat? then you should reach out to us at hello@workforcegroup.com to find out how we can help design and make your retreat more effective, exponentially increasing the ROI from the event.