Offsite Planning Retreat, A Report

On Thursday, October 9 a group of folks gathered at my home in Mableton for an offsite retreat.  I still hadn't finalized who was going to end up on the "ministry team" or the "planning team," but I wanted to begin the discussion of where we are organizationally and where we want to be in the future.  This initial meeting was attended by Mark, Brian, Connie, Melanie, James, Stan, Dave, Zack, TJ, Amber and myself.

As with all the meetings we hold on- and off-site from now on, I want everyone to have access to all the information all the time.  Sometimes when one group goes off to plan, others are left behind to wonder "What are they going to decide in my absence and then expect me to buy into?"  I don't want that to happen in any of our planning sessions, so I'm providing a fairly detailed report of our day.  Here's the agenda we followed...more or less:

7:45  IHOP breakfast

9:00a  Meet at Bill’s house

9:10-9:30a  Devotional/prayer

9:30-10:15  Strengths assessment (see below)

10:15-10:30  break

10:30-noon  Four functions of the XP.  (see below)
Team reflections on First 100 Days.  Describe the culture in which you want to work.  What are the operational values we want to embrace?

Noon-1:00  lunch, discussion

1:30-3:00  Identify the practices of healthy families.  (see below)

Team composition and function: Gray, Blue and Green Team.  Planning, decision-making and communications

3:00-3:20  break

3:30-4:00  Identifying next steps.  What do you want to do next?

After eating a rooty-tooty-fresh-and-fruity pancake at IHOP, we met for prayer at my house.  Here's Dave Hubbard's description of the opening session:

One of the most powerful segments of our team strategy session was the “Strengths Assessment”. Each participant was given the task (as we went around the circle) of (1) telling the group one thing that they personally, consistently, have to give back to the Lord. In other words, something that maybe they have struggled with for a long time that Satan likes to use against them, to produce fear, anxiousness, pride, quilt, etc., and (2) telling the group what they thought were the strengths, talents, giftedness, etc. of the person sitting to their right.  

The depth of sharing was quite remarkable. Each person was open and honest, not only in explaining the nagging “give it back to God” struggle in their life, but especially in articulating genuine praise and thanks for the brother or sister sitting next to them. It was an emotionally charged time, that most definitely will be used in a positive way by the Holy Spirit going forward. 

We spent quite a lot of time praying for each other.  After our prayer time I shared my thoughts on what I believe we've accomplished in the last two months together and an overview of the basic components of my job as I understand it.  Here's my handout on the four functions of the XP.  I'd like your feedback on these points.

Build a cohesive leadership team. 

a.       A cohesive team builds trust through loving vulnerability .

b.      A cohesive team does not shy away from conflict.

c.       A cohesive team has a high level of personal commitment.

d.      A cohesive team holds each other accountable for assignments.

e.       A cohesive team strives for observable results.

Create clarity. 

Organizational health is based on everyone knowing and agreeing on the answers to the eight critical questions:

a.       How are we doing spiritually?

b.      What is our purpose?

c.       What is our cultural DNA?

d.      Who is responsible for what?

e.       What do we do to fulfill our purpose?

f.       What is our strategy?

g.      What is most important right now?

h.      What’s after what’s next?

Overcommunicate clarity.

a.       Strengthen communication links between departments

b.      Create cascading communication between teams (gray, blue, green)

c.       Constantly seek out and resolve chaos, confusion and misunderstanding.

d.      Strive for effective, productive meetings.

e.       Ensure clarity of post-meeting meeting assignments: WWDWBW?

f.       Ensure four-way communication: up/down (teams) and lateral (departments)

 Develop systems that reinforce clarity

a.       Hiring

b.      Orientation

c.       Performance management

d.      Compensation and reward

e.       Recognition

f.       Planning systems

g.      Communication systems

h.      Information sharing systems

By the way, these points aren't original to me.  They're taken from the writings of Patrick Lencioni, a writer I follow pretty closely.


After lunch (Chinese delivery!!) we divided the group into three teams and explored the habits of healthy families.  We came back together to discuss how we can adopt the habits of a healthy family into the life of our staff.  There was lots of good discussion here, and we'll follow up on these ideas and make some specific assignments in our future on-site meetings.

TJ provided this synopsis of this part of our discussion:

1. What does a healthy family do to encourage each other?
Support, talk, affirm, resolve conflict, pray, praise/criticize, personal encouragement

2. What does a healthy family do to make decisions?
Pray, listen, consider impact before acting, state criteria of a good decision, explain decisions

3. What does a healthy family do to resolve conflict?
Honest without rationalization, love, forgive, pray together, “I could be wrong”

4. What does a healthy family do to build memories?
Set aside time, new ventures, vacations, tell stories, fun, do life together, informal

5. What does a healthy family do to celebrate milestones and accomplishments?
Pictures, tell stories, share mementos, celebration meals/events, bookmarks 

6. What does a healthy family do to develop spiritually?
Group prayer, open dialogue/honest questions, building trust, Bible study with life-application discussion, confession and forgiveness, keep short accounts

7. What does a healthy family do to get through difficult times?
Intentional dependence upon God (prayer + heart attitude), open communication, sees God’s activity in midst (James 1), honesty, don’t blame or find fault in others

8. What does a healthy family do to deal with disappointments?
Seek God’s perspective, Learn from it/grow, be joyful/thankful, don’t blame of find fault, encourage one another, pray

Romans 12:9-12
Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord.  Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.

We concluded the day talking about the composition of teams moving forward.  In the past, we've used the words "ministry team" and "planning team," but sometimes people infer position, rank and personal value because of the connotations of the terms.  I'm going to set up a structure based on gray, blue and green teams.  I'll discuss these after our staff devotional on Wednesday, Oct 8 at 9am and will also include the info in the next blog post.

As you can tell, these discussions were more theoretical than strategic.  We're still in the phase where we need to build relationships and learn how to related spiritually and organizationally to one another.  While we didn't walk away from the meeting with a list of action plans, I think we did accomplish some great foundational work for future meetings.  I'd encourage you to stop by the office of someone who was there and get their impressions of our time together.

Off-site planning sessions like these take a lot of preparation, generate a lot of teamwork and great ideas and then (if done correctly) give a sense of purpose and direction for the future.  Our first off-site was a success and I plan to hold an event like this quarterly.

Each of these planning times will be followed by a report to the entire staff so everyone knows what's going on and has a chance to contribute at some level.

My door's always open and I'd be grateful for your feedback.