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:

• Plan Change

• Initiative-to-Action

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

• Annual Processes — A road map for annual processes every business needs
• Annual Planning Offsite POAD — A detailed guide to planning an annual offsite
• How to Run an Annual Planning Offsite  — Additional annual planning offsite guidance