If you want to get better at rope climbing, then take your executives off to one of those “team building” style meetings. The sessions can sometimes be fun, but rarely meaningful past a few Instagram’s of leaders caught in embarrassing moments.

Business planning, strategic sessions and project plans all have one thing in common- they have an increasingly short relevance and viability in today’s markets. A new approach- focused on value, adaptability and sustained results for all stakeholders – must be considered.

Perhaps you’ve decided to meet as an executive or departmental team to recast or update your strategy for the year. Now, the key question- how do you design an effective, engaging session given the urgency and need for insightful and quantifiable outcomes?

The most effective outcomes from these strategic action meetings are met by reaching a unified mindset about where to go, when to go, and how to get there. That means going into your strategy session prepared to leave the experience with a cohesive team, a clear understanding of the external landscape and a reality check about the organization’s internal capabilities to execute the plans you develop.

Here are 7 “next” practices for a better strategic planning/executive retreat:

1. Define the purpose and key outcomes

Yogi Berra, one of baseball’s greatest heroes, once said, “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” The same principle applies to your strategic planning, as well: You need to know where you are going by defining your purpose in order for you to achieve the results you want. It is wise, however, to narrow down your purpose to the 3 to 5 most important issues that your company needs to resolve. This will allow you to focus on the things that truly matter and prevent you from being sidetracked or overwhelmed.

The purpose and outcomes of the meeting must be clearly outlined well in advance of the meeting. What is the “burning platform” or market imperative that drives this need for an offsite? Finally, a cross representation of your key leadership should be part of the offsite purpose and agenda planning to finalize scope, length and final participants.

2. Use an internal or external facilitator?

Once you have identified the need to do a strategic planning meeting with your executive team, it is important to decide whether or not to engage an external adviser to facilitate the meeting.

Internal (employee) facilitators often have an advantage of knowing the company and key players well, but may not have the position power, be limited politically and/or have a limited strategic skill set. Even if they have all three attributes, many internal experts often prefer to remain neutral and be part of the offsite experience as opposed to facilitating it.

You may instead want the objectivity of a professional strategic adviser to keep the meeting moving forward, overcome conflicts, and recognize/help the group pivot when necessary. A good facilitator not only knows strategic planning, but they know how to manage the session “flow”, group dynamics, energy levels and when to limit or extend strategic discussions.

3. Lay a solid foundation – participant pre-session input

Pat McNellis, author of “The Compression Planning Advantage: a Blueprint for Resolving Complex Issues”, shared that his secret formula in ensuring the success of executive retreats they have planned for their clients is to ensure that the stage is set and the foundation is laid down properly. By this he means talking to the participants and making them understand fully the purpose of the retreat. By laying down the foundation, your participants are well-prepared leading to a more meaningful interaction.

It is an effective practice to send the offsite agenda days, if not weeks in advance of the scheduled retreat. The program should contain a comprehensive list of topics to be discussed as well as a brief on external speakers. Feedback should be solicited from all members who will participate. The feedback is often gathered in a pre-offsite interview with the session facilitator and can be structured as a confidential conversation to ensure maximum candor concerning both business and team effectiveness issues.

4. Limit presentations and topic conversations- build an “emotional arc”

Strategic planning sessions and executive retreats are meant to be an avenue for collaboration among the member of your executive team in your pursuit to achieve a purpose. Hence, limit the number of formal, elaborate PPT presentations during the retreat to allow more time for your participants to share their insights and exchange ideas with each other.

Just like a stage play, a retreat should have an emotional arc. Typically, you would want to have a lower level of emotional engagement in the early stages as the issues and environment are explored, building to a fully engaged, passionate discussion of the issues and potential solutions as key strategic initiatives are identified. At the end of the retreat, participants should feel energized and ready to act vs. beaten down by an overcooked agenda, or rehash of past failures.

5. Location. Location. Location.

This tactical consideration is equally important to choosing your facilitators and purpose. The venue should be one that would inspire and potentially expand the thought process of your participants. It should be a place that is structured for focused discussions and will encourage a free exchange of ideas.

Robert O. Sanders Jr., general manager of meetings and events at Ovation Corporate Travel, shares that the key in organizing meetings for C-Level employees is in ensuring that the venue chosen is a place that is “conducive to get things done.” Hence he suggests small boutique-type hotels over mainstream hotels as they provide the privacy needed for this type of meetings.

An even better option is to conduct the session in another company’s office. The experience of being in someone else’s culture and operations can create new insights- particularly if the company is in a completely different industry sector.

6. Secure stakeholder commitment

Changes and new strategic directions developed during the strategic planning session often give birth to several potential risks. You and your executives must be on the same page on how you will manage all the risks that comes with the changes. The participants of your strategic planning session are your best project leaders and champions in implementing and communicating the changes. Therefore, before you end the strategic planning meeting, an essential step is to secure the commitment of your management team in adopting the changes agreed upon during the sessions. We have seen several CEOs literally extend a session until they were sure that they had a unified mindset among all team members to the mission, vision and key strategic initiatives developed during the retreat.

7. Share the outcome

Your employees are both your most important stakeholders and

have the greatest impact on whether your strategy will work or be yet another rope climbing exercise (some might argue that the market/customer response is more important, but it is employees who must first execute, not

the market). A well-crafted communications plan – for both internal and external audiences – should be developed as a part of the strategic planning process. This is where a finely tuned series of “line-of-sight” communications stressing value to not only company success but also individual/team employee success is critical.

Our stakeholder alignment subsidiary, ALLIGN, has for years used visual business maps to help communicate complex business strategy via simple yet powerful interactive “maps” of company strategy. Bottom line, the immediacy of communication is essential- absent information, people who were outside of your strategic planning process will generally conjecture and/or assume the worst.

Does all this sound intuitive? Our experience with hundreds of companies says NO. Most often, we’ve observed strategy meetings that wind up all talk with limited results, or produce elaborate project plans with little buy-in or momentum.

By using these 7 key steps, you can help ensure a more successful strategy meeting and engaged, sustained implementation of the resulting plans of action. For more information and tips on the actual session structure, we invite you to contact our team at info@enpinstitute.com or 888.857.9722 www.scotthamiltonnext.com