Tag Archives: annual strategy offsite

Manage to Lead, Operations

Will you make sure you and your team accomplish the most important thing in the coming year?

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Leadership Offsites focus the top team for growth and performance as the current year closes and the next one starts. Offsites are typically of two types:

  • Plan Change – Identify what needs to be done differently to perform better and / or grow faster.
  • Initiative-to-Action – Launch the most important initiative(s).

Kurt Lewin, the father of Organization Dynamics, taught that change happens in three stages: Unfreeze, Change, Refreeze.

John Kotter studied over one thousand initiatives to identify eight reasons change fails to happen as intended.

IntelliVen Manage to Lead System Modules integrate Lewin and Kotter insights to help leaders conceive and implement Planned Change as suggested in the figure below.

1. Collect Insights

IntelliVen Offsites (circled in the figure) start with an electronic survey and one-on-one interviews with top team members to gain insight into how the organization functions as a whole, and / or in the context of the single, most important initiative, with these questions:

  • How are things today?
  • What good things happen if we change and what bad things happen if we do not?
  • How would things be if the ideal change were successfully implemented?
  • What needs to be done to go from where we are today to where things would ideally be next?
  • What will make it hard to do what needs to be done?

2. Share Insights with Leader

We organize collected data for the Leader and:

  • Highlight important and surprising findings.
  • Prepare to share it with the full team.
  • Help the leader prepare to articulate Where the Organization has Been, Where it is Now, and Where it is Headed to capitalize on the opportunity afforded by the offsite for the Leader to Set Direction, Align Resources, and Motivate Action.

3. Facilitate Team Offsite

At the offsite, IntelliVen Senior Operating Partners guide the Leader and Team to review insights, align to reach consensus on each of the five topics, and to decide what needs to be done using the workplans and facilitation approaches described here:

Next Step

Schedule a Zoom session with PeterD to explore how IntelliVen Senior Operating Partners can help you and your team wrap up this year and get ready for the next as we have so successfully with many others over the years.

SEE ALSO

Do & Review, Manage to Lead, People Matters

How to Run a Great Annual Leadership Team Offsite Meeting.

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Most leaders find it difficult to adequately prepare— assuming they even know how — to facilitate a high-powered, executive offsite. The truth is that it is nearly impossible for a leader to facilitate and participate in, let alone also lead, their own offsite. A better strategy is to hire experts who use proven approaches, tools, and methods to prepare and facilitate a great annual leadership team offsite meeting.

The ten tips and resource links below will help the thoughtful leader to get out in-front of the planning process and make clear to the board, top team, and employees that the organization is in good hands and well-led.

Plan the Plan

  • Inform the board and the management team that it is time to work on plans for the coming year.
  • The management team can be as small as three to five members or as many as 15 to 20.
  • If there are more than seven, pick three to five to serve as an executive committee.
  • Prepare a time-line of steps, outputs, and review points.
  • Assign a process leader who will manage planning as a project.
  • Schedule offsite session and line up facilities and facilitation support.

  See details on leadership team strategy and planning sessions. 

Continue reading How to Run a Great Annual Leadership Team Offsite Meeting. →