Your Guide to Two-Day Retreats

Photo by You X Ventures on Unsplash

A two-day exercise that just might change the way you run your business today and forever.

Hey Founder,

I know. I know. Who has two days to devote to brainstorming and scribbling on whiteboards? You’ve got PO’s to chase and investors to reassure. But I’m here to tell you that I’ve led a ton of strategic retreats in my day, as a CEO, consultant, and an investor, and I can speak with some assurance that a retreat offers you the single best way to create the Playbook that will become the strategic backbone of your company and get you through the the toughest challenges you will face.

That said: here are the key elements I’ve found to be particularly helpful to making a retreat productive.

Context, Purpose, Result (CPR)

First, every meeting, no matter how big or small, should have a context, purpose and result, or CPR (I wrote about this here). For a strategic retreat, your CPR might look something like this:

Context: Our team is cranking! Things are moving fast. We need to expand operationally, which presents a need for more capital. What markets to move into, how to spend that capital, and the best path for growth are all questions at this point in time.

Purpose: The purpose of our San Fran retreat is to come together, align on vision & strategy, celebrate our wins to date and then gear up for the whirlwind ahead; ensuring clarity, alignment, and a mission-centered focus on the adjustments we need to make & results we need to achieve in the short-term to set this company up for success.

Result: Agreement & alignment on our Playbook, including vision and vivid description, strategy, what’s most important and who must do what.

Armed with your CPR, you follow the two-day retreat format that I have successfully used:

DAY 1

The first day is devoted to reviewing our strategy, understanding our current situation from the key angles of marketing, sales and operations, and finally setting the stage for how we will use the second day to determine the most important thing or, at most two things, we should be focusing on. Any agenda items dealing with strategic purposes involve the entire team, while those items dealing with the current situation call on members of the leadership team to report out and lead the discussion.

DAY 2

Day two uses the discussion and inputs we received from our team on day one to determine and then align our team around what we should do in the coming months. This also includes establishing the best KPIs for measuring how well we deliver on our strategy and, most important of all, perhaps, who is responsible for each KPI’s results. A retreat cannot be considered a total success unless these questions are answered by the end of the two days.

If all this looks like more talking and note taking and white boarding than you’ve done in your entire life, then so be it. But that’s the point of retreats: they need to be business as unusual and get your team into a strategic mindset. These are precious hours that should be able to drive your strategy through the inevitable ups and downs of everyday business as usual.

Are you ready to give one a try? We at ScalePassion are here to help with everything from setting ground rules to crafting agendas.

Sincerely,

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