5 Reasons Small Businesses Need to Get Out of the Office
I have been around strategic planning and holding them off-sites for the better part of 30 years. There’s a misconception that these concepts are created by and for the exclusive benefit of large corporations. No matter the size of your organization having a business plan is critical. Benjamin Franklin said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
Let’s talk about the value of getting out of the office for a few days to spend time ON the business. When I worked at Mantralogix we embarked on reflection and celebration and at the same time on setting goals for ourselves at the end of each fiscal year. We engaged all team members in the process. Each year the structure changed slightly – sometimes we used a SWOT framework (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats), sometimes Start, Stop, Continue. We talked about our BHAG (big, hairy, audacious goal), and even used the time to formulate/ revisit our Mission, Vision, Values.
Despite all of this value many companies don’t allow themselves this gift of time. We started off with 1 day for this exercise and eventually grew that to 3 full days.
Here are the 5 major benefits we achieved by being out of the office:
Setting the roadmap for the year ahead. If you don’t know where you are going, how will you know when you get there? All team members had input into the roadmap and hence vested in achieving it. It is OUR plan, and now that we know where the organization needs to end up, everyone can go about setting individual goals to get us there.
Inspiration. By talking about the end goal, we could ALL picture it. By openly talking about the future we developed a common vision of it – and we could then share this with our partners and vendors which allowed them to become more effective in helping us get there.
Team Building. The team articulated that working together, away from the office, on one common goal, brought us closer together. Despite best intentions, there was never enough time in our day-to-day schedule to allow us to dream together.
Skill Development. Many team members had not been formally exposed to goal planning and strategic thinking in their education and career journey. Each year when we got together, we helped to raise the bar on strategic planning as a team and as individuals; and we had the time to address the most common items on employee development plans. For example one year we added in time to learn more about time management and prioritization.
We let The Universe know what we collectively wanted. Caution: be careful what you ask for. Be very clear about what you want, articulate it, revisit it quarterly, and then watch it unfold!
I am passionate about planning. Trust the process – it will never fail you.