Proven Tips to Maximize the Quality of the Time Your Team Spends Out of the Office – and Build Momentum 

Meetings play a vital role within Scaling Up. A regular rhythm of meetings enhances focus, aligns actions throughout the organization with goals, and facilitates problem-solving – all of which save time. 

Quarterly and annual meetings, which typically last one to three days, should take place offsite for maximum focus and results. The annual meeting is where you set the strategic direction and priorities for the year and beyond. The quarterly meeting is where you break your annual priorities into bite-sized priorities that can be accomplished – or moved forward significantly – during a quarter. You and your team will work through and update the Growth Tools, which provide the questions, focus, and agenda for the meeting. 

Offsite meetings are a significant investment of time and money. They take senior leaders away from the day-to-day operations of the business. You’ll also incur travel and lodging expenses for all participants, plus room rental fees and food and beverage costs for your meeting space. The investment is worth it if the meeting produces focus, clarity and momentum. Use the following tips to ensure you get the biggest return. 

What to Do Before Your Offsite Meeting 

Proper preparation ensures that your team can hit the ground running. Complete these tasks starting at least two weeks before your meeting to ensure that your team is ready to go. 

• Finalize your logistics. If you haven’t done so yet, reserve a location. You’ll want a location that will be free of distractions and allow team members access to comfortable writing space (e.g., a boardroom table or U-shaped table set up in a meeting room), plus room to move around and brainstorm.
  
  Work with the event facility to arrange meals, as well as snacks and beverages throughout the day. You want the focus to be on the meeting agenda, not on finding food. Finally, make a dinner reservation for the entire group for the night before. Participants can use this time to get caught up on each other’s lives, so they can dive into the agenda the next morning. 

• Ask team members to clear their calendars fully. Annual and quarterly meetings are held offsite to ensure that all participants are free of distractions and able to focus 100 percent on the task at hand. All participants should make necessary preparations so they are undisturbed during their absence. This includes designating someone at the office to handle pertinent responsibilities during their absence. They should also spell out what decision-making powers their replacements will hold, as well as when an interruption of the offsite meeting is permissible. 

• Assign “homework” two weeks before the offsite. To update the Growth Tools, you need input. Mid-level managers should be assigned the responsibility of collecting feedback from employees and customers. This input should be around what the company should start doing, stop doing, and keep doing or around the 4 Questions (4Q) conversations (i.e., How are you doing? What’s going on in your industry/neighborhood? What do you hear about our competitors? How are we doing?). They should also conduct a SWOT analysis. Also ask employees who will be attending the offsite to submit the top three issues they feel must be on the agenda. Finally, if you want participants to do any reading before the meeting, now is the time to assign it.  

• Set the expectation of preparedness. To ensure that your offsite event is time well spent, every participant must be 100 percent prepared to ensure you get the work done. “Prepared” might include being ready to make a presentation, to discuss their reading materials, and to debate ideas. 

• Get the mental juices flowing. Some people are more creative and effective when they have time to mentally prepare for a discussion. Help them by sending an agenda to all participants well in advance of the meeting. The agenda should include time to address all aspects of the 4D framework: Driver, Demands, Disciplines, and Decisions. 

• Update the One Page Strategic Plan (OPSP). Your OPSP can be updated on paper or in the Scoreboard software. How you capture your OPSP is far less important than making sure your priority statuses and financial models are current. Also update your “war room,” which is the physical or virtual space where you keep visuals of the Scaling Up work you’ve been doing together. Examples of these visuals might include a market map, an activity-fit map, or swim lanes. 

What To Do After Your Offsite 

Pre-meeting preparations determine how smoothly your meeting goes and how much you can accomplish. But what you do after your offsite meeting is even more crucial because this is where traction happens – or momentum is lost.  

Participants will leave your offsite meeting energized about the great ideas generated during the meeting and what the future holds. Then they will get back to the office and hit with a firehose of problems and things to do – guaranteed. This is a critical point in the process. Without structure and momentum, the ideas you generated at the offsite will wither away and die a slow death on a to-do list. Use the tips below to build momentum that carries you through the critical weeks after your meeting. 

• Carve out time to reflect and review. Sometimes you’ll identify organizational priorities that sound great at the offsite meeting. But once you get back to the office and have time to mull over the plans that have been made, you may have second thoughts about the priorities that were set. Allow at least one day to sit with your decisions, then have a follow-up meeting with everyone who attended the offsite meeting. Use this time to reaffirm your commitment to your priorities – or to change them. This is your opportunity to ensure that you’ve set the right priorities and written them the right way. Plan to lock in the next-quarter priorities within 1 week off your offsite meeting. 

• Plan your race. Quarterly offsite meetings should be held a few weeks before the end of the current quarter. This ensures that your team starts each quarter prepared, clear on what their priorities are, and excited to dive in. If you’d like to add extra spark and excitement to your process, turn each quarter into a “13-week race”. Ask your team to flesh out how the priorities will get done, then map out what needs to happen each week over the next 13 weeks. Map out the milestones you need to hit – and by when – to ensure you complete the quarterly priorities.
  
  This process helps to identify where you might run into a conflict in departmental resources or in order of operation. For example, imagine that one of your organizational priorities involves the marketing department completing a big project during Weeks 4-6. But when mapping out your race, you discover that this demand overlaps with the marketing department’s need to prepare for an industry trade conference. You’ll need to modify milestones and/or departmental priorities to ensure that Scaling Up priorities can be addressed without sacrificing “normal” business activities. 

• Strategize your communication. When your team gets back to the office, the big question they’ll hear repeatedly is “What did you talk about?” Craft and agree on no more than three bullet points that accurately explain the priorities that were set.
  
  Then decide how you’ll carry this message throughout the organization. Teams benefit from cascading messages. Communication should happen at all levels of the organization, and messages should be consistent. Multiple channels and a variety of delivery mechanisms are best. For example, you could start with a town hall, follow up with an article in your company newsletter, and then reinforce your messaging with a weekly blog, video message from the CEO or company-wide email. 

• Advanced User Tip: Do as much of the “after” activities during the offsite meeting as you can. For example, during this quarterly meeting, you’ll set organizational priorities. The next step is to create department-level priorities that align with the organizational priorities. Finally, you’ll flesh out individual priorities that align with the departmental and corporate priorities. If at all possible, draft your department priorities while you’re still at the offsite meeting. This level of planning will likely not be possible when you are first introducing Scaling Up to your organization. As your team becomes more familiar with the processes and rhythm of Scaling Up, your offsite meetings will become more efficient, and you’ll be able to invite mid-level managers to participate in the second day to set department-level priorities. 

Use Offsite Meetings to Build Momentum 

Offsite meetings are a critical part of Scaling Up. Gathering your leadership team away from the distractions of the office and day-to-day business creates space and focus to get a lot done quickly. By preparing thoroughly for your offsite meetings, you’ll guarantee that the events are productive and efficient. And by implementing these post-meeting suggestions, you’ll guarantee that the time will be well-invested, creating momentum to help get more done as your organization works toward its priorities.