The Off-Site Strategy Meeting Guide for Senior Managers
We get it. You think getting the team together for some time away from the day-to-day fracas will get us pumped up, focused and ready to “dig in.” Throw in a few team-bonding activities and you can basically phone in the next two quarters.
The first thought most of us have when getting your emoji-laden “save-the-date” email is, “Have I used ‘my Grandmother passed away’ once or twice?” Once we realize it’s an unavoidable part of our job to attend, we take a peek at your agenda. Clever, original, refreshing, interesting are things nobody on your team thinks as they peruse the nightmarish three days.
So, let me offer some advice to help you avoid spending all that money at that nice place your wife likes, and actually try to get something out of this time-honored cluster.
Let’s start with your agenda. I’m guessing it looks something like this:
Day 1: Arrival
6–7PM Arrival & Check-in
7–10PM Cocktails, social time and a special guest speaker to get you fired up! This is a team activity — we expect everyone to participate!
10PM That’s a wrap on Day 1!! — (Let’s all get a good night’s sleep and be ready to lean in hard in the morning!)
Day 2:
7–8AM Breakfast
8–11:30AM General session #1
11:30–12PM Bio break/email check
12–12:30 Lunch
12:30–4 Breakout Sessions (1–6, rotation through each)
4–5:30PM Presentation Skills Training!!!
5:30–7PM Personal Time
7–10PM Dinner, followed by special guest speaker Jim Swanson, VP Strategy TechCo, Inc.
Day 3:
7–8AM Breakfast
8–11AM General session: Reach for the Stars! Motivation for your Team
11–1PM Breakout sessions, deep dive (Pursue Your Passion!)
1–2PM General session: Wrap Up, Final Thoughts
Look about right? I thought so.
Let me break this shit-show down and help you avoid being stabbed in the parking lot. First, on day 1… Listen, everything after “Cocktails” on the agenda is a complete waste of time. I’m pounding vodka tonics at an Olympic pace with a single goal of blacking out, hopefully before the special guest starts bloviating about pulling on a rope or something. Also, examine what’s wrong in your life that you need to use so many exclamation points. None of this is exciting, except the cocktails, and you didn’t have the fucking good sense to punctuate that correctly. Finally, nobody is going to bed except eager-faced Kim who is so nervous and excited about her presentation tomorrow she peed a little on her way back to her room. The rest of us are going to see if we can cause some trouble at the hotel bar. Spoiler — we can.
How to Improve Day 1: You started out great, you did. Now kill everything after cocktails, keep the booze flowing till at least midnight, or like babies we all just exhaust ourselves. This way, you’ll know where we are and trust me, unless the motivational speaker is one of those carnival cash grab machines, nobody wants to participate and ain’t none of us getting fired up.
Day 2. Breakfast? Are you shitting me? I can barely keep down the fragments of a cracked tooth. The three-and-a-half-hour festival of presentations you’ve got lined up is perfect. We can all pretty much nod off while your all-star cast of “experts” regales us by reading a pile of PowerPoint slides, all using 7-point type. This is all a blur… the slides are a blur, the talking is a blur. The only nods you see in the room are from the new, overly enthusiastic additions to the management team. They have absolutely no idea what the fuck is going on or what they are saying yes to. You could be initiating them into a death cult and get the same vacuous agreement.
Moving on… don’t ever write, say or think “bio break.” There is no need for anyone to check email. Spare those of us who actually do most of the work from watching these self-important suck-ups pretend they’ve got oh just tons of urgent emails… bite me. Their people back home are so fucking happy they get a few hours away from the relentless barrage of stupid questions, there is no way they are initiating contact. Ninety percent of whatever they’re staring at is complete bullshit. Guaranteed.
At lunch we all consider entering a formal complaint with HR that you’re only giving us a half hour to eat (so we can stay on track!). But the buffet food is so shitty and the kiwi-lemonade iced tea so off-putting, we lose our gusto, grab a chocolate chip cookie and head back in for the afternoon.
Everyone has to shit, but nobody can.
Breakout sessions are horrible, so here’s what we do. You, because you’re important, are going to “float” between all the breakouts to really get a pulse on the action. As you dip in, like shape-shifters we transform into the super-engaged. We throw ideas on the white board, raise good points, “parking lot” a few things and agree with whatever someone else says — the nodding is really the hardest part to maintain for the full five minutes you’re in there with us. Once you leave, we collectively exhale, recline in our chairs like we just lost all muscle control and don’t make eye contact with one another — this lasts until it’s time to change rooms, or your come back. We all know what we just did — but we all accepted we’d have to get dirty if we were going to survive. This is probably the closest we’ll come to bonding as a team the entire off-site.
Now that we’re exhausted from faking our way through most of the day, you think it’s a good time for some training. Poor bastard who took the training gig thought he was going to be up in front of people that wanted to learn. Nope. What this poor fellow gets is an angry, tired, constipated mob. We’re not assholes, so we indulge, suffer through and throw all the training materials in the trash as soon as we get back to the room. Not for nothing, but I don’t even know where I’d play a CD that I WANTED to watch.
The personal time at the end of the day consists of trying not to fall asleep and/or pre-gaming for tonight’s buffet with any kind of laxative that might unleash the growler that has impacted itself inside each of us.
On to dinner. Oh look! We get to CHOOSE! Chicken breast or salmon. And what’s this? Mixed veggies AND rolls? No fucking way! And do my eyes deceive me or are those tiny tarts for dessert. I love this place. As we eat, conversation turns to how amazed we are with the fact that we can keep shoving this shit in, but nothing ever productive comes out. It gets all too meta when we realize we’re not talking about the food and we quietly take tiny bites from our tiny tarts and once again avoid eye contact. We do notice Paul has like 8 tiny tarts. Jesus Paul, get out much?
Now that we’ve got a full bloat going, Jim from TechCo hits the mic. You thought it would be good for us to hear from someone in our industry who has faced some of the challenges we’re now facing. Was this guy like a pre-school teacher or a camp counselor, or maybe in crisis management — because that would actually help this team. Nope, he’s just a douche management buddy of yours who goes on way too fucking long about what a hero he is and how if we do what he did, it’ll all work out great. Doesn’t matter that almost none of the circumstances are remotely the same, but let’s give Jim a big round of applause. Fuck Jim.
Dinner is over and only the truly hardcore alcoholics are up for another night out. The rest of us just want to please-for-the-love-of-god take a meaningful dump and go to bed.
How to Improve Day 2: Kill everything after lunch and give us vouchers for local bars and restaurants. We HAVE to get out of this place! The pattern on the carpet in the Conference Center is making us all insane and the smell of boiled asparagus permeates everything. Don’t bring in outside speakers that are at the same level as your team. Everyone wanted Jim to fail, we did. We hated his guts — nothing personal mind you — because he isn’t one of us and he’s looking down his nose. Outside of the over-reliance on Ex-Lax, hating Jim was the only other common experience we all shared. I guess it was team bonding in a sense — probably not what you intended.
Finally, day 3. We can see the light. Nobody is showing up for breakfast, but there is quite a buzz around the coffee station as Lisa proudly shares her tale of conquering the “black mud beast” that had holed up inside her for the past two-and-half days. Yep, about 2:30AM as she tell it. Her story brings hope to the rest of the group.
Day three of any off-site is pretty hazy, but as I recall anything involving movement is unwelcome. We’re in full-depletion at this point. Nothing productive is going to happen today. But nevertheless your agenda says we’ve got to press on and maximize our time together. So, we go through the motions, one eye on the clock. And even though you’ve scheduled an hour to deliver your final thoughts, not even you have more than about 15 minutes in you. Take notice of the people packing their bags, slipping out to “catch a flight” or perhaps taming their own black mud beast as you ramble on… Cutting the day short at this point makes you a God.
How to Improve Day 3: No Day 3. Just stop it.
Finally, resist if you can, sending the follow-up email with how great the off-site was for everyone. We’ll pretend none of this actually happened if you will. And, to be honest, some shit went down that’s better left unsaid. Did Mark and Coleen get naked in the hotel hot tub? Nobody is saying they did, just that you can’t un-see that kind of Midwestern whiteness. Did Skip try to break into the little store in the lobby at 3:48AM? That’s what the surveillance tape would have you believe. No, the off-site should remain off-site and out of mind. And let’s agree you won’t ask about my expense report.
Hope that helps.
