Shame on Me For Not Remembering the Power of Offsite Meetings

Michael MacNair |

Shame on Me For Not Remembering the Power of Offsite Meetings

Here I am the owner of a company that provides Travel and Meeting Management services and I have not taken my Executive Team offsite for our annual planning session in far too many years. That changed this past week when my team and I traveled to the El Conquistador Resort in Puerto Rico for our planning session (it is a great place by the way). I didn’t care that it sounded like a vacation and nor should you - ever. We got such better results from these days together than at the past local meetings we have ever had. Here were the five biggest differences from a local meeting:

  1. It was longer, and had to be, giving more time for side bar chat during transport to build collaboration and tackle distractions to our focus.
  2. Less local distractions made for more focus and creativity and cooperation.
  3. We traveled as a team and as a result we got to know each other more, building trust and a better team.
  4. They appreciated and enjoyed the investment and were more engaged as a result.
  5. As we broke for lunch and dinner and after hours we kept taking about business and ideas and thoughts we never quite got to in the scheduled meeting time.

If you begin with the end in mind, establish what you want to accomplish, and understand that you can get more by taking your meetings offsite; it will be an amazing investment. Oh yeah, use a professional to plan the event as well. I know one if you are interested.