The quality of a strategy offsite is largely determined before anyone arrives at the venue. Most of the things that go wrong on the day, the circular conversations, the decisions that are not quite decisions, the energy that dissipates after lunch, are the product of preparation that was either skipped or done in the wrong order. Here is what the preparation should actually look like.
Start With One Problem, Not an Agenda ¶
The most common mistake in offsite preparation is building an agenda before defining the problem. An agenda is a list of topics. A problem is a specific question that the team does not yet have a good answer to. 'Growth strategy' is a topic. 'Should we enter the German market in the next eighteen months, and if so, how?' is a problem. A day built around a problem produces decisions. A day built around an agenda produces a record of conversations.
Send Pre-Reading That People Will Actually Read ¶
Pre-reading for offsites is almost universally ignored. The reason is usually that it is too long, too dense, or arrives too late. Useful pre-reading is short, specific, and arrives at least a week before the session. It should contain the current state of the problem, the key data points that bear on it, and the two or three questions the team will be asked to answer on the day. Nothing else. If the pre-reading requires more than forty minutes to read carefully, it is too long.
Decide Who Should Be in the Room ¶
The right group for a strategy session is not the same as the senior leadership team. It is the group of people who have the information and the authority to make the specific decision at hand. These are sometimes the same people. Often they are not. Including people who do not have relevant information or decision-making authority tends to slow the session down and produce decisions that are less clear, because the group is managing more relationships than it needs to.
Build in Time for Silence ¶
The most productive moments in a well-designed offsite are often the quiet ones: the twenty minutes after a difficult question is posed, before anyone speaks. Most facilitators fill silence because silence feels like failure. It is not. It is the sound of people thinking. A session design that includes structured silent reflection time, even ten or fifteen minutes, tends to produce more honest contributions than one that moves immediately from question to discussion.
Plan the Follow-Through Before the Day ¶
Decide before the offsite how decisions will be recorded, who will write the follow-through document, and when it will be distributed. If this is not agreed in advance, the document tends to arrive two weeks later, by which point the energy of the session has dissipated and the decisions have already begun to be relitigated. The follow-through document should be in people's hands within three working days of the session.
If you are planning a leadership offsite and want help with the design and facilitation, the Facilitated Offsite Design service covers the full process from scoping to follow-through documentation.