When we hold our quarterly leadership team offsites, my executives are constantly distracted by their phones, answering Slack messages, and putting out fires back at the office. How do we keep the team focused on strategic planning instead of daily operations?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When your leadership team brings daily operational fires into a quarterly offsite, you lose the high-level perspective needed to scale the company. You cannot build a healthy, cohesive leadership team if half the room is mentally checked out.

To solve this, you must establish strict ground rules before the session starts. Implement a strict technology boundary. All laptops and tablets must remain closed, and phones must be placed in a basket in the center of the room.

Schedule dedicated, structured breaks every ninety minutes. Inform your team that these ten-minute windows are the only times they are allowed to check messages or call their departments. Let them know that the rest of their teams should expect them to be entirely unavailable except during those times.

As the leader, you must model this behavior. If you break the rule, your team will follow.

Use the quarterly agenda to drive focus. If an operational issue or a specific daily fire is brought up, immediately move it to the IDS® list. If it does not belong on a strategic quarterly level, push it down to a weekly Level 10 Meeting™ instead. Keeping the focus on long-term planning, team health, and major Rocks will force your executives to shift their brains from tactical fires to strategic leadership.