The Group Retreat – How It's Done

The group retreat brings together two or more individuals for an extended period of time – anywhere from three hours to three days – to tackle issues or opportunities they feel need addressing.

Success rests on the participants’ knowledge, their perception of the organization, and the issues they believe it faces. In our experience, it also depends on the degree to which the participants are committed to succeeding, indicating that the selection of individuals to be involved in the session is a critical decision.

This is an ideal occasion to exploit the talents of an experienced facilitator.

Approach

The group retreat needs to be designed to ensure that both the participants and the facilitator are well prepared, which in turn ensures a greater level of participation in, and commitment to the results of the session.

Entry and Preparation

In preparation for the session, the facilitator reviews relevant documentation and interview all participants – or at minimum, key players – to better understand the environment, and problems and issues facing the group. With larger groups – 20 or more – participants may be asked to respond to a three- or four-question survey, and in some cases, an extensive “data gathering” questionnaire.

Using the interview and survey results, the facilitator drafts a position paper that summarizes the responses, and highlights the common issues and preferences which surfaced. These responses are also used to help formulate the question set for the session itself.

Distributed just prior to the meeting, the position paper provides a basis for dialogue, and allows the group to focus more quickly on the critical aspects of the topic at hand. As appropriate, we select other relevant material can be included, with the package being distributed to the participants prior to the session to prepare them for the discussions. The package could include, for example:

recent journal or newspaper articles,
position papers by participants or other stakeholders,
industry, demographic, economic or other statistics,
relevant legislation or regulatory positions, and
information regarding the meeting itself, e.g., location, agenda, format, timing, attire, leisure activity.

The final step is confirming the design of the session and agreeing upon the question set to be used in the meeting.

Execution

The process is driven by the group answering the series of questions established prior to the meeting. After the group reaffirms the objectives for the session at the beginning of the workshop, the group steps through the question set to define, for example,

the role or mandate of the group,
a shared vision of a “preferred future,”
specific goals and objectives which reflect achievement of the vision,
critical success factors for meeting those targets,
strategic initiatives to move towards the shared vision, and finally,
results-oriented action plans to proceed with the strategies.

The responses to these questions are captured during the session using a mixture of flip charts and a computer-based outliner projected on a large screen.

After the session, the session results are documented in a report, and a copy provided for each participant.

Completion

Following the publication of the session results, the facilitator holds a debriefing session with the Executive Sponsor. The purpose of the debriefing is to review the results of the session with respect to the objectives, and to identify the required follow-up action items.

The facilitator’s role in the exercise

The external resource acts as facilitator, instigator and synthesizer for the process. The responsibilities include:

working with the Executive Sponsor to set the framework for the session,
conducting the pre-session interviews,
generating the initial and subsequent drafts of the position paper,
leading the retreat itself,
analyzing and documenting the results — both during and after the session, and
conducting the debriefing.

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