What is the ROI of taking your leadership team out of the boardroom?
It is a question I think COO's, HR leaders and Strategists in companies should sk more often.
I have spent a lot of my career organising meetings, board gatherings and corporate events, and one of the things I have learned is that putting the same people in a different meeting room does not necessarily produce a different conversation, sometimes you need to change the environment.
Take a leadership team out of the office and bring them somewhere completely different. A chalet in the mountains, perhaps a walk rather than another PowerPoint, or dinner around one table. Give them a few hours where nobody is disappearing between meetings or checking emails every five minutes, and something changes. Titles become a little less important, people talk differently and listen more, conversations continue over dinner or while walking back from an activity.
Why is this important, because you begin to understand the person behind the job title and, very often, that is where trust starts to grow, and that has real business value.
Better understanding can lead to quicker decisions. Stronger relationships can reduce friction between teams, while clearer communication helps people align around a strategy. Giving leaders proper time together can also uncover problems and opportunities that simply never make it onto the agenda of a 60-minute meeting.
This is why, at HOWARD&Co, I don't see a corporate retreat as simply a few days away from the office. I see it as an investment in how a team works when they get back.
And the mountains give us an incredible environment in which to do it.
Here in Switzerland, we can combine leadership development with walking, indoor and outdoor experiences, great food and hospitality, private spaces for serious conversations and, importantly, enough breathing room for the unplanned conversations that can sometimes be the most valuable part of the whole retreat.
It does not have to be extreme, and nobody needs to climb the Matterhorn, It simply needs to be designed around what that particular team needs to achieve.
For me, that is the real ROI of a great executive retreat, don't measure its success by how good the hotel was or how many activities you fitted into three days, measure it by what happens when everyone goes back to work:
Do they communicate better?
Do they understand each other better?
Do they make decisions faster?
Do they trust each other more?
And do they move forward together?
If the answer is yes, those few days away were anything but time away from the business.
Howard
Founder, HOWARD&Co
Based in Switzerland - Working globally.
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