Our annual leadership team offsite is approaching, but our past sessions have been derailed because we spend too much time arguing about current operational fires instead of building our multi year strategy. How do we structure our annual planning offsite to ensure we actually focus on the long term vision and our 3 Year Picture?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

It is very common for annual planning offsites to devolve into a series of debates about immediate tactical issues. When this happens, you lose the valuable strategic altitude needed to align your team for the coming year. To prevent your annual offsite from getting bogged down in daily fires, you must strictly segregate your issues. Before the session, have your team submit all their current challenges. As the facilitator, you must ruthlessly sort these issues. Anything that can be resolved in a weekly Level 10 Meeting™ or during a quarterly session must be pushed out of the annual agenda. During the annual offsite, your primary objective is to review and refine your V/TO® and build your 3-Year Picture and 1-Year Plan. Keep the focus on where the business is going, not where it is stuck today. When tactical issues arise during the meeting, place them on a separate parking lot list. You can address them during the IDS® portion of the agenda only after your long-term goals are locked in. If your team struggles to stay out of the weeds, it is often a sign that your regular weekly meetings are not resolving issues effectively, leaving a backlog of unresolved pain. Focus on mastering the IDS® process in your weekly meetings throughout the year so your annual offsite can remain truly strategic, focused on high-level direction, structure, and alignment.