Avoiding Tangents and Time Drains in your Strategy Sessions

We all get tied up with the day to day and working ‘in’ the business – but time spent with key stakeholders working ‘on’ the business can be invaluable. Running workshops will get you on the right path for future success, whether it’s concerning internal alignment, short / longer-term goals, or dealing with an immediate crisis. The first challenge in running workshops or strategy sessions is to get the right people in the room at the same time, which is no mean feat! Once this is achieved there are still several pitfalls to avoid and navigate around.

Here are the top 5 things that can send internal strategy meetings awry

1. Tangents and time drains – One of the biggest challenged is effectively staying on topic, with different agendas in the room it’s easy to get distracted on other topics. Another common mistake is also spending too much time on one issue, leaving you little time to get to the crux of the issue and find solutions. You may even run out of meeting room time and have to re-organize another session
2. Distractions – emails, urgent calls, text messages. Sometimes, it’s just out of habit that we glance down at the phone and then we can’t seem to stop ourselves from replying - after all it only takes 2 minutes. However, without everyone fully focused, even if it’s just a few minutes, you will find topics or agendas getting lost in translation. Having dedicated ‘focus time’ is key, whilst allowing breaks to deal with urgent business issues.
3. Personalities / positions – stronger voices, quieter voices. It’s only natural for a more senior person to dominate sessions, even if they don’t intend to. There may be important points missed just because there is no air space, or a lack of confidence from a more introverted stakeholder means counter arguments or ideas could be missed. You want to leave the room with everyone feeling they have contributed and are on board with the next steps. However, who is going to tell the boss to pipe down?
4. Lack of structure – often people are coming from different points of view and different departments, which can lead to a disjointed session with unclear goals or outputs. Setting an agenda with clear outputs and goals is important – but it’s also vital to assign responsibilities to each of these to ensure the ideas created come to life.
5. Boredom / lack of creativity – roundtable discussions in isolation are not the best recipe for finding solutions and setting goals for your brand/ company. Sometimes we must reach further by going out of our comfort zone, into a more creative space before we find our way back to practical actions and next steps

Do you recognize some of the above? If so, then having an external person facilitate these sessions has numerous valuable benefits.

It can help with giving parity to voices and input – is there a key stakeholder that has some great ideas but doesn’t always have the confidence to voice it? Having someone manage the session means that there are key ground rules put in place to ensure confident and equal input across the board. 

Having an external facilitator who can set in place tech bans and other regulations without fear of authority can really make a difference to stakeholder engagement. In most cases, we are ‘stronger together’ and strategy sessions can really help hone and clarify not only key actions, but also put timescales and teams’ responsibility alongside each one to ensure the session is not forgotten about.

And facilitators can really bring the best out in people creatively using gamification and enabling techniques. We have plenty to draw from such as PIP decks, or models like De Bono’s six thinking hats. Saying which concept you like best doesn’t require much thought – but what if you had to put your (virtual) money where your mouth is? Then you might think harder as to which ‘investment’ will give you a good return. 

It’s also good to consider the right location for these sessions – ideally off site, with plenty of natural light. It’s amazing how a change in location can change the mood and mindset and create more of a buzz around the session.

Ultimately, there are times when internal sessions don’t need any external help, but for those more challenging, groundbreaking sessions, it’s an excellent worthwhile investment.