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What Makes a Great Executive Retreat

• Elisa Farri

Three strategies to ensure yours isn’t an expensive waste of time.

After a two-year hiatus, the annual executive retreat is making a comeback. In theory, the CEO gathers company executives off-site to focus on strategy, and the team returns with clear goals and a sense of camaraderie. In reality, wall-to-wall PowerPoint presentations are often the order of the day. Information flows in one direction, followed by improvised, open-mic Q&As. Executives fight for their individual fiefdoms. Teamwork is often notable by its absence. The ultimate output is a list of ambiguous messages that are scarcely actionable and rarely followed up. In short, retreats are often an expensive waste of time. The author presents a more creative approach CEOs can take to make the most of this annual opportunity with their executive teams.

The executive retreat, a well-established corporate staple, is making a comeback after more than two years of virtual gatherings. The traditional format is simple: The CEO takes the company’s executive leaders away from the office for a day or two of debate and strategic contemplation. The team returns with a clear idea of what they’re doing and a renewed sense of working as a team with their colleagues.

• Elisa Farri is vice president, co-lead of  Capgemini Invent’s Management Lab , and Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2023. She is the co-author of the forthcoming book HBR Guide to Generative AI for Managers .

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On Purpose Leadership & Strategic Planning

The CEO’s Guide to Strategic Planning Retreats That Get Results: PART 1

Purposeful strategic planning is critical to the success of any organization. as a leader, the most important activity of your position it so set and achieve your organization’s annual strategic plan., this three-part series is designed to give you a step-by-step framework for planning, executing and debriefing your strategic planning retreat to ensure maximum results., part i: what to do before your annual retreat.

First, we begin by outlining the key things you need to do before your retreat, so you can get your team onboard and create a powerful strategic plan.

According to Insights 2020 research, organizations that “over-perform” in terms of revenue growth link everything that they do to a clearly defined purpose. When your team members share a powerful purpose, they become more collaborative and creative. This will help you stand out from your competitors, reach your goals and drive revenue.

One of the best opportunities to align your team around a shared purpose is during your annual strategic planning retreat. Giving your teams time to step away from their day-to-day routines allows them to focus on the big picture and how they contribute to the overall purpose and mission of the organization.

Some leaders are skeptical about the strategic planning process, considering it a waste of time or boring at the very least. It doesn’t have to be this way.

If you create a strategic planning process that centers around the unique needs of your organization and is structured so that all team members participate in the construction of the plan, it can produce exceptional results.

Here are seven things to do before your retreat to put your organization on the path to success:

1. decide if you want to create a team strategic plan.

As a leader, you have two options for creating a strategic plan:

• Create one yourself
• Develop one as a team

Creating a plan yourself may be appropriate during crisis or turnaround situations. However, in most cases the more powerful approach is to develop a plan with your team – harnessing their passion, input, knowledge, and power.

Developing a plan is an engaging team process. Creating a strategic plan that aligns organizational and individual purpose is extremely powerful. It gets everyone into alignment and gets them inspired about achieving shared goals.

2. Conduct market and team research

To make it to the finish line, you must know where you’re starting from. Conduct research before your strategic planning retreat to understand what’s going in your industry, with your customers, and in your company.

For example, you can:

• Determine if your organization is on purpose or off course.
• Collect market data on what your customers are thinking and what they want.
• Research what external factors are impacting your market.
• Conduct an employee audit or survey to gain an even better understanding of your organization’s culture and morale.
• Perform financial forecasting and look at the implications of different options.
• Identify potential growth opportunities.

3. Pick a date

The best time for a strategic planning retreat differs for every organization. Plan your retreat during a slow period, when sending your leadership team out of the office will have the least impact on your operations. Pick a date that gives your team time to ramp up for the next cycle or season. Although the summer months tend to be slower, they may not be the best time for a retreat if much of your staff is on vacation.

Many organizations try to cram their retreat into two days. While doing it in two days is better than not doing it at all, in many cases, this tight timeframe won’t always give your team room to think creatively. Try to get away for several days and incorporate some relaxing and team building activities into the agenda. This allows your team to build relationships with one another, as well as be more productive and creative during your planning sessions.

4. Determine whom to invite

Invite a cross-section of your organization – from veterans to rookies – to your strategic planning retreat. Include people from different parts of the organization, especially those who interact with customers.

For example, you can consider inviting:

• The core people you need to execute your strategic plan
• Senior executives
• Board members and/or advisors
• Key customers who can share their experiences
• New team members, as the retreat will get them up to speed quickly and allow them to develop rapport with their colleagues
• 1-2 potential future leaders who could gain valuable experience at the retreat

Try to limit the group to 15 people. Going beyond this number can hinder the free-flow of ideas.

5. Pick a location

It’s vital to get out of the office – and away from distractions – during your strategic planning retreat. Picking a scenic environment with unique activities will make your retreat memorable and boost team spirit. It’s also a reward for asking your team to leave their homes for an extended period.

Make sure your venue has good catering and meeting facilities. But don’t pick a venue that is too formal, as a stuffy setting will reduce collaboration and participation.

6. Plan your agenda

Create an agenda and share it with your team at least one week in advance. This gives them time to pull together information before the retreat and prepare for the various activities. Your agenda should be somewhat flexible in terms of topics and timelines. Don’t try to cram in too many topics, as you likely won’t get through everything.

Here are some key topics that will help you build an on-purpose strategic plan:

• WHY: Develop or reaffirm your core philosophy, or “why” you exist. What is your mission? What are your core values?
• WHAT: Discuss “what” your organization’s goals are for the coming year.
• HOW: Plan “how” you will executive your strategic plan. What are your timelines? Who will be responsible for what?

7. Hire a facilitator

It’s always best to to engage a third-party facilitator for your strategic planning retreat. An internal team member will always have biases that impact your planning. And when the leader tries to moderate a planning session, they often unintentionally shut down their team. After all, no one wants to argue with the boss!

Your team will feel more comfortable contributing with the help of a neutral third-party facilitator. The more they open up, the more insights you will gain about how you can improve your organization and drive results.

Find a facilitator you trust – one with the right amount of experience to guide your team through this complex maze. Look for someone who inspires your team but is modest enough to step back and let you and your team take the credit. Your facilitator should also be prepared to challenge your leader and team to be their best … but not in a threatening or overpowering manner.

What you do before your strategic planning retreat has a huge impact on your results. It’s vital to get your team excited about the planning process, as this will align everyone around a shared vision and help you achieve your goals.

Stay tuned for the next article in this series, where we will share strategies for running your planning retreat and how to follow up after the retreat to ensure your ongoing success.

Related posts:.

• 5 Keys to Building a Strategic Plan That Fuels Growth
• The CEO’s Guide to Strategic Planning Retreats That Get Results: PART 3
• The CEO’s Guide to Strategic Planning Retreats That Get Results: PART 2
• The #1 Mistake That’s Ruining Your Strategic Plan

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How to plan a company retreat: your complete step-by-step guide.

Planning a company getaway? Here’s your complete step-by-step guide on how to plan an awesome corporate retreat in 2022.

A company retreat is a great way to break up the usual routine and get colleagues together in a fresh environment. It’s the ideal setting for team bonding, thinking outside the box, and tackling challenges with creativity. 

Sounds great, right? But how do you make sure your retreat is actually enjoyable and not just another corporate event your employees or clients have to attend?

We’ll show you how. In this guide, you’ll learn:

• What exactly is a company retreat, and what are the benefits of having one?
• How to plan an awesome company retreat (9 steps & best practices)

We’ve also included a 10th bonus tip at the end, so keep an eye out for that. 

Ready to plan a company retreat to remember? Let’s go.

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What is a company retreat and why should you run one?

A company or corporate retreat (sometimes referred to as an “offsite”) is an event which takes employees out of the usual working environment. It can last a day, a few days, or even five—it all depends on the nature of the retreat and where it’s held. 

Whether you hold your company retreat in the same country, somewhere abroad, or online, it’s essential that it takes place away from the office or wherever your employees typically work. It’s a retreat, after all—not a meeting. 

There are many different reasons you might plan a company retreat. Perhaps you want to facilitate team bonding and collaboration, or maybe you want to provide some kind of training. Perhaps you want to get colleagues together to solve a particular problem. A corporate retreat can serve many purposes; it’s up to you to define the goal and plan the agenda accordingly. 

What are the benefits of a company retreat?

The major benefit of a company retreat is that it takes place in a fresh, new environment. This allows people to step away from day-to-day operations and routines, encouraging them to embrace new perspectives and think outside the box.

At the same time, being away from the usual business setting can help colleagues get to know each other better, build empathy, and generally create a stronger bond. This has benefits for teamwork, communication, and team morale. 

If planned and executed well, a company retreat is a great opportunity to problem-solve, innovate, learn, strengthen relationships, and boost productivity beyond the event itself. All good things, right? 

Onsite vs. virtual retreats: Which should you go for?

Remote work has become the norm across many sectors, so you might be wondering what this means for your company retreat. Should you opt for an in-person getaway or keep it virtual? 

Aside from considerations like budget and any Covid-19 restrictions in your area (or your desired destination), factor in the needs and preferences of your employees/colleagues/client, as well as the goals of the company retreat. 

Are people keen on the idea of traveling and meeting in person, or would they feel more comfortable with a virtual retreat? What do you hope to achieve from the retreat, and how might a virtual retreat vs. an in-person gathering impact that outcome? 

Ultimately, you want people to feel comfortable while still benefiting from the change of scenery that a company retreat typically provides. It may be harder to achieve this “away from the norm” vibe with a virtual retreat—there’s a risk that it’ll end up feeling like any other remote meeting or workshop . But, with careful planning, it’s certainly possible. 

If you do opt for a virtual retreat, take extra care to differentiate it from everyday meetings—for example, by using different software, setting up breakout rooms, and putting on some out-of-the-ordinary activities. 

Whether you’re running an in-person retreat or a virtual event, it requires meticulous planning. You want it to be memorable for all the right reasons! So, without further ado, let’s take a look at how you can plan an awesome, unforgettable company retreat. 

Note: We’ve written our guide with in-person retreats in mind, but all of the steps and best practices provided can easily be applied to virtual retreats, too. 

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How to plan an awesome company retreat: 9 steps & best practices, 1. plan the company retreat with a clear goal in mind.

The very first step is to define a clear goal for your company retreat. What do you want to have achieved by the end of the retreat? What should people (and the company) get out of it? 

If you already have a clear goal in mind, you’re off to a strong start. This will be your northern star as you design and plan the retreat. 

If you don’t yet have a specific purpose for your retreat, no worries! Now’s the time to figure it out. Consider the following:

• Is there a problem you want to get together and solve? For example, defining company values, coming up with the direction for a new product, feature, or campaign, or setting goals for the upcoming quarter.
• Is there an aspect of company culture that needs improving or nurturing? This could be anything from fostering better communication to creating a more inclusive, psychologically safe workplace.
• Do you want to use the retreat as an opportunity to offer training in a certain area? For example, perhaps you have lots of recently-promoted managers and team leads who could benefit from management training (or something similar).
• Do you want to focus the company retreat on celebrating achievements and boosting morale?

As you can see, corporate retreats can be tied to all kinds of goals. Just make sure you know what your goal is before you start planning—and don’t hesitate to get input from others, too. 

2. Find the perfect location for your company retreat

Ok, perfect is maybe too strong a word, but you want to get as close as possible when choosing the location for your company retreat. 

The surroundings will really set the tone for the retreat, so it’s important to find a setting that not only allows for the kinds of activities you want to run, but also gives a bit of a “Wow” factor. Think nature, waterside, luxury, historical, or unique—or all of those things combined! 

The best retreat locations encourage people to relax and explore during their free time, and offer ample opportunity for socializing and spending time alone. When considering a venue or location, think about where people will sleep, what facilities are available for work and recreation, and what food options are available. 

You’ll also want to make sure the location isn’t too difficult to get to (especially if you’re expecting people to find their own way there). The perfect location might not be so great if you have to travel 10 hours by bus to get there. 

If you’re planning a virtual retreat, think about location in terms of what software and tools people will use to congregate, as well as how you can set it up to feel different from a standard meeting. 

3. Don’t overpack the agenda—leave room for work and play

Just as you’d write an agenda for a workshop or meeting , it’s important to have an itinerary for your company retreat. However, the sole focus shouldn’t be on maximizing productivity or cramming in as many activities as possible. 

Workshops and group sessions are great, and you’ll need them to move towards your goals. However, they can be exhausting. If you schedule too many organized sessions, all people will want to do at the end of the day is lay down alone in a dark room. 

So: Plan your itinerary carefully. Include essential workshops and group sessions, and leave plenty of space for organic team building and downtime, too. Aim for a balance and ensure people have enough time, energy, and flexibility to grab a coffee with a colleague, go for a nice walk, or have a swim at their own leisure. 

4. Build fun into the agenda

The best company retreats are those where people feel comfortable and relaxed. Hopefully, your chosen location will go some way to putting people at ease and getting them in holiday mode. 

Beyond that, put on some activities that are purely for fun—and, in doing this, remember that “fun” means different things to different people. Steer away from the clichéd raft building and “trust fall” exercises, and instead consider what people might actually enjoy doing. 

What you go for will depend on your location, but some of our favorite activities include:

• Group bike rides or walks
• A guided tour around the local city or town
• A quiz or game night
• A wine tasting

Plan a variety of activities that will appeal to as many people as possible, and make sure there are options that are accessible for everyone. In fact, that brings us to our next point…

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5. plan a corporate retreat that caters to everyone.

Some people will be thrilled at the thought of attending a company retreat. Others will feel a little nervous about being out of their usual surroundings. Some people will want to socialize the entire time, while others will need plenty of space to recharge their batteries. 

Not everyone will eat the same foods or follow a similar diet, and not everyone will drink alcohol. Not everyone will want or be able to take part in physical activities. 

Everyone will have different needs, and everyone should be given equal opportunity to take part in, and enjoy, your company retreat. Plan your retreat with inclusivity and accessibility at the forefront. Ensure everyone has sufficient food options, and that your planned activities don’t risk excluding certain people or making them uncomfortable. 

6. Communicate the plan (and expectations) ahead of time

If there’s one thing a company retreat does well, it’s taking people out of their comfort zone. This can work wonders for creativity, innovation, problem-solving , and team bonding. In the lead-up, it may also create some anxiety. 

You can alleviate any pre-retreat anxiety by communicating early and clearly. This requires you to plan well ahead of time and keep people in the loop as to what they can expect from the retreat. 

People will want to know:

• The exact dates and location of the retreat
• What kind of accommodation will be provided
• How to get to the retreat (is transportation provided?)
• The purpose of the retreat and what the expected outcomes will be 
• If there’s anything they need to prepare in advance
• The agenda/itinerary 
• Whether they will be expected to answer work emails and perform day-to-day operational tasks during the retreat

The more you can communicate ahead of time, the more at ease people will feel. This sets a great tone for a relaxed, productive, and enjoyable company retreat. 

7. Work with an expert facilitator

If you want to ensure a successful team retreat, it’s worth hiring a professional facilitator. Facilitators are trained to lead productive workshops and meetings. They’re experts at handling conflict, teasing out the pain-points, and guiding people towards a solution. 

There are many benefits of working with an external facilitator. For one, they’re not involved in team dynamics or office politics, so they can address problems and challenges from a different perspective—and help others to do so, too. At the same time, people often find it easier to be open with a stranger; if it’s a manager or leader running the session, they may be more wary of what they do and say. 

An expert facilitator will enable effective, solution-focused discussions, and equip your team with new ways of working that they can take with them beyond the retreat. You can learn more about facilitation and why it’s such a valuable skill here .

8. Establish action points at the end of the retreat

You started your company retreat with a specific goal in mind. You wanted to solve a particular problem, come up with new ideas, or improve company culture (to name a few possibilities). As your retreat winds down, it’s important to consider how you’ll take what you’ve learned and carry it over to the “usual” workplace setting. 

Towards the end of the retreat, carve out some time for everybody to get together and turn the retreat learnings into concrete actions. Ultimately, what needs to be done to ensure that you all continue working towards your goal? And who is responsible for implementing those actions and changes? 

Committing to clear, concrete actions will ensure the impact of your company retreat lasts beyond the event itself. This is important for achieving your original goal, and for making sure everybody knows that their time and input is valued. 

9. Get feedback 

Planning and running an awesome company retreat is no small task. There’ll be things that go well, and things that can be improved for next time. After the retreat, send out a short survey to gather feedback—and make it anonymous so you get to hear people’s honest thoughts. 

When it comes to planning your next company retreat, refer straight back to your survey data so you can address any pain-points and ensure an even better experience the second time around.

Bonus tip: Treat your guests to a VIP goodie bag

A company retreat should be something special. If you have the budget, end your retreat on a high with a VIP goodie bag for your guests. Make it luxurious, unique, and as personal as possible—it’s a great way to say “thank you” and close the retreat on a positive note. 

So there you have it: Everything you need to plan and deliver an awesome company retreat. For more tips, check out this guide on how to design and run a successful workshop . 

Emily Stevens

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Designing the Perfect Team Retreat Agenda – 8 Steps

A well-planned team retreat can be a transformative experience, fostering team bonding, collaboration, and rejuvenation. However, crafting a comprehensive and engaging team retreat agenda requires careful consideration of various factors to ensure its success.

In this blog post, we explore the art of designing the perfect team retreat agenda, utilizing the innovative features of NextRetreat to optimize every aspect of your retreat and create an unforgettable experience for your team.

1. Setting the Stage: Pre-Retreat preparation

Preparing for a team retreat is an essential step in ensuring its success. The pre-retreat preparation phase sets the foundation for a seamless and impactful experience. By investing time and effort into this stage, you can align retreat objectives with team goals, understand participant expectations, and create a conducive environment for open communication and engagement.

2. Defining Retreat Objectives and Themes

Defining retreat objectives and themes is paramount in ensuring a focused and impactful team retreat. Objectives provide a clear direction and purpose for the retreat, allowing you to set measurable goals and outcomes. Themes, on the other hand, create a cohesive framework that ties all retreat activities together, fostering engagement and creating a memorable experience for participants. By thoughtfully defining objectives and themes, you lay the foundation for a successful retreat that drives personal and team growth.

3. Incorporating Team-Building Activities

Incorporating team-building activities into your retreat agenda is essential for fostering stronger relationships and promoting collaboration among team members. Whether it’s engaging in trust-building exercises, problem-solving challenges, or interactive workshops, these activities encourage open communication, build camaraderie, and enhance teamwork.

4. Professional Development & Skill Enhancement

Integrating professional development and skill enhancement activities into your retreat agenda is a powerful way to invest in the growth and advancement of your team members. By offering workshops, training sessions, or expert-led discussions, you provide opportunities for learning, acquiring new skills, and expanding knowledge. These activities not only foster personal development but also contribute to the overall professional growth of your team.

5. Time for Reflection and Feedback

Provide dedicated time for reflection, self-assessment, and feedback during the retreat. Use NextRetreat’s capabilities like Rating tab (feedback forms), and one-on-one sessions to encourage personal growth, self-awareness, and continuous improvement. By the way, it is always a good idea to collect rating post-trip too. You can read here more about this feature in our app.

6. Balancing Work and Play

Balancing work and play is crucial in creating a well-rounded and engaging team retreat experience. By incorporating leisure and recreational activities into your retreat agenda, you provide opportunities for team members to unwind, bond, and recharge. Virtual team games, social events, and relaxation sessions not only foster team camaraderie but also promote stress relief and overall well-being. Striking this balance allows participants to have fun, build connections outside of work, and return to their tasks with renewed energy and enthusiasm.

Prioritizing both work and play in your retreat agenda contributes to a positive and harmonious team culture that values both productivity and employee happiness.

7. Inspiring Innovation and Creativity

Inspiring innovation and creativity is a key objective when designing your team retreat agenda. By incorporating activities that encourage brainstorming, ideation, and out-of-the-box thinking, you create an environment that nurtures innovation and unlocks creative potential. Utilize NextRetreat’s features such as brainstorming sessions, design thinking workshops, and collaborative ideation platforms to stimulate fresh ideas and unique perspectives.

Inspiring innovation and creativity during the retreat not only leads to breakthrough solutions but also cultivates a culture of continuous improvement and adaptability within your team. By dedicating time and resources to this aspect of the retreat, you empower your team members to think innovatively and embrace creativity in their work.

8. Post-Retreat Follow-up

A post-retreat follow-up is essential for sustaining the momentum and positive outcomes of your team retreat. By developing a clear action plan and implementing a robust follow-up process, you ensure that the insights and lessons learned during the retreat are translated into tangible results.

Conclusion : Designing the perfect team retreat agenda requires careful thought, strategic planning, and the utilization of innovative tools like Itinerary planner or post-trip Ratings in NextRetreat app can be helpful in the process.

By leveraging NextRetreat’s features and capabilities, you can create a transformative team trip experience that strengthens team dynamics, boosts productivity, and cultivates a positive work culture.

Remember, a well-designed team retreat agenda is the key to unlocking the full potential of your team and paving the way for long-term success. And importantly, don’t forget to have fun! 🙂

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Jan 31, 2023

Your Guide to Crafting the Perfect Leadership Retreat Agenda

Heather Harper

Company Culture Writer

Leadership corporate retreats can give the employees that are highest up in your organization a sense of focus, dedication, and a goal to work towards. Time away from the typical, and sometimes mundane, work tasks can foster creativity, renew vigor, and give your team members a fresh and exciting approach to their roles.

When planning your leadership retreat you don’t want to waste anyone’s time. Having an executive leadership retreat agenda to stick to is an incredibly useful tool for ensuring that you plan an insightful, engaging, and fun leadership retreat for groups of any size! 

Why are leadership retreat agendas important?

Leadership retreats are fantastic team building activities as they take your team away from their typical office setting and encourage them to take part in activities that are specifically designed to build trust, improve communication and build relationships. As with most things in life, perfect planning prevents poor performance, and a leadership retreat is no different! Here are the top three reasons why a leadership retreat agenda is so important: 

1. Provides an objective

Planning an agenda for your leadership retreat helps you to outline what you want to achieve. There is nothing worse than wasting your own time, let alone someone else’s (and especially the most executive leaders in your company). When you sit down to plan your leadership agenda, be sure that it aligns with the objective and the ‘why’ for holding the leadership retreat in the first place. When planning your activities, consider whether the sole purpose of the retreat is to take your leaders away from the office so that they can learn specific new skills, or is the purpose of this retreat to focus on bonding exercises for all your executive team members? 

2. Helps with the engagement of the retreat

Shipping the most senior members of your team off for a few nights away together is all well and good, but to get the most out of your leadership retreat, and make it worth the money, you need your leaders to be engaged with the retreat. Planning and sticking to an executive leadership retreat agenda ensures that you take some time to plan the activities that you think will engage your whole team. Having the agenda to closely follow also ensures that you don’t forget any of these carefully planned activities on the big day(s)! 

3. Allows for better budget planning

As with almost everything in business, budget planning is absolutely crucial when throwing events. It’s essential to first decide on a budget and then stick to that budget and plan activities accordingly. Having a water-tight leadership retreat agenda allows you to plan activities that suit your budget so that you don’t overspend. As a result, you’ll save money and ensure that the most important activities are included, meaning you can host an event for any budget!  

What should every leadership retreat agenda include?

It’s important that your corporate retreat is not just about work. Otherwise, you may as well do it all in the meeting room of your office! A corporate retreat needs to focus on skill development and future planning, but you also must include ways to relax, unwind and allow your team to leave feeling better connected. 

1. Include icebreaker activities at the start

Icebreakers are a short and simple way to give each of your leaders a little bit of insight into each other. When played at the start of your leadership retreat, they provide the perfect way to break the ice and create a warm and welcoming atmosphere. 

2. Wellness activities to help unwind 

Whether you decide to include a yoga class, a massage, a healthy cooking class, or a high intensity workout, adding a wellness activity to your leadership retreat agenda will help your leaders unwind and clear their heads. 

3. Time alone to recharge

Going on a leadership retreat can be a socially draining experience. To stop your leaders from feeling overwhelmed, give them some alone time as part of your agenda. This is best at the end of the day so that they can use this time to reflect on the content covered. 

4. Leadership skill development 

Even though it’s important that your leadership retreat doesn’t focus exclusively on work-related tasks, you must not forget the reason why you held the retreat in the first place! Including specific leadership development tasks will ensure your leaders leave the retreat with more knowledge and skill than when they joined! 

5. Future planning talks 

Planning for the future creates a 30% greater chance of growth. Seize the rare opportunity of having all your top leaders together and spend some time putting plans in place for the future of the business. 

6. Activities to push your team outside their comfort zone

Nothing blows away the cobwebs and bonds or connects a team more than being pushed outside their comfort zone! Whether you decide to go water skiing, sky diving, white water rafting, or go-karting, including a heart-raising and sometimes competitive activity for your leaders is a must. 

7. Activities to play in the evening

If you’re hosting an overnight retreat then it’s critical that you make sure you have entertainment for the evening. Pick from our list of corporate event retreat activities and watch as your leadership team continues to connect and form bonds while singing a karaoke song together! 

8. Arts and crafts activities for creativity  

As a recent study has found that providing art and arranging cultural activities makes for a happier and more productive workforce, this is not an activity to be missed from your leadership team building agenda. Either host an art class yourself or invest some money and time in getting a company to pop in for an hour or two and do it. 

9. Plan to eat meals together

Food is a great way to connect. Sharing a delicious meal can reduce anxiety, encourage conversations, and, as a result, form lasting connections. These strong connections will form a stronger and more productive leadership team. 

Leadership Retreat Agenda Sample

Below is an example of a two-day leadership retreat agenda. This leadership retreat template is suitable for a small to medium sized group of leaders. 

Before the retreat 

• Pick an event location and date
• Send out invites to your leaders. Stuck on what to include? Check out how to write a team building event invitation.

Retreat day 1: 

9:00 pm – 10:00 pm 

• Leaders arrive and are shown to their rooms to unpack and get settled
• Introductions, if needed
• Icebreaker games to create a welcoming atmosphere 

10:00 am – 11:00 am  

• Welcome presentation
• Outline the goals and the agenda of the retreat 

11:00 -12:00 pm 

• Arts and crafts activities to promote creative thinking and help relax 

12:00 pm – 1:00 pm  

• Catered lunch 

1:00 pm – 3:30 pm

• Guided leadership development activities 
• Leadership skills session 

3:30 pm – 4:15 pm

• Debrief of the day
• Remind leaders of the plans for the evening 

4:15 pm – 5:00 pm

• Wellness activities, such as yoga, pilates, or meditation 

5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

• Chill out/alone time in rooms 

6:00 pm – 9:00 pm  

• Evening activities, such as karaoke and a mystery game

Retreat day 2: 

8:00 am – 9:00 am  

• Buffet breakfast
• Recap on retreat day 1
• brief for the retreat day 2 

9:00 am – 11:00 am

• Adventure activities, such as waterskiing or go karting

11:00 am – 12:30 pm

• Future planning  sessions 

12:30 pm – 1:30 pm

• Catered lunch

1:30 pm – 3:30 pm

• Guides leadership skills sessions 
• Review and discuss company goals and mission statement 

3:30 pm – 4:30 pm

• Debrief on the day and how skills and knowledge apply to the office 
• Goodbyes  

Final Thoughts

Hosting a leadership retreat is an incredibly useful tool for ensuring that the most senior members of your team get to know each other better whilst becoming better and more experienced leaders. Having an agenda is the only way to ensure these events are engaging, match your company’s goals, and don’t blow the budget. 

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See exactly how our games work, ask questions about logistics and add some energy to your work day. Demos are 30 minutes long and take place on Zoom. There may even be a DoorDash giveaway!

Heather Harper has a Masters in Occupational Psychological from the University of Manchester. She currently works as an editorial writer specializing in organizational psychology – helping teams work better together.

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How to Lead a Strategic Planning Retreat

There is no substitute for getting your team (and your whole organization) working toward the same goals. A strategic planning retreat can pull everyone’s heads out of the office, so you can look at the bigger picture together.

We have learned some important lessons that make the difference between success and failure in strategic planning efforts. If you’ve already decided that you want to lead your own retreat (instead of bringing in an expert facilitator), you can increase your odds of success by paying attention to these keys.

#1: Measure your Mountain

When I lived in Africa, a massive and beautiful plateau rose 3,500 feet above us just a few miles from our home. Since I was in fairly good shape from running and riding my bike, I didn’t really need any preparation to hike up to the top. But when a friend challenged me to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro with him (19,341 feet!), I knew it would take a lot of work to get ready.

Before your strategic planning retreat, you need to measure your mountain to understand what you are trying to accomplish. Do you want to come out with a full 3-5 year Strategic Plan? A more limited Annual Plan? Or just a review and refresh of a plan you already have? Once you decide, make sure to set expectations by letting your team know exactly what you want to get done on the retreat.

Keep in mind: the bigger your mountain, the more work you need to do in advance.

#2: Assemble the right questions

A common pitfall in strategic planning is not digging deep enough to uncover the real issues. If you ask superficial questions, you will end up producing a plan that looks remarkably like what you are already doing but with bigger numbers. If you want to get past that, you’ve got to ask the right questions.

The right questions are not only difficult to answer, they can be difficult to think of. Here are a few to get you started:

#3: Share responsibility for preparation with your team

Sharing responsibility is not just good leadership, it’s also smart. Let people choose areas of ownership (or make assignments). They will accomplish more preparation than you could alone, and they will be more invested in the process. That’s two big wins for you.

What areas does your team need to prepare in advance?

• Logistics. This includes arranging the venue, meals and snacks, materials on site (projector, easel charts or whiteboards, and markers), calendar invitations, and reminders.
• Research . Someone needs to collect relevant information like recent financial reports, any available market information, and the last set of written plans or goals that you have.
• Employee survey results. Don’t take the risk of having your wonderful new plan blown off by your employees because you didn’t consult them. A simple survey can give you a feel for what employees are seeing and raise issues for discussion at the strategic planning retreat.
• Agenda and schedule. You need an agenda to follow that will guide your discussion at the retreat. A schedule and a dedicated timekeeper help you stay on task and make progress. If your team knows what is on the agenda, they can prepare to discuss items in their own areas.

#4: Stay in your role

Since you have chosen to facilitate the retreat, your team needs you to stay in that role. Here is what happens when you don’t have good facilitation:

• The group gets sidetracked and chases rabbits
• Discussions go long and do not conclude with specific actions or decisions
• Quiet people watch and don’t give their input
• Loud people talk too much and dominate

Committing to the facilitator role is difficult for most CEOs or owners/presidents. You can facilitate, or you can participate, but you can’t do both at the same time. The facilitator doesn’t answer questions—he or she asks them and follows up with more questions to get the team to really think.

Once you start championing an idea, you have become a participant, and it’s hard (or impossible) to facilitate discussion of the alternatives. If you switch roles mid-retreat, your team may get confused or disengage.

“You can facilitate, or you can participate, but you can’t do both.”

A strategic planning retreat could be just what your team needs to create alignment and break through obstacles.

Have questions?     Reach out and talk to us about how you can plan and lead a successful strategic planning retreat for your team.

Like us on Twitter , LinkedIn , or Facebook to get thoughtful articles on the bridges leaders must build and cross to inspire greater performance.

Written by Phillip Shero

View all posts by: Phillip Shero

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MasterMinds Leadership

• Enough is Enough: Part 2
• Enough is Enough: Part 1
• Believe in Your Team
• Customer Focus is All About the Shoes
• Be a Helper: Why We Need Diplomacy When Things Get Ugly

How to run a better Strategic Planning Retreat at your agency

A client reached out because he’s doing a strategic planning session with employees to plan for the coming year. He has run planning sessions as an employee in the past, but now it’s his own agency.

If you have the same question, I recommend approaching this in four parts —determine your plan, create the agenda, do the event, and work through followups.

Depending on your situation, consider doing a two-day strategic planning retreat; half a day to review progress this year, and 1.5 days to plan for next year. In this article, I’ve included a free one-day agenda.

Part I: Plan the Strategic Planning Retreat

Here’s how I organize the “planning the planning session” process:

• Define your goals for the event—what do you want to accomplish?
• Decide what’s up in the air vs. what’s nailed down. (That is, what are the items you’ll consider to be already-decided?)
• Make a list of topics you want to work out. These might involve brainstorming (generating ideas), discussion (making a decision on an idea), and/or workshopping (figuring out how to implement something you’ve decided to pursue).
• Put the topic list in priority order.
• Decide if you want to do an off-site, on-site, or virtual planning session. Off-site is often good for creative thinking and a change of pace, but you’ll need to weigh budget. And with the COVID-19 pandemic, you might lean toward 100% virtual.
• Choose the date(s) if options aren’t open-ended. Ideally, you should do the retreat during the work week, so you’re not requiring the team to give up their weekend.
• Decide what’s “must have” versus “nice to have” when it comes to outcomes.
• Create a draft agenda, with rough lengths per topic. For team bonding, be sure to include social time in addition to “work work work” time.
• See how long it is. It’s likely longer than it should be.
• Decide what to cut or collapse.
• Finalize the agenda and date. The agenda will drive the attendee list.
• Recruit someone on your team to manage logistics (booking the space, ordering food, scheduling calendar blocks, circulating the agenda and invitations, etc.).
• Invite the team, based on who needs to be there. People should clear their schedule for the retreat day(s)—and set up their Out of Office autoresponder .
• Send invitees a list of any prep they need to do beforehand (including notifying clients about availability).
• Pre-write a debrief survey to send after the retreat, assessing what did and didn’t work.

I recommend that you delegate logistics, but don’t delegate goal selection. It’s your retreat—make sure it serves your needs.

Part II: Build an Agenda [Free Template!]

Here’s a rough outline for a one-day retreat —the particulars will depend on what you need to brainstorm, discuss, and/or “workshop.” Try to limit sessions to 80 minutes apiece—or less, when it’s via video. When sessions are too long, people have trouble focusing… and that hurts productivity.

• Opening to Review Goals (with breakfast)
• Icebreaker (including learning about people beyond their work roles)
• Short Break
• Lunch Break
• Distilling Outcomes into Next Steps
• Build List of Specific Actionables

Sprinkle breaks throughout. Instead of Topic #3, you might do overflow from Topic #2, or even spend all day on a single big topic.

You might consider a two-day retreat, especially if you’re doing the past-year review and the upcoming-year planning at the same time. In that case, you’ll also have more time for social activities. Be sure to allow time during Day 1 to complete “homework” for Day 2.

Consider whether sending “care packages” if people are meeting virtually. This creates a sense of togetherness when you can’t meet up in the same physical space.

Be sure to block-in “recovery” time for yourself the day after the retreat. You’ll use that to process followups and then catch up on what happened while you were away.

Part III: Hold the Retreat

Beforehand, be sure the food and venue are confirmed (if you’re meeting off-site), and remind people to activate their Out of Office messages .

Plan on this during the event:

• Use the agenda to stay on track, but be flexible if the team is following useful tangents.
• Be sure someone is recording key decisions and actionables. You may assign specific due dates later, but it’s important to track who’s on the hook for what.
• During lunch, double-check that you’re making progress toward your goals. If not, you’ll need to adjust in the afternoon.

Enjoy being away from the day-to-day—your retreat is still “work,” but it should be more fun than a regular day in the office.

Part IV: Work Through Followups

Afterwards, review key decisions and actionables. Identify what needs to happen next, including any open items. Circulate your post-retreat survey  to the team to help you improve things next time.

Assign-out the followups, preferably using your regular PM system . You want followups to be part of everyone’s regular workflow. For you, try to focus on immediate followups before you get sucked back into the day-to-day. That’s why I recommended blocking-in time for followups after the retreat, instead of jumping into your regular schedule.

After all that, move forward with what you learned! The retreat alone isn’t enough to make everything happen, but getting out of the office will help you jumpstart the process.

Applying This at Your Agency

Have you scheduled your year-end retreat (to review progress from this year) or strategic planning retreat (to prepare for next year)? Now’s the time—it’ll be here before you expect it.

Want outside perspective on how to make the most of your retreat—or need a third-party facilitator who knows digital agencies? I’m glad to help. Contact me  to see if there’s a fit.

Question: How do you approach year-end planning?

Are you reaching your full potential as an agency leader?

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The program can help you cut through the frustration and loneliness at the top—to help you and your team make smarter decisions for smoother growth.

How to Plan a Fun and Productive Company Retreat

The company retreat, often imagined as a weeklong playground of corporate hedonism and zero work, is slowly getting a much-needed makeover.

At Help Scout, we’re rethinking how to plan a company retreat — the goal is to produce thoughtful, effective getaways that spur productivity, juice up morale, and lead to more meaningful relationships.

These details are critical whether you work together in an office or you’re a remote team, like we are.

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Teams using Help Scout are set up in minutes, twice as productive, and save up to 80% in annual support costs. Start a free trial to see what it can do for you.

Why plan a company retreat?

Like other remote companies, we rely on many tools to stay connected and organized as we work. But ...

There’s a special magic that happens when we get the entire team together in a room, on a ski slope, or in a bowling alley on our retreats.

Figuring out each other’s personalities face to face offers helpful information to take back when we resume our largely text-based communication. For non-remote teams, an offsite retreat can help shake up the status quo and get creative juices flowing in an environment that’s not the same old office.

Now that more than 100 people work at Help Scout, our company retreats require more planning since the first time a dozen or so of us gathered together in Provincetown, Mass. Everything requires more consideration — timing-wise, for example, the first week of the month isn’t good for finance, while the last week of the month isn’t good for sales. Some team members may be planning their sabbatical or parental leave. There’s a lot that goes into it, so we generally start planning our retreats nine months in advance!

Planning a company retreat that leaves your team invigorated has its challenges, and with several under our belt, we’ve learned a great deal.

How do you plan a retreat?

One of the most useful things I learned as a high school teacher was the concept of differentiated instruction — not every student learns the same way, so the act of teaching benefits from a variety of approaches to present any given topic.

How do you take 100 people with different tastes, requirements and preferences and successfully plan for food, fun, and ways to recharge that they’ll all enjoy? Much like differentiated instruction, differentiated company retreat planning is the best approach — providing variety and choice will result in maximum happiness and a trip everyone will remember.

With this philosophy in mind, let’s talk details: setting a budget, picking a location, finding a place to stay, and structuring those memorable activities.

(One thing to note: Organizing and executing a company retreat is equal parts exhausting and exhilarating. If you don’t have the bandwidth internally, consider going with a company like Moniker , who can help with all the research, logistics, planning and even on-site staffing of your next retreat.)

How much does a company retreat cost?

Retreats don’t have to break the bank. To determine a budget, consider your company size and where you want to go. If your company has never retreated before, start small. You can save a considerable amount by traveling in the off season, and staying somewhere close to a major airport.

For our first retreat in September 2014, we rented a few houses and kept things simple. After that, we stepped it up and stayed on a ranch in Colorado. For our fall retreat this year, to a resort in Cancún, Mexico, we aimed at keeping our budget under $2,300 per person. We carefully estimate flight costs, accommodations, meals and incidentals, all the way down to AV costs, airport transfers, gratuities … and of course, swag!

Our design team always creates memorable (and adorable!) company retreat swag — we’ve done T-shirts, pins, totes, backpacks, temporary tattoos and other fun mementos.

Buffer, another remote company, projected their ninth retreat (to Singapore) would cost $380,067 for 85 team members, plus their partners and children.

If you’re a remote company and still concerned about the price tag, keep in mind that it’s less expensive to fly everyone someplace twice a year than to pay rent on an office space year-round.

How long should a company retreat last?

Our first four retreats were four-day, Tuesday-Friday affairs. We thought this would be enough time to work, bond and respect work-life balance. But while four days is probably sufficient for co-located offices, our remote team is spread out all over the world, which meant the first day was always lost to travel.

Nowadays, we schedule a full workweek retreat (Monday-Friday). Adding a designated travel day and three full days at our offsite was the perfect amount of time to get work done and have enough time to get to know each other.

How do you choose a company retreat location?

While it might seem appealing to travel to a five-star tropical resort that’s only accessible by helicopter, we’ve learned that getting to the retreat location is as important as the retreat itself. Finding company retreat locations near major airports and within a short drive helps your teammates feel relaxed and happy they’re about to spend time with their colleagues. And you’ll never know until it’s too late that someone on your team might get motion sickness, so the less time on a bus, the better.

Remember that traveling during the shoulder season can save you some dough, and that if you have teammates all over the world, it’s nice to switch up locations — that way, everyone takes turns having to take longer versus shorter flights!

One other factor we try to be aware of is that politically, we need to ensure all of our team members can travel safely and be admitted without hassle to the countries where we’re traveling. Think about whose economies you’re going to support and make sure your team feels safe and comfortable traveling to those regions.

What kind of accommodations are best for corporate retreats?

While they’re costlier, top-notch accommodations set the tone for your retreat. An impeccable hotel that pays attention to detail will wow your employees, raise morale from the start, and encourage everyone to bring their A-game.

While it’s ideal to scope out accommodations ahead of time, that won’t always be doable, so relying on travel-review sites such as TripAdvisor and Yelp are essential. We try to book entire hotels, estimating how many rooms we’ll need based on our hiring plan. We prioritize allowing every team member a private room. It increases the budget, but we’ve found that our team appreciates some quiet time and the chance to recharge alone.

Details are important to us — we want to treat our team just as well as we treat our customers. Does the hotel have plenty of breakout spaces for team meetings? Can you use Google Earth to take a virtual walk from the closest metro stop to the main lobby entrance, so you can give your team members all the travel instructions they might need? Our goal is to let everyone have a nice time and not have to worry about anything.

How should you structure your company retreat agenda?

Unless your team is comprised entirely of extroverts, it’s important to schedule time to bond together as well as unstructured free time. Spending several high-energy days with your colleagues has the potential to feel draining, so providing your team with choices in how they spend their time will add to employee delight. Just be crystal-clear on which activities are mandatory and which are not.

Here is an example of a Help Scout company retreat agenda, from our Spring 2019 trip to Lisbon, Portugal.

While the main reason we retreat is for everyone to build deeper relationships, we also talk shop. We nominate individuals to give deep-dive talks on their work. We structure time for each team to meet, as well as cross-team meetings. Scheduling team-meeting time is also great for big-picture visioning and strategizing, which energizes everyone to return to their remote offices with refreshed goals and attitudes to execute.

But all work and no play makes Jill a dull girl. In between the meetings and meals, plan a few non-business activities for your colleagues to participate in. Think of activities that are exciting, potentially out of the ordinary, and also accessible to the greatest number. No, I’m not talking about trust falls or mandatory karaoke. In the past, we’ve coordinated bike rides, beer and wine tastings, soccer games, museum visits, cooking classes, street art tours, treasure hunts, game nights, and all kinds of other fun stuff!

Recommended Reading

27 Company Retreat Ideas Your Team Will Actually Enjoy

While there’s nothing wrong with offering opportunities to imbibe, don’t make assumptions that your team is full of boozehounds. Trust your team to make adult decisions, but also set everyone up for awesome, safe fun by capping open bars or handing out drink tickets. In the event you do have people who are dying to sing karaoke, make it happen, but make it optional.

Figuring out group meals can be one of the most daunting yet exciting parts of retreat planning. We’ve found that surveying everyone on your team before the retreat about food allergies or dietary restrictions goes a long way to ensure restaurant selections meet everyone’s needs. And it’s helpful to have these on file going forward (in case you someday want to send cupcakes to Megan in Italy, you’ll know they have to be vegan!).

In addition to all-hands meals in the hotel, we also break the team up into dinner groups and send them out to various restaurants around the city, so everyone gets a chance to interact with folks from different teams.

When you’re planning a company retreat, there’s no such thing as over-communication

Getting our entire team together on the right day and time takes organization and patience. We invite everyone to a retreat-specific channel in Slack — that’s where we share all the pertinent info like location, dates, tentative schedule, and so on. It’s also a great way to build excitement beforehand and get the whole team invested in having a fun and productive time together.

Here is a conversation from our retreat-related Slack channel.

We ask team members to research their own flights and run their proposed itinerary past planners from our People Ops and Customers teams. Once they have the go-ahead, they can purchase the ticket on their own company credit card. That way, everyone is able to find flight schedules that work best for them and purchase them easily.

As your company gets larger, getting your team where they need to be can feel like herding cats. We send Google Calendar invites to everyone, and we post all pertinent retreat info in our internal wiki (we use Slab ). Part of the differentiated retreat planning involves sending information via various channels, so the more the better — reaching people in a variety of ways ensures everyone gets to the right place at the right time.

Before the retreat, we host a “retreat Q&A” for all retreat newbies. We cover what to expect and let everyone ask questions, and we pair them up with a Help Scout veteran as their “retreat buddy” so they have a point of contact before and during the event. During the retreat, Slack can be a huge help to rally everyone in the lobby or to send schedule updates in real time.

The post-retreat survey

As soon as your retreat is over, solicit feedback from your team to improve the next one while showing your team you value its input. We run a short survey after every retreat, and that’s one of the first things we look at as we start planning the next one. Don’t take it personally if some people don’t love every part; differentiated retreat planning requires being at peace with the fact that everyone will enjoy things differently, and that’s great.

When planned with intention and consideration, a company retreat provides an authentic opportunity to boost employee happiness and build a strong, connected culture — and it shouldn’t require a six-figure spa bill to pull it off.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in February 2016 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

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Leah knobler.

Leah is the VP of People at Help Scout, a fully-remote company of 145 people building helpful, human customer support tools. When not at work, she loves spending time with her wife, toddler, and pit mix, Nova, in their home in Philadelphia. Connect with her on LinkedIn .

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The Complete Guide to Planning a Company Retreat in 2024

Everything and More That You Need to Know about Planning a Company Retreat

While we’re usually busy planning other companies’ retreats, Moniker has been hosting our own internal annual retreat for six years now. Over time, as the team has grown, they’ve become increasingly more complex — yet exponentially more meaningful and necessary as we scale the company.

Here’s a guide to planning a company retreat, as told by an actual corporate retreat planners .

Why Plan a Company Retreat?

Every company is going to have their unique reasons both for and against hosting a corporate retreat . There’s a number of factors to take into consideration like size, distribution (where everyone is based), timing, and obviously the finances (here’s a link on how much a company retreat really costs ). The benefits may or may not outweigh the time and resources involved in hosting one, however figuring that out and having clear objectives upfront helps make the decision easier.

In our case, the general purpose of our company retreat is two-fold:

1. Business Introspection

‍ Things can get pretty busy throughout the year and travel schedules often overlap. Carving out a moment to step-back as a full group and pry out a magnifying glass to assess the company is paramount to our progress. We focus on evaluating the state of our business (performance), how we do things (processes), and give every member of the team the opportunity to share any ideas they feel would benefit us as a company and culture overall (progress). I can’t stress enough how valuable this can be to getting everyone aligned on the same page and moving forward in the same direction together.

2. Double-Down on Building Culture

‍ As lucky as we are to travel often throughout the year guiding our client’s programs, its rare we get the chance to travel all together and spend time abroad just hanging out without the responsibility of overseeing a client’s program. The retreat offers us the opportunity to learn more about each other outside the office environment, share a few laughs, and enjoy each others company while exploring a new destination. It’s also a chance to sit back and toast ourselves in celebration of the small wins and successes of the past year, which can serve as an important reminder of how far we’ve come and really get people fired up for the road ahead.

“So ... how do you plan a company retreat?”

Great question.

Setting Up a Structure

The most important piece of advice I can offer is to first create a framework and hold everyone accountable to a set schedule , setting aside specific times each day for work, activities, and free time while clearly outlining the agenda people can anticipate.

Share it with the team far in advance, communicating exactly what everyone’s contributions are expected to be and giving them plenty of time to prepare.

Our itinerary from our 2020 retreat in Morocco. Want to know more? Check out our blog post on Company Retreat Agendas

We’ve established this structure to give everyone the opportunity to touch on their respective team functions as well as any other topic they feel should be shared. It gets everyone presenting in front of the team at least twice, and could easily be adapted to whatever industry you’re in.

1. Business Unit Presentations

‍ Each organizational ‘department’ in our company (e.g. Operations, Trip Planning, Sales & Marketing, Media, etc.) is tasked with joint-presenting a 60 to 90 minute session on a topic directly related to their area of expertise that will help us either make improvements to our current processes, or otherwise re-evaluate whether what we already have in place is still the best approach/system available.

In our most recent retreats, this portion has been responsible for us introducing Asana as our project management tool, rolling out Slack as our core communication platform, and utilizing new software like Brojure to streamline our research & proposal processes. Typically, these are the most impactful sessions we’ll see to our business

2. Individual Workshops

‍ In addition to the above team presentations, we also task each person to choose a topic (literally, it can be anything) they feel would be beneficial for the team to learn about and teach us or lead a workshop on it.

Past examples have included the OCEAN Personality Type evaluations and how to leverage our personality styles to better work together, culture exercises, and a lengthy tutorial on how to leverage our presence on social media into more growth. These sessions tend to be the most eye-opening and interesting from a people point of view.

Our screen got stuck in customs at Casablanca, so we improvised!

In terms of the leadership team and what our contributions are, every year we kick things off with the “State of the Union”. It’s a very thorough deep dive that’s split into three sections:

• The Year Prior ( Reflection )
• Our Current State, Where We Are Today ( Assessment )
• The Year Ahead ( Roadmap )

It usually ends up as a 90-minute comprehensive and honest evaluation of how the ship is sailing. This really helps galvanize the group into understanding how everyone contributes, where and how the money that comes in gets spent, and how we all fit together as a cohesive team trying to reach our shared goals. This session is where most people leave the retreat feeling reinvigorated.

Tips & Advice For Planning A Company Retreat

Having been directly involved in 200+ retreats over the past 10 years, there are plenty of practices and approaches we’ve seen work well and consistently contribute to positive feedback and a better overall experience by attendees. Here are just a few:

Retreat Schedule and Length

There’s equally valid arguments that can be made for shorter vs. longer retreats. You’re essentially taking your entire team offline for a few days, however on the flip side it also takes a few days away before the group dynamics really start to adjust. 

In our experience, if you can only afford a shorter retreat — time and/or money-wise — try to do a Thursday-Sunday (3 nights) getaway, leaving right after breakfast on Sunday so people still have plenty of time left to spend with family and kids. If you can afford to do longer — Aim for a Monday-Friday, or if further abroad, arriving Sunday night to adjust to the timezone and kick things off on Monday morning fresh. Here are a couple of retreat schedule templates for whatever length of time is best for your team. 

In terms of destination, there’s a compromise to find between “exotic” and “convenient”. If the group is remote or spread out, finding somewhere accessible in the middle is ideal to save on flight costs as well as time-zone adjustments. Europe is generally a good option, with surprisingly good value once you step outside the main cities or in particularly in Portugal, Spain, and Eastern Europe. 

On the other hand, if your goal for the retreat is going somewhere truly inspiring you may need to accept traveling a bit further and off the beaten path. Need some inspiration? Check out other blog posts for great retreat locations in California , Colorado , Texas , London , Mexico , Lisbon and The UK . 

Rural vs. Urban Setting

In our experience (and particularly for remote team retreats), finding a place 30–90 minutes outside the city is best, ensuring people will stay on property and spend more of their time together instead of heading out on their own exploring. On the flipside, if the corporate retreat is more about work and spending the bulk of your days in meeting rooms, being in the heart of a city allows for people to have quick access to jaunting off on their own or with a few close colleagues during much needed down-time.

Money & Expenses

‍ When possible, try to cover all expenses for employees throughout the retreat. Asking people to go out-of-pocket on transfers, meals, activities, etc. can be a divisive issue that can take away from the spirit of the company retreat. Remember, you’re asking people to take a few days away from their families and loved ones and some may see this as a mandatory “work trip” rather than a fun group outing. 

That being said, in recent years we’ve seen a growing trend towards companies limiting what they will cover, particularly in terms of alcohol (only during dinner, for example) or sometimes not at all. Regardless of your approach, make sure to communicate the expectations around money and expensible items clearly and early to avoid any misunderstandings.

Food & Drink

For larger retreats held in hotels or resorts, this isn’t really an issue as pretty much every meal will be covered/catered. For smaller company retreats, our philosophy is hire a chef to take care of breakfast, breaks, and lunch. It means more time to focus on what’s important, and takes away the hassle of grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning up. 

Dinners can be a team-led experience, with people volunteering to showcase their inner chef or chipping in with the prep, or heading offsite to a restaurant for dinner. In either case, make sure to pay special attention to people’s specific dietary needs and do all you can to accommodate. Nothing will sour someone’s attitude quicker than being hangry without many options available! Oh, and candy. Can’t forget a well stocked candy or snack basket ;)

Keep to the Schedule

‍ I can’t stress enough how important it is to set a tone right from the beginning about keeping as close to schedule as possible. To make the most use of your time — and to avoid creeping in to people’s down-time — the work sessions need to start and finish on time or be cut and parked for another day. Get comfortable starting a session if not everyone is present. It sends a message that the show begins with or without you, and you’re going to miss out if you’re not there on time. That applies to the leadership team too.

Make Team-building fun!

The words team-building can be completely cringe-worthy. Since Company retreats are meant to help your team get inspired, it’s time to really shake things up if you want to see results. We’ve put together company retreat tream-building ideas that have always been a hit at the retreats we’ve planned, and are actually fun. Always ensure you’re planning activities that are inclusive of everyone’s activity levels and it’s a bonus if you can incorporate the local culture!

Pay Attention to the Little Touches

‍ Branded Swag, custom designed Agendas, Branded Presentation Templates, Welcome Gifts, Daily Notes, etc. — these are all little items that go a long way to creating a more polished impression and overall professional experience. Don’t underestimate the value of the little things that end up in your attendees hands or in front of their eyeballs!

‍ Have and enforce a ‘No Phones’ policy during sessions. It shows respect to those presenting but also creates boundaries on ‘work time’ vs. ‘free time’ which lead to more productivity when you need everyone’s undivided attention. That includes the CEO/Founder first and foremost, and sets the tone from the top-down.

Buyout vs. Not? House or Hotel?

In our opinion, having everyone together under one roof is transformative to the general vibe and feel of a company retreat . As companies grow, this gets more and more challenging but as long as it remains an option I would stress to make an effort to find a place where everyone can sleep under the same roof with no other guests on-site at the same time.

When you’re small, AirBnB’s are fine (as well as sites like VRBO, LuxuryRetreats, and similar) but as the number goes up your options get limited to hotels and resorts. When possible, always aim for full buyouts (100% exclusivity). It is infinitely easier for people who may not recognize each other to say ‘hello’ when they know an unfamiliar face is just a colleague they haven’t met yet. This is especially important for remote teams.

What Else To Ensure?

• Send out a “Save the Date” early on to ensure as many people as possible can participate, and those with kids can plan arrangements accordingly with tons of notice.
• Respect Personal Space & Privacy during the retreat. Reinforce that “locked doors” means DND, and if you see someone on the phone with a loved one, leave them be unless invited to join the conversation.
• Set and share a policy towards respecting personal boundaries and behaviour around alcohol. We shouldn’t have to tell you why.
• Don’t forget to set your Out-of-Office on e-mails and communicate to the outside world where you are and what they can expect in terms of response times for e-mails.
• Appoint people to be in charge of evening games and icebreakers. Encourage people to bring their favourite boardgames, or other activities people can join in on in a circle and have some fun without drinks being involved.
• Offer a mix of active and wellness-related activities for those interested. For example, if someone on the team is really in to yoga, see if they would be willing to to lead a class each morning before sessions start. Likewise if there are runners or gym-goers in the group. Too often a busy schedule can overtake people’s normal health routines, but having options built in to the schedule can mitigate that.
• Mix in ‘all-hands’ team-building with optional activities so people can self-select what they will do based on their own interests. Offer a variety of active/cultural/learning activities to suit all palettes.

Finally — Have fun! Remember, while work is a key part of a retreat, at the end of the day if it’s only about work you could have accomplished it in a drab meeting room elsewhere. Soak up the experience, create shared memories, and make the most of what the destination has to offer! Still looking for more advice? Check out our team retreat planning resources and our blog post for ' 6 Tips for a Successful Retreat! "

Get a Complimentary Proposal

Stressed about planning a retreat with no extra time? Why don't you let us do some of the heavy-lifting first, and put together a complimentary proposal that will provide you with ideal locations, activities and costs for your upcoming offsite.

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CUSTOM COMPANY RETREAT

Your next company gathering with a peace of mind.

Why organize a retreat for the whole company?

Team retreats offer a great opportunity for departments or senior executives in your company to come together to set goals, foster innovation, and boost team morale. For some companies – especially those who work remotely – it’s a priority to bring not just a portion, but the whole company on a retreat. Company-wide retreats with more than 50 people are growing in popularity as more employees are now fully remote.

There are unique challenges to planning a retreat with more than 50 people. Large company retreats mean that the whole company meets in the same place at the same time. All departments come together to focus on company culture or results. These gatherings can be annual or quarterly all-hands meetings to present company results and keep everyone up-to-date.

Surf Office has hosted dozens of retreats for large groups. We’ve arranged retreats for multiple large groups with up to 400 people – and we can definitely handle even larger groups. Our experts have learned a lot of insights from the planning and logistics process. Small companies can also take advantage of these lessons learned from big groups. Here’s what firsthand experience has taught us about planning company retreats.

What is the purpose of a company retreat?

There are a number of good reasons why your company might come together for a retreat. A team retreat can accomplish:

- Team alignment on goals and mission - Boosting morale across the company - Building relationships between departments and teams - Generating new ideas and innovation - Sharing company results

Surf Office retreats for large groups or entire companies are usually shorter. Many of our retreats are three to five days. For full-team retreats, many companies choose to limit their offsite to two to three days. It really depends on your goal for the retreat and how much you wish to accomplish.

Organize your next company retreat with Surf Office

Sample agenda for a company retreat.

The retreat agenda, of course, depends on your specific goals. For large groups, we recommend limiting your time to two to three days of action-packed adventure. Here’s an example of what a retreat agenda might look like for a larger group:

Day 1: Arrive and give your employees a chance to settle in.

Day 2: Welcome presentation, motivational speaker, and kick-off event.

Day 3: Productive sessions (hackathon, team-building, or presentations).

Day 4: Either more productive sessions, team bonding, and a farewell dinner.

Day 5: Everyone departs.

For more inspiration, read our detailed retreat schedule for large companies . A lot can happen with a large group – delayed flights, missed connections, or weather issues can derail a schedule quickly. Have some flexibility built into your agenda for worst-case scenarios.

Company retreat activity ideas

Looking for inspiration on how to keep your company busy on the retreat? Here are some activities that Surf Office has hosted in the past:

Head to the beach ‍

Workday , a people analytics company, hosted its company retreat in Barcelona. The team spent at the beach with activities like stand up paddle, swimming, and a surfing lesson. A beach trip is good for big groups because everyone can do what they want. Some can swim, some can play beach volleyball, and some can veg in the sun.

Take a hike

Get away from the noise and hustle of the city and bring your team for a nature hike. Our destinations in the Catskill Mountains , Zion national park , and Gran Canaria are perfect for bringing your team on a hike for some fresh air.

Treasure hunt

Break up your larger group in small teams and take a walk through the historic streets of Lisbon , for instance. See famous monuments, hidden gems, and learn about the culture of the city on a scavenger hunt. Get to know the city and each other in a fun way.

Sailing trip

Surf Office can arrange as many boats as necessary to take your company for a sunset sail. We’ve hosted short sailing trips for our retreats in Lisbon , Ericeira , Santa Cruz , Mallorca , Valencia , and Barcelona . These are memorable evenings out – usually with a stunning sunset!

Have a game night

Weather not cooperating? If you’re stuck inside, host a game night. Divide into smaller groups to get competitive over Monopoly, trivia, or Charades. Make a tournament out of it to bring the whole group together at the end of the evening to cheer on the finalists.

Karaoke night

Karaoke night is another fun team bonding activity great for bigger groups. Those who aren’t afraid of the spotlight can step right up and belt out a song. The rest of the group can dance, laugh, and cheer them on.

Host a speaker or Ted Talk

Invite a local expert to speak about something out-of-the-box. Or, have your employees volunteer to give informal Ted Talk-style presentations about something they’re passionate about. “Lean into your internal resources and enable them to lead a training or lesson on their interest. Doing so not only uplifts them and their hobbies, it demonstrates that you as the employer, prioritize hobbies and skills that don’t necessarily connect with their desk job,” writes Zenefits .

Share a meal

EVBox is a company focused on providing charging solutions for electric vehicles. Their group of 200 people joined Surf Office for a company retreat. In the process, we hosted a special dining experience in Lisbon with traditional dishes and drinks. Organizing meals can be a challenge for large groups: read what we’ve learned about making restaurant reservations.

If you want to keep your team bonding business-focused, host a hackathon. Divide the large group up into small teams and work on a project. A traditional hackathon focuses on creative problem-solving – emphasis on “creative.” Don’t be afraid to make the hackathon open-ended to foster innovation.

Team building activities for large groups

While it is not too difficult to organize activities for groups of 15 people, the activities for 50+ are a challenge. Generally speaking, there are two approaches to organizing activities for large groups. First, you can divide the big group into smaller teams. Alternately, you can loosely organize an activity – like an afternoon at the beach – and let people decide how to spend their time. Read more about each approach in our guide to planning big group activities .

Lastly, we’ve learned through trial and error that it’s difficult to make restaurant bookings for large groups. The approach is different from making a reservation for a pair or family-sized group. Start your research by ticking the “good for large groups” option on Yelp, TripAdvisor, or Google. Learn more in our article, “ 5 common mistakes to avoid when booking restaurants for a large group ”.

Case studies

Avocode’s retreat as a mini startup accelerator

Avocode is a tool that helps designers and developers collaborate on one seamless platform. For their work retreat, the team spent 10 days with Surf Office Lisbon working as a mini-startup accelerator.

The group of 20 divided into small teams on day one, and then spent the time working on specific projects. The last day of the retreat was dedicated to presenting each team’s results with the rest of the group. As a result, Avocode’s work retreat drove innovation. Their result is a great example of how to make the most of limited time to do some creative thinking.

Mynd retreat resulted in 12 new products features

Mynd is a property management company based in California. For their work retreat, Mynd’s team of 32 people relocated for 10 days to Surf Office Barcelona. Like Avocode, they spent the first three days running a hackathon. The team developed 12 new product features in a quick sprint of innovation.

Mynd’s approach to their work retreat was to prepare beforehand; key design elements were already in place when they arrive in Spain. As a result, the team could move quickly and work without designers. Consider what you need to do to prepare before arriving onsite for your work retreat.

Mattermost’s innovative design retreat

Mattermost is a communication software company that makes a Slack-alternative messaging platform. Their team retreat in Lisbon combined innovation and team-building in five days.

Mattermost spent their work retreat building a product roadmap, discussing their core values, team-building, and hosting a hackathon. Check out more in this video from their CTO, Corey Hulen.

Invision’s team comes together for beach meetings

Finally, InVision is a product design tool and 100% remote company. The team met in Ericeira for a work retreat with Surf Office.

They split their time between team bonding – stand-up paddle, surfing, and eating incredible seafood – and a hackathon. During their one-day hackathon, InVision built new product features and internal communication tools.

What is included in our team retreat packages?

1. workspace & meeting space.

Are you planning a strategy meeting , design sprint, hackathon, kickoff meeting of a new project or “just” regular work time?

Whatever it is, we’ve got your back.

Expect a professional working environment with:

• Desks and chairs
• Meeting room
• Projector with all the fancy adapters
• Post-its, markers, pencils, stickers & pens

And of course, very fast internet.

2. Accommodation

Each team has a bit of a different expectation when it comes to their retreat experience and that’s why you have the flexibility to choose different types of accommodation ranging from premium ensuite rooms to shared accommodation.

All of our accommodation options are located in central areas within walking distance from the restaurants and grocery stores. You don’t need to rent a car or use public transportation to move around. We want to make your stay as easy as possible.

You have 100% security that your booking won’t be canceled (anyone with experience of last-minute group booking cancellation can relate).

We understand that your team might be growing and you might need to add additional rooms over time, you’ll have this flexibility too.

3. Team Retreat Planning & Facilitation

We’ve built a system that makes retreat planning easy and fast .

We’ll plan every detail of your retreat from start to finish, so that you don’t have to. This includes:

• Reservation of activities, transport & restaurants
• Tips for local places to visit and activities
• Crafting of unique experiences
• Troubleshooting

You will get a personalized schedule and online dashboard with all of your retreat information before your retreat starts. Our onsite support will show you everything you need to know upon your arrival and make sure everything goes smoothly for you and your team.

“I just wanted to say a thousand thanks to you for all of your hardwork and help in the organising of our team summit. It was a huge success and we couldn’t have done it without you!”

Emma Louise Bowen , People & Operations Manager in Workday

How does it work?

1. Tell us more about your plans

We would like to hear more about your plans and how we can make your next company summit a success.

Do you have an office in one location or is your team distributed? Can employees bring their partners? Is the retreat going to be more about work or fun?

2. Planning with your dedicated project manager

Even finding and booking one single restaurant for the dinner can be a painful project. Is the food going to be good? Is the price fair? How many of our team members have diet restrictions?

Each retreat is a combination of multiple smaller projects and with a large group the complexity might be scary.

But no worries, we mastered this process and made it fun and easy.

Our experienced project manager dedicated to you will help you with a whole organisation from searching for flights to crafting unique surprise activities for your team.

We will be your one-stop-shop for all of the logistics of your retreat. The Retreat Planner assigned to your group will work with you to book and coordinate everything from A-Z, providing you with peace-of-mind and a guarantee of quality and reliability from our local partners at the best possible prices.

According to our repeat clients and our first-time clients who have previous experience in organizing retreats in-house, this is the greatest value that we bring we bring to them.

3. Detailed plan and schedule of your company retreat

At the end of the planning process you will end up with the bullet-proof schedule. There is no room for improvisation with a large group.

Everything must work perfectly, all the activities and transfers must be just-on-time.

Sounds like a dream end, right? That’s how we work.

You are ready for your epic company retreat.

→ How does Surf Office work?

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How to Plan a Company Retreat

If you have a project that's too big to fit into a two-hour meeting slot, a retreat might be just the tool you need to hash it out. here's how to make sure you get the most out of your time offsite..

Do you need to work out a strategic plan? Build your team? Launch a project? It's unlikely that you will be able to work through these projects in a one- or two-hour meeting-;which is why many companies choose to hold an annual retreat.

"You start to understand perspectives that maybe you hadn't considered before," CEO and founder of Tutor.com George Cigale says of his company's past retreats. "Slowing down time allows you to think a little bit differently about the way you communicate and depend on each other." Throughout the years, Tutor.com's retreats have facilitated both large changes, like deciding to expand into the consumer market, and small changes, like instituting monthly meetings about operational metrics. Taking time for a retreat eliminates daily work distractions and helps set the tone that the project you are working on is important and worth extra time. Here's how to get started on making yours a success.

How to Plan a Company Retreat: Know Your Goal

Without a goal, there's no point to a retreat. "Having a retreat to keep things exactly as they are isn't a good use of staff time," says Marianne Liteman, the president of Liteman Rosse, a small consultancy that designs and leads retreats. "The retreat should have a business purpose. If you don't have a strategic reason for holding one, it's better to do something else with your resources."

Bruce Withrow, the founder of Meeting Facilitators International, helps his clients start to plan their retreats by asking this question first: "If I could wave a magic wand and put it into your hand, and you could make a successful conclusion to your retreat, what would it look like?" It's important to be as specific as possible. "To just say 'strategic planning' isn't enough," says Withrow, who plans between 50 and 60 retreats every year. "It's such a plastic word that means so many different things to so many different people. What is it that you think is missing? What is it that you want?"

Once you narrow down your accomplishment wish list to some specific goals, make sure that they can be realistically accomplished within the time you've allotted yourself. Decide how much time you need to do each item properly, and add up the hours that you've assigned each task you're hoping to accomplish. If the time to effectively complete your wish list exceeds the time you have at the retreat, then you need to trim it down.

Your goals should drive your invitation list. Cigale invited all of his employees to his retreats because one of his goals was to have every employee understand how different parts of the company work. Because Tutor.com has under 50 employees and many people telecommute, this made sense. Depending on your company and goals, it may be more appropriate to invite just the senior management team or a vertical slice of the organization. In some cases, such as when you are looking for ways to better serve your clientele, it might even be appropriate to invite a handful of customers. "In a retreat you make a lot of decisions, and that requires action afterward," says Bruce Honig, the founder of a Bay Area-based meeting facilitation company called Honig Idea Guides. "So if you have people who provide energy or support for that action to occur, you want them there. If they can sabotage the process after the retreat, you also want them there." Dig Deeper: Ready, Set, Strategize How to Plan a Company Retreat: Logistics

Before you stress about where you will go and what you will do, remember that, from a business perspective, this is probably the least important part of planning your retreat. Cigale's company has held retreats at a dude ranch, Las Vegas, Florida, and, when the budget was a little tighter, at a conference center near the company's offices. But he considers each retreat to have been successful.

"It's nice to play golf, and it's nice to have trees around you, but that's not necessary to get the work done," Honig says.

If you can afford it, however, adding some fun to the trip does have advantages. First, it can help get your employees excited about the retreat and somewhat compensate for pulling them away from their homes and families. Second, it can provide time for informal discussion and help your team get to know each other better. "Just the time together at dinner and talking about the Olympics or whatever, I think that that helps with communication," Withrow says. Cigale recommends sticking with about a 20 percent fun, 80 percent work ratio. Dig Deeper: Everyone Can Play How to Plan a Retreat: Choose a Facilitator

Another planning issue that should be on your mind from the start is who will facilitate the retreat. The most important qualities in a facilitator is that he or she is trained in group processes and able to maintain a neutral position throughout brainstorming and debate. For the later reason, the CEO or a manager of the company is often a poor choice. One popular alternative is to hire a professional facilitator, which may cost up to $5,000 per day but will ensure that time is used efficiently.

If you do chose to facilitate your own retreat, however, Withrow suggests that you save a seat at the table while you are standing by a screen or at a flip chart taking notes. If you have an opinion that you need to express, walk to the chair, sit down, and announce that your facilitator hat is off. "You have to be really careful not to overstep your bounds," Cigale says. "Give people the comfort and permission to speak openly. If you're the facilitator and an authority figure in the room, the risk really is that there won't be open and honest debate."

Using a facilitator from a different department may also be an option. "In a strategic planning session, it will be very tough to have someone more junior in the organization telling the CEO and the VPs when to talk, when not to talk, and pushing back on them," Withrow says. "But a retreat for another reason, say it's a customer support area or they want to talk about new CMS system or something like that, a peer facilitator from somewhere else in the organization could handle it." Dig Deeper: Offsite Bloopers How to Plan a Retreat: Using Your Time Effectively

Planning is your friend when it comes to retreats. By the time you arrive at the retreat location, you and every attendee should already have a good idea of how you are going to accomplish your goals. Will you make decisions by consensus or majority? Does the person whose organizational responsibility the decision is get the final say? Will you debate, branch out into smaller discussion groups, or brainstorm? These are questions that you should work out before you get to the retreat.

"Participants should know from the beginning whether they are being asked to make decisions that the organization's senior leadership will support or recommendations that senior leadership will take into consideration," Liteman says. "Either is okay. What's not okay is for participants to be led to believe they're making decisions only to find out that the boss is cherry-picking: 'Let's implement this suggestion, but not that one. And by the way, here's something the participants didn't even think of that I'm going to ask them to implement.'"

There are innumerable ways to format your meeting time. Honig likes to start out strategic planning sessions by examining the history and milestones of the company. Withrow sometimes asks people to defend assigned positions during a debate. Cigale devotes much of his time to presentations by different departments of his company. And Liteman uses tools including improvising, role plays, storytelling, music, metaphor, silence, and art to facilitate retreats. Some key principles to follow no matter what approach you choose are:

• Collaborate . "Even if there are fifty people, everyone should have the means and the opportunity to contribute to everything," Honig says.
• Make discussion introvert-friendly . Ask people to write down answers to questions instead of blurting them out, and ask every person in the room to give his or her opinion in an organized manner.
• Encourage people to express themselves . Have people use the same marker and type of paper to submit their opinions so they won't be afraid of judgment. Make sure minority opinions have a way to be heard.
• Combine team building with work . Obstacle courses might be a good way to diagnose team problems or have fun, but the real team development happens around the work. "What you do in team development is look toward the future and think about how the team is going to be different," Honig says. "Specifically, the team should decide their next steps in the future, versus just experiencing a task together and saying, 'look, we can work well together.'"
• Stay on topic . Withrow uses a "parking lot" to accomplish this. When someone brings up an issue that isn't on the agenda at that time, he'll write it down on a whiteboard or flip chart and come back to it at the end of the meeting.
• Diverge, converge . It can be effective to break up the team and assign them different aspects of the project that they can bring back to the larger group for discussion.
• Document your next steps . Assign a champion for each step that the team has agreed on. Make these steps as specific as possible. "Document who does what, by when, as measured by how at the end of it," Withrow says.

Dig Deeper: Escape From Meeting Hell

A refreshed look at leadership from the desk of CEO and chief content officer Stephanie Mehta

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More From Forbes

14 major considerations for leaders planning an employee retreat.

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Employee retreats are among the best team-building exercises that a company can invest in. All the same, ensuring that the activity goes well and no issues are encountered takes some skillful planning by the leaders tasked with that duty. The most crucial element to consider is the balance of fun and work that encourages employees to build bonds and pursue improvement of their skills by taking part in dedicated activities or consulting more experienced co-workers.

To help business leaders attain this balance, 14 members of Forbes Coaches Council take a look at the crucial considerations to keep in mind when creating one of these employee retreats, and why those actions are essential to the overall success of the exercise.

Forbes Coaches Council members share what every employer needs to take into account when planning an employee retreat.

1. Don't Overschedule The Agenda

Too often, leaders overschedule retreats with too many agenda items. What inevitably happens is that input from team members is cut short, and that leaves people feeling their voice is not important. Determine the purpose, and then figure out what items can be managed best in a retreat setting and what agenda items can be handled in the normal course of business. Give enough time for engaging discussions. - Wendy Fraser , Fraser Consulting, LLC

2. Mix Fun And Function

When you mix fun and function into each agenda item, you'll have a more meaningful and memorable team retreat. Try splitting the team up into small groups to discuss big questions over dinner. Or try using Legos to help brainstorm solutions to business problems. Integrating the fun and functional will make functional work more memorable, and the fun will have more meaning. - Kate Dixon , Dixon Consulting

3. Get Your Team's Input

Balancing corporate outings is not difficult if the basics of the end goal are the starting point: teamwork. Considering that the most likely goal of such an endeavor is to improve both individual and team performances, the planning should involve team feedback. Using both individual and team input in planning is going to inherently result in more interest and better outcomes for the event. - Kamyar Shah , World Consulting Group

4. Find The Right Theme

Identify a relevant and motivating theme. This theme can help balance the fun and the work items and also link both of these to a central focus. Along with the fun activities, ask how the work items can be made engaging to diverse employees who bring their own styles, experiences and expectations. The right theme is a key step in planning a retreat that has value—during and after it ends! - Mary Camuto , MC Consulting

5. Make It Personal (With Boundaries)

Successful retreats are when professional work and personal life are balanced; therefore, not too much work and not too much personal. Boundaries need to be set clearly at the beginning, allowing everyone to feel comfortable choosing their own level of openness without judgement. It gives an opportunity to connect and build deep rapport, which doesn't normally get achieved in the workplace. - Debbie Halls-Evans , RLC Global

6. Let Your Employees Do The Planning

As an employee, there's nothing worse than attending a retreat that is irrelevant, boring and disengaging. Let your employees plan your next retreat by forming a committee of volunteers to drive the planning and execution of the event. Help your employees understand what you are hoping to achieve and what success would look like, then empower them to lead by getting out of their way! - Sinive Seely , Sinive Seely Coaching and Consulting

7. Enhance Human Connection

It's equally important that people learn about each other—what's their history that makes them who they are? Successes, failures, major learning and turning points. What are each person's unique gifts that you wouldn't know from their job? Music, athletics, awards, hobbies, languages, etc. What adversity was overcome, demonstrating their grit? These attributes are resources and help build trust. - Mark Samuel , IMPAQ Corporation

8. Plan For Time To Think

Company retreats are often packed to the gills with meetings, workshops and activities. They can be exhilarating and exhausting. Too much work can overwhelm, and too much playtime can detract from the learning experience. We always plan in time for breaks to allow the brain to process what has been discussed and for physical activity to help keep awake and energized. - Janet Fouts , Tatu Digital Media

9. Leave Plenty Of Free Time

Leave plenty of free time. This will give employees time to connect in an unforced and natural way. Too many retreats are overly structured with business topics and "forced fun." Allow employees time to define fun for themselves, even if this means they want to curl up with a book alone. They'll thank you for it! - Holly Knoll , Holly Knoll Coaching and Consulting

10. Connect To The Business Goals

We're on a retreat. Yay! This is so much fun! But what do these events and activities and growth opportunities actually help with? This is what you have to show and explain during these retreats—how does this connect to the business goals? If your team cannot say exactly what each and every thing they did was designed to help them accomplish "back in the office," then you have failed them as their leader. - Cody Dakota Wooten , The Leadership Guide

11. Create A Dynamic Agenda

Build a retreat agenda alternating business objectives with professional development and interactive activities. Include a variety of team-building exercises—such as get-to-know-you, problem solving, using influence—so there's something for everyone. This broadens the experience and deepens individual learning and team bonding. Go with the flow and flex the agenda as the energy of the group dictates. - Sheryl Lyons , Culture Spark LLC

12. Make Time For Journaling

Employee retreats have many objectives, such as fostering teamwork, discussing work issues and getting to know one another better. Packing in a whole bunch of activities without making any time to process them is like taking someone to a buffet and telling them to keep eating even when they are about to burst. Making time for journaling is a way to build genuine bonding through appreciation. - Anne Beaulieu , Walking Inside Resources Inc.

13. Let People Interact Naturally

Have you ever noticed that the biggest ROI from a workshop you attended was the break when you met someone really interesting? Don't fill in every moment. Give time for people to mix and talk naturally without worrying about cramming in email responses or running to the next structured event. - Nick Leighton , Exactly Where You Want to Be

14. Don't Unintentionally Create Sidelines

Scan the plan for retreat activities that are inclusive. Make sure all your people are trapeze-ready if flying is part of the plan! Don't create events that require physical or mental challenges that will leave some people out of the fun, even if there are alternatives. Especially watch out for competitive events, or events like skits or roasts that could lean toward embarrassment or even harassment. - Tom Kolditz , Doerr Institute for New Leaders

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Anne and Meghann.

Photo by melissa quaal..

I recently planned a business retreat with fellow solopreneurs, Melissa and Anne , where we used a planning tool I developed to dive deep into our creative businesses and identify actionable steps toward our ideal business futures. Here, I share some of the core practicalities and considerations to take if you’d like to plan a retreat of your own. Planning the details beforehand will ensure your investment (of time, money or both!) is effective and will allow you and all the participants to be fully present in the discussions and get the most out of the retreat.

Who to Invite?

Meghann, Melissa, and Anne.

Some points you’ll want to consider when identifying who to invite for your retreat are:

• Focus and stage of business
• Ability to listen, be candid, and confidential
• Personal and/or business competition

Managing Expectations

A clear objective and rules of engagement are important to managing the expectations of retreat participants, including yourself. You can either draft these before inviting fellow solopreneurs, or draw them up jointly in the early planning phase. Although it may seem evident, having these objectives written out ensures that everyone arrives prepared, on the same page, and with similar expectations of what they’ll be getting out of the retreat.

Where and How Long?

Location is important, but it doesn’t have to break the bank. This year, we were in a beautiful apartment in Old San Juan. But last year, I held a “retreat” in my dining room. The budget and amount of time that you are able and willing to invest in your retreat will be your parameter. Although I’d say 3 days is ideal, you can do a lot in one full working day! We chose Puerto Rico because we wanted sun and warmth in January. Since I’d been to Puerto Rico before, I knew that Old San Juan was a colorful area that would allow us to step out the door for pleasant walks, as well as visit restaurants and shops during our down-time. On a conceptual level, I wanted to find a place that was beautiful and creatively inspiring while calm and peaceful.

Some points to consider when choosing your location:

• Is there Wi-Fi?
• Is it an inspiring space away from daily routine?
• Is there good ventilation and/or fresh air?
• Is the space conducive to group work and smaller break-out groups?
• Is it located in an area that allows for movement, such as short walks during breaks?
• Is there a kitchen or space for preparing coffee, tea and other refreshments, as well as a bathroom?

How to Structure Your Retreat?

Meghann, Anne, and Melissa. Photo by Melissa Quaal.

• In the spotlight – each participant talks about the current state of their business, past year challenges, and hopeful direction.
• Unsolicited advice – one participant sits listening and taking notes while the others talk about their business as if they weren’t in the room. Scary! But SO good!
• Visioning – what does your ideal business look like? Or, in your wildest dreams, where would you like your business to be in 5 years? Now go there.
• Identify what is holding you back from getting to the ideal vision.
• Identify what could get you to the ideal vision.
• Stop, Start, Continue – what do you need to stop doing in your business, start doing (that you aren’t doing already) and continue doing?
• Planning – identify “deadlines” and work backward, planning activities in your calendar.

Thoughts on My Next Retreat

I can’t think of a better way to start the year than a small business retreat! I returned home so inspired, motivated, and ready to move forward with confidence. The changes I would make for future retreats are minor and mainly in the details. Based on the feedback I received from Melissa and Anne, as well as my own reflections, here are a few tips that may be useful for your retreat too:

• 3 to 6 participants and three full working days seems ideal.
• Participants should arrive with key business figures filled out on their “preparation document,” such as income, site visitors, newsletter subscribers, etc.
• In addition to notepads, provide participants with basic, empty monthly calendars to facilitate planning. Paper & pen are often easier to work with in a group rather than using digital technology.
• Keep your Day 1 agenda minimal. This is the day when you’re most vulnerable, so it’s important to allow plenty of time.

“YES! That’s it!” we called out several times during our time together in Puerto Rico. It was exhilarating! It never got old or felt repetitive to “talk shop” during our short week together. There was a constant flow of constructive brainstorming between the three of us, and it felt gloriously productive.

Check out these two posts for additional ideas:

A “how to” for a shorter retreat: https://www.paperandoats.com/blog-native/how-to-plan-a-diy-mastermind-retreat

Participant Reactions

Melissa: I cannot over-state the value of traveling to Puerto Rico for a creative business retreat.  The work I did there included systematically reviewing my current business, envisioning the future, and breaking down goals into bite-size pieces. Doing all of that while surrounded by supportive women who ‘get it’ left me feeling ready to tackle a big re-branding and launch a business I believe in.

Meghann Halfmoon

Contributor

This goes so perfectly with this week’s episode of the Courage and Clarity podcast! She did a similar retreat in New York City with 9 other women. It’s here, if you want to hear a variation on this theme.

https://www.courageandclarity.com/podcast/82

Interesting trend, these self-organized, small scale retreats!

Do you have any specific pointers for businesses that are in the early stages: about to start up to new & not yet profitable?

Hi Victoria, We have resources for creating your business structure and setting up your bank account and creating a business plan. Our community has members who are at all different stages of their business. We’d be happy to help you in your journey 🙂

I have worked with numerous small business. A business plan is key. Your raw materiial base is critical . costing is essential. set standards for yourself ensure consistency in your finished product.

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How to Run a Backlog Refinement Meeting (+ Agenda)

The importance of a Backlog Refinement meeting cannot be overstated. A successful session can move you forward and prepare for upcoming Sprints.

In this blog, we will dive deep into what Backlog Refinement meetings are, how to effectively run them, show you the best practices; and we'll even give you a free agenda template to use.

What Is Backlog Refinement?

Backlog Refinement (AKA Backlog grooming or Story Time) is the iterative process of reviewing and updating the Product Backlog items. This ongoing activity involves the whole Scrum Team, to ensure the Backlog items are organized, and ready for the next Sprint.

Product Backlog in Agile methodology is a dynamic list of all the tasks, features, technical work, and other activities that need to be addressed to develop and improve a product. It's a prioritized inventory that provides a comprehensive picture of the project at any point in time.

The Product Backlog includes details like User Stories, bug fixes, and other project-related tasks. It is regularly updated and prioritized by the Product Owner to reflect the project's evolving needs and goals.

The purpose of Backlog Refinement is to clean up the Backlog and make sure that it only contains relevant and detailed items. It also ensures that all team members have the same understanding of the matter and that everyone knows what they’ll be doing in the next Sprint.

There are no strict rules about the duration or frequency of Backlog Refinement sessions, but it's common to have one 30-60 minute gathering per Sprint.

The goal is to ensure that the Product Backlog remains updated, clearly defined, and properly prioritized for upcoming Sprints, without overburdening the team with excessive meetings.

• Product Owner : Takes a central role, leading the session. The PO clarifies the details and intricacies of Backlog items, ensuring each is clearly understood. Their primary task is to prioritize these items, aligning them with the overarching business value and project goals.
• Development Team : Provides a realistic perspective on technical feasibility. They contribute by estimating the effort required for each task and assisting in decomposing complex items into manageable tasks, thereby aiding in accurate Sprint Planning.
• Scrum Master : Acts as the facilitator for the meeting. Their role includes ensuring that the session stays on track, adhering to Agile processes and effective communication. They also help resolve any impediments that may hinder the Refinement process.

Backlog Refinement vs. Sprint Planning

Backlog Refinement and Sprint Planning are two important activities in Agile and Scrum methodologies, but they serve different purposes and are conducted at different times in the Sprint cycle.

Backlog Refinement : The main objective of a Product Backlog Refinement is to review and prepare the Product Backlog for upcoming Sprints. This involves prioritizing items, estimating efforts, and ensuring clarity and understanding of the Backlog items.

Sprint Planning : The goal of Sprint Planning is to decide what work will be performed in the upcoming Sprint. This is where the team commits to specific items from the Product Backlog to complete during the Sprint.

In summary, Backlog Refinement is about preparing and maintaining the Product Backlog, ensuring it's ready for the Sprint Planning meeting. Sprint Planning, on the other hand, is about committing to specific items from this backlog and planning the work for the upcoming Sprint. Both are critical for maintaining the flow and effectiveness of Agile development.

How to Run a Backlog Refinement Meeting

Running a successful Backlog Refinement meeting is more than just gathering the Scrum Team around a table. It's about ensuring productive discussions and actionable outcomes.

Here's a guide to conducting an effective meeting:

Prepare in Advance

Preparation is key to an effective Backlog Refinement meeting. The Product Owner plays a crucial role in this phase. Pre-meeting preparation involves:

• Reviewing the Backlog : Analyze the current state of the Product Backlog. Identify items that need updating and clarification.
• Gathering Data : Collect any relevant data, customer feedback, or research findings that might impact the Backlog items.
• Setting the Agenda : Outline what needs to be discussed. A clear agenda helps in keeping the meeting focused and productive.
• Communicating with the Team : Brief the team on the agenda and any specific preparation they need to do. This ensures everyone comes to the meeting well-informed and ready to contribute.

Set Clear Objectives

• Defining Specific Goals : Clearly state what the meeting should accomplish. This could include clarifying complex User Stories, re-prioritizing the Backlog, or resolving specific blockers.
• Aligning with Project Aims : Ensure that the objectives are in line with the broader project goals and current Sprint objectives.
• Communicating to the Team : Share these objectives with the team beforehand, so everyone understands the focus areas and prepares accordingly.

Focus on Collaboration

• Promoting Teamwork : Encourage an environment where the Product Owner, Development Team, and Scrum Master work together closely. This collaboration is key to understanding and agreeing on the nuances of each Backlog item.
• Balancing Perspectives : Ensure that the perspectives of both technical and business sides are considered. This balance helps in creating a more effective and achievable Backlog.
• Resolving Conflicts : Use the Refinement session as an opportunity to address and resolve any disagreements or misunderstandings regarding Backlog items.

Document and Assign Actions

• Record Key Decisions : Ensure that all decisions and changes made during the meeting are documented. This could be in the form of meeting minutes or an updated Backlog document.
• Assign Responsibilities : Assign tasks or follow-ups to specific team members. Ensure everyone understands their responsibilities and deadlines.
• Action Items Follow-up : Plan for a follow-up on these actions in subsequent meetings or through other communication channels.

Remember, the goal of a Backlog Refinement meeting is not just to go through the motions, but to ensure that the Scrum Team is on the same page and ready for the upcoming Sprint.

For better documentation, try using apps that can help you with taking notes. With the advances in technology, AI apps such as Wudpecker can generate intuitive notes and action items from your meetings; you will not miss a thing.

Keep It Time-Bound

• Setting a Time Limit : Establish a specific duration for the meeting (e.g. 1 hour) and stick to it. This helps maintain focus and efficiency.
• Time Management : Allocate specific time slots to each agenda item to ensure that all important points are covered without rushing.
• Avoiding Overrun : Be mindful of the time and steer the discussion to prevent overrun, ensuring that the meeting remains productive and respects everyone's time.

Time-bound meetings help maintain a high level of energy and engagement throughout the session.

Backlog Refinement Agenda Template

This template offers a balanced approach, ensuring each aspect of Backlog Refinement is addressed effectively within a time-bound session. Remember, this template is a guide. Feel free to adjust the timings and focus areas based on your team's specific needs and the nature of your project.

Best Practices

Regular scheduling.

Regular scheduling of Backlog Refinement meetings is vital for continuous and effective backlog management. It's about finding the right balance:

• Frequency and Duration : Determine an optimal frequency (e.g., weekly, bi-weekly) that suits your team's pace without causing fatigue. Keep the meetings concise to maintain focus.
• Consistency : Hold meetings at regular intervals to establish a rhythm, making them a predictable part of the team's routine.
• Flexibility : Be open to adjusting the schedule based on the team's needs and project demands.

Inclusive Participation

• Encouraging Input : Every team member, from the Product Owner to the Development Team members, should feel empowered to contribute their perspectives and ideas.
• Diverse Viewpoints : Valuing the different insights and experiences that each member brings to the table, can lead to more comprehensive and well-rounded decisions.
• Active Engagement : Creating an environment where all members are actively engaged in the discussion, not just passively listening.

Flexibility

• Adaptability : Being open to re-prioritizing the Product Backlog as project needs and customer requirements evolve.
• Responsive Changes : Quickly incorporating new information or feedback into the Backlog Refinement process.
• Balancing Priorities : Adjusting the focus between long-term goals and immediate needs, ensuring the backlog remains relevant and dynamic.

This approach allows the Agile team to remain responsive and effective in a changing project environment.

Focus on Value

• Prioritizing Impact : Aligning Backlog items with the highest impact on end-user satisfaction and project goals.
• Value-Driven Decisions : Making decisions based on the value each Backlog item brings to the customer and the project.
• Regular Reassessment : Continuously reassessing the Backlog to ensure that the most valuable items are prioritized for upcoming Sprints.

This approach ensures that the team's efforts are always aligned with delivering the most valuable outcomes.

Continuous Improvement

• Learning from Experience : Regularly reflecting on past Refinement sessions to identify areas for improvement.
• Implementing Feedback : Actively seeking and incorporating feedback from the team to enhance the Refinement process.
• Evolving Practices : Adapting and updating Refinement techniques and practices to better suit the team's evolving needs and project dynamics.

This approach ensures the Backlog Refinement process remains effective and efficient, continuously evolving with the team and project requirements.

Implementing these practices helps in maintaining a common understanding among Scrum Team members, ensuring that the Backlog Refinement process contributes positively to the overall team efficiency and project success.

Navigating the Backlog Refinement process is like charting a course for a successful Agile journey. It's about bringing clarity, prioritization, and alignment to your Product Backlog, making sure your team is ready for every Sprint Planning session.

By embracing effective Backlog Refinement meetings and practices, you set the stage for a smoother, more efficient Sprint. Remember, it's an ongoing process, evolving with your project and team. Keep refining, stay agile, and watch your team's productivity soar!

What Should Be Discussed in Backlog Refinement?

1. Clarifying and detailing User Stories and Backlog items.

2. Prioritizing Backlog items based on importance and project goals.

3. Estimating the effort required for User Stories, using methods like planning poker.

4. Breaking down larger tasks into smaller, manageable pieces.

5. Updating or removing items that are no longer relevant.

6. Introducing new User Stories or tasks as needed.

What Does Backlog Refinement Focus On?

Backlog Refinement focuses on reviewing and updating the Product Backlog to ensure clarity, relevancy, and prioritization of tasks and User Stories.

It includes detailing and clarifying Backlog items, estimating their effort and complexity, prioritizing them based on project goals and value, and breaking down larger tasks into manageable pieces.

This process helps in preparing the Backlog for effective Sprint Planning and execution.

What Are the Most Effective Techniques for Prioritizing Backlog Items During Refinement Sessions?

• Value-Based Prioritization : Focus on items that offer the most value to customers and align with business goals.
• MoSCoW Method : Categorize items as Must have, Should have, Could have, or Won't have, to streamline prioritization.
• Kano Model : Analyze items based on customer satisfaction and functionality, balancing basic needs with delightful features.
• Cost of Delay : Evaluate the impact of not completing items on time to prioritize urgent and high-impact tasks.
• Stakeholder Input : Regularly involve stakeholders in the Refinement process to understand their perspectives and requirements.

Date: [Insert Date] Time: [Insert Start Time] - [Insert End Time] Location: [Specify if it's an in-person or virtual meeting and provide necessary details or links]

Meeting Purpose: [Clearly articulate the overarching goal or objective of the meeting]

1. Opening (5 mins) :

• Quick overview of the agenda.
• Set expectations for the meeting's outcomes.

2. Review of the Current Backlog (15 mins) :

• Examine existing User Stories and Backlog items.
• Update or remove items that are no longer relevant.

3. Prioritization (20 mins) :

• Discuss and prioritize Backlog items for the next Sprint.
• Focus on aligning with the project's overall goals and customer needs.

4. Estimation (20 mins) :

• Assign story points or effort estimates to new and existing User Stories.
• Use techniques like planning poker to facilitate estimation.

5. Discussion of New Items (15 mins) :

• Introduce and define any new User Stories or Backlog items.
• Determine their relevance and potential impact on the upcoming sprint.

6. Action Items and Closure (5 mins) :

• Summarize key decisions and action items.
• Confirm the meeting agenda for the next grooming meeting or Backlog Refinement session.

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MoSCoW Prioritization

What is moscow prioritization.

MoSCoW prioritization, also known as the MoSCoW method or MoSCoW analysis, is a popular prioritization technique for managing requirements. 

  The acronym MoSCoW represents four categories of initiatives: must-have, should-have, could-have, and won’t-have, or will not have right now. Some companies also use the “W” in MoSCoW to mean “wish.”

What is the History of the MoSCoW Method?

Software development expert Dai Clegg created the MoSCoW method while working at Oracle. He designed the framework to help his team prioritize tasks during development work on product releases.

You can find a detailed account of using MoSCoW prioritization in the Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM) handbook . But because MoSCoW can prioritize tasks within any time-boxed project, teams have adapted the method for a broad range of uses.

How Does MoSCoW Prioritization Work?

Before running a MoSCoW analysis, a few things need to happen. First, key stakeholders and the product team need to get aligned on objectives and prioritization factors. Then, all participants must agree on which initiatives to prioritize.

At this point, your team should also discuss how they will settle any disagreements in prioritization. If you can establish how to resolve disputes before they come up, you can help prevent those disagreements from holding up progress.

Finally, you’ll also want to reach a consensus on what percentage of resources you’d like to allocate to each category.

With the groundwork complete, you may begin determining which category is most appropriate for each initiative. But, first, let’s further break down each category in the MoSCoW method.

Start prioritizing your roadmap

Moscow prioritization categories.

1. Must-have initiatives

As the name suggests, this category consists of initiatives that are “musts” for your team. They represent non-negotiable needs for the project, product, or release in question. For example, if you’re releasing a healthcare application, a must-have initiative may be security functionalities that help maintain compliance.

The “must-have” category requires the team to complete a mandatory task. If you’re unsure about whether something belongs in this category, ask yourself the following.

If the product won’t work without an initiative, or the release becomes useless without it, the initiative is most likely a “must-have.”

2. Should-have initiatives

Should-have initiatives are just a step below must-haves. They are essential to the product, project, or release, but they are not vital. If left out, the product or project still functions. However, the initiatives may add significant value.

“Should-have” initiatives are different from “must-have” initiatives in that they can get scheduled for a future release without impacting the current one. For example, performance improvements, minor bug fixes, or new functionality may be “should-have” initiatives. Without them, the product still works.

3. Could-have initiatives

Another way of describing “could-have” initiatives is nice-to-haves. “Could-have” initiatives are not necessary to the core function of the product. However, compared with “should-have” initiatives, they have a much smaller impact on the outcome if left out.

So, initiatives placed in the “could-have” category are often the first to be deprioritized if a project in the “should-have” or “must-have” category ends up larger than expected.

4. Will not have (this time)

One benefit of the MoSCoW method is that it places several initiatives in the “will-not-have” category. The category can manage expectations about what the team will not include in a specific release (or another timeframe you’re prioritizing).

Placing initiatives in the “will-not-have” category is one way to help prevent scope creep . If initiatives are in this category, the team knows they are not a priority for this specific time frame. 

Some initiatives in the “will-not-have” group will be prioritized in the future, while others are not likely to happen. Some teams decide to differentiate between those by creating a subcategory within this group.

How Can Development Teams Use MoSCoW?

  Although Dai Clegg developed the approach to help prioritize tasks around his team’s limited time, the MoSCoW method also works when a development team faces limitations other than time. For example: 

Prioritize based on budgetary constraints.

What if a development team’s limiting factor is not a deadline but a tight budget imposed by the company? Working with the product managers, the team can use MoSCoW first to decide on the initiatives that represent must-haves and the should-haves. Then, using the development department’s budget as the guide, the team can figure out which items they can complete. 

Prioritize based on the team’s skillsets.

A cross-functional product team might also find itself constrained by the experience and expertise of its developers. If the product roadmap calls for functionality the team does not have the skills to build, this limiting factor will play into scoring those items in their MoSCoW analysis.

Prioritize based on competing needs at the company.

Cross-functional teams can also find themselves constrained by other company priorities. The team wants to make progress on a new product release, but the executive staff has created tight deadlines for further releases in the same timeframe. In this case, the team can use MoSCoW to determine which aspects of their desired release represent must-haves and temporarily backlog everything else.

What Are the Drawbacks of MoSCoW Prioritization?

  Although many product and development teams have prioritized MoSCoW, the approach has potential pitfalls. Here are a few examples.

1. An inconsistent scoring process can lead to tasks placed in the wrong categories.

  One common criticism against MoSCoW is that it does not include an objective methodology for ranking initiatives against each other. Your team will need to bring this methodology to your analysis. The MoSCoW approach works only to ensure that your team applies a consistent scoring system for all initiatives.

Pro tip: One proven method is weighted scoring, where your team measures each initiative on your backlog against a standard set of cost and benefit criteria. You can use the weighted scoring approach in ProductPlan’s roadmap app .

2. Not including all relevant stakeholders can lead to items placed in the wrong categories.

To know which of your team’s initiatives represent must-haves for your product and which are merely should-haves, you will need as much context as possible.

For example, you might need someone from your sales team to let you know how important (or unimportant) prospective buyers view a proposed new feature.

One pitfall of the MoSCoW method is that you could make poor decisions about where to slot each initiative unless your team receives input from all relevant stakeholders. 

3. Team bias for (or against) initiatives can undermine MoSCoW’s effectiveness.

Because MoSCoW does not include an objective scoring method, your team members can fall victim to their own opinions about certain initiatives. 

One risk of using MoSCoW prioritization is that a team can mistakenly think MoSCoW itself represents an objective way of measuring the items on their list. They discuss an initiative, agree that it is a “should have,” and move on to the next.

But your team will also need an objective and consistent framework for ranking all initiatives. That is the only way to minimize your team’s biases in favor of items or against them.

When Do You Use the MoSCoW Method for Prioritization?

MoSCoW prioritization is effective for teams that want to include representatives from the whole organization in their process. You can capture a broader perspective by involving participants from various functional departments.

Another reason you may want to use MoSCoW prioritization is it allows your team to determine how much effort goes into each category. Therefore, you can ensure you’re delivering a good variety of initiatives in each release.

What Are Best Practices for Using MoSCoW Prioritization?

If you’re considering giving MoSCoW prioritization a try, here are a few steps to keep in mind. Incorporating these into your process will help your team gain more value from the MoSCoW method.

1. Choose an objective ranking or scoring system.

Remember, MoSCoW helps your team group items into the appropriate buckets—from must-have items down to your longer-term wish list. But MoSCoW itself doesn’t help you determine which item belongs in which category.

You will need a separate ranking methodology. You can choose from many, such as:

• Weighted scoring
• Value vs. complexity
• Buy-a-feature
• Opportunity scoring

For help finding the best scoring methodology for your team, check out ProductPlan’s article: 7 strategies to choose the best features for your product .

2. Seek input from all key stakeholders.

To make sure you’re placing each initiative into the right bucket—must-have, should-have, could-have, or won’t-have—your team needs context. 

At the beginning of your MoSCoW method, your team should consider which stakeholders can provide valuable context and insights. Sales? Customer success? The executive staff? Product managers in another area of your business? Include them in your initiative scoring process if you think they can help you see opportunities or threats your team might miss. 

3. Share your MoSCoW process across your organization.

MoSCoW gives your team a tangible way to show your organization prioritizing initiatives for your products or projects. 

The method can help you build company-wide consensus for your work, or at least help you show stakeholders why you made the decisions you did.

Communicating your team’s prioritization strategy also helps you set expectations across the business. When they see your methodology for choosing one initiative over another, stakeholders in other departments will understand that your team has thought through and weighed all decisions you’ve made. 

If any stakeholders have an issue with one of your decisions, they will understand that they can’t simply complain—they’ll need to present you with evidence to alter your course of action.  

Related Terms

2×2 prioritization matrix / Eisenhower matrix / DACI decision-making framework / ICE scoring model / RICE scoring model

Prioritizing your roadmap using our guide

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