3 key ingredients of a successful management 'awayday'

Retreat accomplished!

We focused on prioritisation, accountabilities, leadership, tangible collateral and insights.?

It was very much the start of a conversation.??

Over my career, I’ve been on many, many team away days that promised ‘transformation’. And some have been truly inspirational.

A ‘Retreat’, as is the descriptor here at the #AfDB, allows for us, the CHGS management team to get together, get outside of the office, away from Zoom, and inspire us to dream of a new way of working and a little more sociable cohesion.

Our Team responsibility is clear, it's to create and manage the Bank’s sustainable places and services, to international standards, enabling all our people to thrive, right across the continent.

Pierre, Marcelle and Christian (and a number of guest speakers) invested time together and I’m so thankful - and motivated - for their insights, openness and sheer joi de vivre.?

Here are 3 takeaways that I want to share with you:

1. Context

The Retreat was a chance for the team (we agreed that we're a Leadership Team, not a Management Team!) to spend informal time together in a different context. Dinner, and even the dreaded team-building exercise (we did Belbin – recommended), to help cement our relationships.

And yes we did travel to the venue by a short Boat trip, across the beautiful Abidjan ébrié lagoon ;)

We didn’t want to have too much of a good time – or incur too much expense, but getting away together was our chance to really focus on the big questions like:

'where is this organisation going?'

and

'how will it get there?'

From experience, I'd say that it’s well worth contributing a bit of time and money to make sure your team Retreat sets you up for a profitable discussion of these important subjects.?

Final point, here, we focused on GROW; a really useful approach to give some structure to addressing complexity:

• Goals.
• Current Reality.
• Options (or Obstacles).
• Will (or Way Forward).

2. Collaboration

I’m still new here and the Team is constantly on the go, and again thankfully they're all very welcoming as I move out of learning mode to actually being of (some) value.

Relatively small but packing a good punch, we've bags of energy, huge ambition, and a lot to do. The drive to get things done means we gravitate to our specialist silos and don’t always take time out to find out what others are doing, or how we can support each other.

We're colleagues and now developing a special camaraderie and as – I feel -?friends, and really a 'team'.

The Retreat was less focused on knowledge sharing (yes I do love a slide presentation) but more on structures, capabilities – behaviours).

The Retreat brought us together

in unexpected ways.

First, we jointly set the agenda – everybody got to say what they wanted as an aim, and what they didn't want to do.

Second, everyone had a role – this was not a top-down cascade session. We all had a job to do (personally, I learnt so much!).

Third, we had a clear purpose: the outcome was to identify ways to share relevant, valuable insights, in useful and interesting formats.

Through a series of activities, we found innovative ways to share, and created a set of collaborative Ground Rules and tools (and the intangible but so valuable ‘approaches’ that will work for ‘us’).

The real gain was that intangible of camaraderie indicated by the noise of the chat and banter during the day. Oh to capture *that* magic for all day motivation. Yes please!

3. Pragmatism

And finally, we've tangible tools and techniques?- and shared, agreed approaches we'll use going forward.

Creating pragmatic collateral and

agreed protocols are sure signs of

a successful Retreat.

Yes we did laugh together and some sessions were highly entertaining, but committing to (and carrying out) action is what leads to enduring success.

As well as laughter, fun and

togetherness in abundance.

A team session that really gave me a light bulb moment was when we worked on our stakeholder engagement plan.

A simple task to perform: map out what interactions we have and then figure out where we need to make changes.

And what kept us on track, and stopped us drifting, was our Ground Rules. Continuously challenging us to be practical, making us focus on reality and encouraging us to think deeply about the ‘as is’, not the ‘if only/should be’.

By the end, we all had an individual action plan – and more importantly a team action plan - we will implement straight away (including the classic 30, 60, 90 days).

We’ve set the stage for our ambitions. By generating clarity as the ‘to be’ state and direction, we’ve high hopes we’re on the same page to achieve our shared success.

Bringing it all together

Team away days can be either dull (too much focus on work planning / reviewing work plans) or vacuous (empty or forced fun).

Teams can get stuck in group-thinking and have blind spots or unconscious bias.

For us, our Retreat brought us together, challenged perceptions, identified big levers we can pull to make a difference, encouraged creative thinking, and ultimately, as a driver of our commitments to success.

I’ve no doubt many of the team woke-up next day tired yet re-energised (I certainly did).

Culture is a wide and deep topic but one relevant description that captures how we feel now is that we've a ‘collective character’ of our Leadership Team.

Reflecting on our Retreat accomplishments:

we’re in a really great place.

Recommended!

-Steve

Stephen Ashcroft BEng MSc FCIPS, with over 25 years’ international experience - of putting myself in challenging situations of doing, learning and growing - I still see the glass as half full.

My Purpose: To help drive improved performance; aligning vision, goals and requirements. A recognised advisor, speaker and author;?please follow at?LinkedIn.???