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two day retreat

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

For the past two days, I joined a client's executive team and board on a strategic retreat that started with "What do we do as a company?" (which led to a substantial revelation) and followed that all the way to which executives would own what crucial initiatives this year, and which would follow on through the next two years. I witnessed a strong sense of "ownership" of the product(s) of this process by the entire executive team and board, and a great deal of education on how this sort of things is done. We also came away with forms showing how to turn each "crucial initiative" into a list of action items with owners, budgets, and time frames. There were some 28 of theses initiatives, and we bucketed them into four categories with only four in the "immediately actionable" bucket and a handful of must-have larger items in the strategic column to be tackled in the next two years.

I'd say the consultants short-circuited a year of self-discovery and planning, and got us there in a process that dispensed with all of the politics and pain that usually goes into such an ordeal. It goes to show what can happen when you hire pros.