The grass may or may not be greener over that famous fence but I can assure you the breakfast spread is probably better two meeting rooms down from yours. This epiphany was courtesy of getting lost in the concourse of a large hotel. As I wandered along trying to remember which tree my meeting room was named for, I stopped to inspect the contents of each congealing breakfast service and to see if I could draw any parallels between the food and the type organization in the room. Consulting firms go for yogurt and granola; banks like sausages; a chemical firm favoured Tex Mex wrapped somethings and the large law firm was doing an Egg McMarriott thing. My plate was pretty full by the time I found my own offsite next to the muffins and bagels.
What wasn’t different, sadly, was inside each of those rooms was a dozen people, fuelled by the corporate diuretics of caffeine and captivity, dutifully brainstorming and strategizing their little hearts out. Naturally, the meeting room walls were covered with giant Post-it Note paper, in turn covered in barely legible scribbles. And we all know that after a day or two of unbridled brilliance, some poor schmuck will get the job of transcribing these giant Post-it Notes into “Action Items”. The good news is, that list will probably not see the light of day and they’ll all get to do it again next quarter.
Marketers are among the worst offenders for the famous offsite. Maybe we think we’re more creative in a room with no windows, not enough air exchanges and a broken thermostat, or maybe we just don’t feel special unless we bond over the soup du jour and catch a whiteboard marker buzz. But we sure can piss away a great deal of time and money doing basically nothing for two days.
In more than 20 years of offsites, I can honestly say only a handful were worth the time. So here is my take on when, why and how to do them.
Do you really need to go offsite?
Is your workplace so distracting and devoid of food that you need to be in a hotel? Do you really think people aren’t checking their messages under the table? Maybe you just need a quiet room in the office with some pizza. And I don’t buy the BS that if you meet in the office people will go to their desks and not return. That has nothing to do with location; it’s just bad meeting management and even worse manners.
I like spas, skiing and humiliating drinking contests as much as the next person, but I really don’t see how these make a meeting more productive. People are busy. Get on with it.
Are you trying to accomplish something new?
There are really only three reasons to go offsite:
1) To help a new team bond (which is mostly code for “Hey, let’s go skiing”)
2) To solve clearly identified problems
3) To learn something new, usually from someone outside the organization. Getting the dude from Finance to come explain the balance sheet again doesn’t count.
And you only get to do one, at the most two of those.
Quarterly planning is not a reason to have an offsite
Your team should be able to write and present a quarterly plan all by itself in the normal course of things. If it can’t, locking it up for two days is not going to fix the problem.
Offsites are a lot of work to get right.
How many times have you received the agenda for an offsite the day before? The day of? How can you possibly make good use of your time if you aren’t prepared? And how many offsites have you attended where you had no idea why you were there? How many times has half the agenda gone in the trash because there wasn’t enough time? If you can’t think of a measurable goal or demonstrable outcome, don’t have the meeting. If you must have the meeting, make it someone’s job to pull the agenda together, invite the speakers, identify the goals and clearly communicate all of this at least a WEEK ahead of time.
Why you need a moderator
Even the best agenda is meaningless unless there is context, structure, order and a grown-up in the room. If you do nothing else, get a moderator to run your meeting. Their job is not to participate in the discussion but to drive it toward the stated conclusion, keep you on track, glare at people who are late or inattentive, take notes and follow up. The best moderators are people who are not part of your immediate group: someone from the training department or a consultant is usually the best bet. Pick a mean one; they’ll keep you honest and on track.
BizMarketer is written by Elizabeth Williams
I help companies have better conversations
Drop me a line at ewilliams@candlerchase.com
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Bizmarketer, this is twice in one day I comment on you. I hope you will not be overwhelmed by ennui. I know that the moderator would be glaring at me for I am easily distracted (therefore unfocused) by pointlessness.
But today’s blog overlooks what can only be an essential motivator for any such extravaganza as you describe, marketing-oriented or non. That would be the urgent requirement of being seen to have done. When midway through the quarter that ensues the offsite and the results or lack of achievement is questioned, no one can find fault with the level of effort or dollars expended only last quarter in respect of this very thing. And in this comforting notion one finds also the sweet, heady wines of postponement. Given the introspective and motivational gala we’ve only just out on, perhaps all that’s needed is a leetle more time for trickle down and another moment or so for saturation. On silken wings one can then glide to the next quarter for review, and with a low-calorie exertion gracefully extenuate yet another thus achieving an entire year of blissful nothingness.
Am I wrong?
You’re bang on there. And let us not foget the semi-annual leadership offsite where the less-than-ideal results are examined in detail so minute, the participants need to do it next to a golf course. Or, my fave, the All Hands offsite where 150 people are carved up into teams and given unlikely scenarios to solve with a candle, three paper clips and some chewing gum.
Ahhh, the last puts me in mind of a New Age verb I only encountered in the past year – (the husband says I lead a sheltered life). I set aside my fear that it will sit uneasily with your linguistic sensibilities, but I do not think it is Askhole-worthy. The verb is “to MacGyver”. The people you describe are MacGyvering. BTW, they should also have a few damp matches in their kit…..