How to avoid messing up your next company retreat

When the moment comes to share a corporate strategy with employees, executives using old thinking often make a series of common errors.

Fortunately, new tools are available that fix the problem, make the task easier, and leave their staff inspired, motivated and respected. Here are a few of the errors I have seen, and some remedies that work.

Error No 1: To under-share meaning

Oftentimes executives overestimate the competitive importance of their plans and, in their fear of keeping them out of the hands of their competitors, they conceal critical aspects of the plan from their staff. They convince themselves that there are corporate spies around every corner, and resort to cryptic language that leave employees confused. The only remedy here is to be bold, and trust that the benefits of participation outweigh the costs of exclusion.

Error No 2: To over-rely on insider lingo

Unlike their employees, managers are often the holders of advanced degrees in management. The conversation in a planning retreat can become complex as managers' combine their best thinking in order to build a plan. Unfortunately, those who don't have the same educational background, and missed out on the deliberations are at a tremendous disadvantage. When the weekend is summarised for them in five to 10 PowerPoint slides little of it makes sense and none of it gets implemented. Good presentations are geared for the average listener, not the most advanced.

Error No 3: Putting together a grab-bag strategic plan

As a child, I remember grab-bags being passed around at Christmas time. A crocus bag was filled with small gifts and passed from one person to another. When your turn came, you had to feel around in the bag for a single gift that became yours once it was removed. Each item was randomly thrown into the bag without rhyme or reason, unconnected to the other gifts.

Too many companies assemble 'grab-bag strategic plans' that are little more than a list of random ideas. They aren't related or connected to each other, and when placed together they fail to tell a coherent story, or articulate a unified theme.

Why does this happen? In many management teams, it's easier to say 'yes' to everyone's pet strategy, than it is to force a choice between competing ideas. Many senior management teams avoid conflict wherever possible, producing retreats in which politeness is valued over the truth.

Employees who are subjected to such data-dumps are often stunned into silence. After hearing the presentation they are no better informed than before, and return to their cubicles as they left them.

The solution is to encourage hard conversations during the retreat.

Error No 4: Using only words

Strategic plans that are written in 100 pages of pompous prose are failures before the first page is printed. No one, not even its authors, can bear the thought of opening it to read its contents a mere week after it's sent out for comment. The team may have spent a great deal of time coming up with the ideas contained in the document, but its unwieldy existence and deadening presentation prevent any of the tactics from making it off the page.

Fortunately, the strategy mapping technique developed by Kaplan and Norton can be combined with a facilitated consensus to prevent all the errors listed above. Their technique can be used to draft a computer-generated map in real time that lays out a company's strategic plan, showing clearly the critical cause and effect links. Producing such a document requires the interaction of the entire team at just the right level of detail.

The final outcome is not only a group product, but a map that illustrates a strategic story that includes assumptions, challenges being faced and a pathway for the future - something any employee can understand with a few minutes of explanation.

It helps maximise the time and expense of any corporate retreat, while building the beginnings of a balanced scorecard.

This makes it an elegant solution, and in its 10 years of existence, I have seen teams use it as the most important tool for engaging employees in the fulfilment of a firm's strategic plan.

Francis Wade is a management consultant and the author of the One Page Digest.francis@fwconsulting.com