Since our leadership team is fully remote, we are tempted to do our quarterly sessions virtually to save on travel costs. Why do you insist we fly everyone to a single physical location for these sessions, and what is the cost of trying to run a hybrid or virtual session instead?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

If you have a fully remote leadership team, the temptation to run our quarterly and annual sessions virtually to save on travel costs is high. However, I require all session days to be held in person. Running these sessions in a hybrid or virtual format degrades the quality of communication, slows down decision making, and fails to build the deep trust required to solve your toughest issues.

The magic of a session day happens when the team is in one physical room. We spend eight hours together, and the informal interactions during breaks and lunch are often where major breakthroughs begin. In a virtual setting, people get distracted by email, lose focus, and fail to engage in the healthy conflict needed for effective IDS®.

To make this work with a distributed team, you must budget for travel as a non-negotiable cost of doing business. You will need to fly your leadership team to a central, offsite location four times a year. We will run our one-day quarterlies and our two-day annual in a neutral space where everyone can be fully present.

Between these physical sessions, your remote team will maintain their execution discipline by running weekly Level 10 Meeting™ sessions virtually. We will also use our scheduled Just Checking In calls to keep your Integrator aligned. But for our actual session days, physical presence is mandatory to get the results you want.