Here are three examples of how we have designed and conducted retreats that have produced successful “organizational makeovers”:

1. Culture Change for the Senior Staff of an International Organization
The Issues
An executive at an international organization asked us to facilitate a culture change retreat for senior leaders to help them form a more cohesive team. He wanted to link their work more closely to the organization’s business plan, ensure that key priorities were communicated in a more coordinated fashion, and better manage workloads to decrease the risk of staff burnout.

Our Process
We interviewed each member of the senior team and a cross-section of staff from all levels of the organization to learn what the leadership team was doing well and where they were falling short.

Because this was already an overworked group, we designed a retreat that would not create a long list of action items to add to their already-too-huge workloads. The retreat helped them focus on several agreed-on guiding principles. A consensus on these principles helped them simplify their daily business decisions and determine a few key actions that would change things for the better.

Although they had all agreed on the importance of the retreat, it was hard to get them to respect the ground rule they had created about keeping their cell phones off except during breaks. Ringing cell phones during sessions provided a vivid in-the-moment example of their 24/7 work culture. The executives were able to see (and hear!) how they were creating a reactive, stressed-out environment for themselves and their employees. This was a time when “breaking the rules” helped the group make progress.

The Measurable Outcomes
Using a series of exercises that established a safe and fun environment for discussing sensitive topics candidly, we helped the executive team:

• Identify the key issues they needed to address and the likely consequences of continuing to ignore them;
• Commit to four guiding principles that would simply their decision-making; and
• Implement five key actions that would improve communication and reduce stress throughout the organization.

The executive team now functions as a team. They have implemented small changes that greatly reduced everyone’s stress level, such as not sending or responding to e-mails on the weekend, which had fostered the notion that staff were expected to be on duty ever hour of every day, weekends included. In doing this, the executives also gave themselves permission to relax. The staff survey indicated that employees see marked improvement in how the senior team leads the organization and communicates more clearly about key priorities.

2. Strategic Planning for a Large Nonprofit
The Issues
The executive director of a large nonprofit asked us to design and facilitate a strategic planning retreat, hoping to position the organization to be an even stronger community presence as it prepared to celebrate its 75th anniversary.

The long-serving director of the organization, who planned to retire during the five-year period to be covered by the strategic plan, also wanted to ensure a smooth transition to new leadership.

Our Process
Because it was a large organization with broad reach in its community, we interviewed and surveyed more than 50 members of its board, staff, volunteers, funders, and users of its services. We asked questions about their priorities for the organization, the strengths that could be built on, and the greatest community needs that the organization should address. We then wrote a detailed summary of the findings, taking care to protect the anonymity of the people who responded.

The Measurable Outcomes
The twenty-nine retreat participants used our report to reach rapid agreement on the areas to focus on during the strategic planning process. They opted to pursue three specific and measurable goals:

• Conduct a $3 million capital campaign for facility renovation and expansion;
• Implement a board and staff engagement, retention, development, and succession plan that would yield measurable increases in satisfaction and retention; and
• Focus programs to ensure annual increases in customer satisfaction ratings and a 5% program income increase each year.

After the retreat, we guided working groups to flesh out specific action assignments and make sure that each key action had a champion. We provided ongoing coaching to the board and staff about how to integrate the goals of the plan into their everyday work.

The board and staff report that they are working enthusiastically to implement their ambitious agenda. An unexpected benefit of their retreat is board and staff members’ new level of excitement and engagement. The executive director told us she now sees a highly competent board and staff team who can step up to key leadership roles when she retires.

3. Team-Building for the Staff of a Marketing Communications Company
The Issues
The company had nearly doubled in size in the previous two years. With so much focus on managing their new clients and hiring enough people to take care of the new business, their operating systems soon were overwhelmed. And although the new people were talented and excellent at client relationship skills, they didn’t understand the company’s culture.

Senior managers worried that in the rapid growth they were losing some of what had made the company distinctive. They wanted to make sure everyone understood and shared the company’s values. To address the issues in a memorable way, they decided to hold their retreat at a dude ranch.

Our Process
We interviewed the senior management team, including every department head, and also a sample of people at other levels in the company. To make sure that everyone had an opportunity to be heard, we also e-mailed a survey with open-ended questions to the staff we didn't interview. We learned that new people felt they’d been tossed into the work without having had time to learn the ropes and that people who had been there longer didn’t have the time to mentor them.

We structured the retreat so that the “fun” parts – a trail ride and dancing to the music of a cowboy band late into the night – would follow the working sessions. Because people needed to get to know each other better, we had them work in groups with people from different departments, holding different positions and with different tenure in the company.

Two months earlier, the company had given everyone the DiSC Profile behavioral assessment. Although people knew their scores, they hadn’t ever taken the time to fully explore what they meant, so we also included a learning session in the retreat to help them use these profiles to work more effectively together.

Because many of the issues to be addressed in the retreat related to rapid growth and high levels of stressful work, we agreed that decisions about changes had to be made at the retreat, not put off to another time. We also guided the participants to commit to outcomes they could implement without taking too much time from billable client work.

The Measurable Outcomes
The staff came away with a better understanding of their roles and the company’s culture. This understanding led to specific commitments to improve how they worked together. These included:

• Revamping of the Monday staff meeting. Previously, only department heads spoke at the meetings and everyone agreed the meetings were too formal. Now the meetings are run by the staff and focus on issues they’re working on.
• Developing a mentoring program, in which more experienced staffers had regular breakfast or lunch meetings with newer people. The purpose of the meetings was simple: to talk through problems and opportunities.
• Agreeing on a social calendar. Because getting to know each other was deemed so important to developing trust, the staff agreed on four upcoming company social events that were planned entirely by cross-discipline staff committees.
• Improving a key process. At the retreat, the group discussed where the job tracking system seemed to go awry, identified the problems, and streamlined the system.
• Committing to a monthly “knowledge session” in which people shared what they were learning in their client interactions.

The company continues to have staff retreats in which they learn from each other, welcome new people into their culture, and address a different critical process issue.

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