Our leadership team works entirely remote across three time zones. How should we adapt our EOS quarterly offsite rhythm when flying in every quarter feels cost-prohibitive or disruptive?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

You cannot run an effective, high-traction business without in-person leadership offsites. While weekly Level 10 Meetings thrive on video calls, quarterly and annual planning sessions demand the human nuances of physical presence. Vulnerability-based trust, deep ideological debate during IDS, and body language cues break down over video screens.

If budget or logistics make quarterly travel tough, adopt a hybrid offsite rhythm. Hold your two-day Annual Planning and your mid-year Q2 session fully in person at a central location. For Q1 and Q3, conduct virtual offsites, but treat them with extreme operational discipline.

Virtual offsites must not run as eight-hour video marathons. Split the session into two consecutive four-hour half-days to avoid cognitive fatigue. Enforce hard ground rules: cameras turned on, Slack and email closed, no multi-tasking, and microphones unmuted.

When you do meet in person twice a year, protect that investment ruthlessly. Spend zero time reviewing departmental slide decks. Focus exclusively on strategic alignment around the V/TO, Scorecard health, and clearing deep systemic Issues. Team health is built through shared struggle and unstructured conversations over dinner, which remote software cannot replicate. If you want a leadership team that operates as a single cohesive unit rather than disconnected functional silos, in-person offsites are an essential investment, not an optional overhead cost.