“Offsite meeting.”
For most business people, these words evoke the sensation of dozing off in a stuffy conference room far from home.
I’ve been there… but I’ve also been to offsites that were energizing, thought-provoking, and fun. What’s the difference?
1. Location, location, location.
The worst place for an offsite: A conference room in your own building. Sure, it’s easy and inexpensive, but it’s also not off-site. Familiar surroundings promote everyday thinking. Offsites are designed to elevate the level of thinking, to accomplish important things distinct from our day-to-day work.
One of my favorite offsites was held at Friendship Park in Cincinnati, in a beautiful, well-ventilated building with a glass exterior wall. The occasional distractions of joggers and Segway tours were offset by the pretty scenery and the sense that we were in a space without boundaries.
The perfect location might be right under your nose. A former manager held an offsite at her house. It was a lovely home, and it gave us a chance to connect with her and each other on a more personal level.
2. Don’t do anything for longer than an hour.
With the exception of Hollywood blockbusters, there aren’t many things people will enjoy sitting and watching for more than one hour. If you have four hours worth of content to share, chunk it up. Have one speaker present for an hour, give the group a break, then do an interactive and fun activity before bringing out the next speaker.
3. Be present, literally and mentally.
Leave your cell phone number on your voicemail and email out-of-office messages in case of a work emergency, and instruct attendees to do the same. Set the phones on the table and lay down the rule early: If your phone rings, you may step outside and take the call, but everything else – the random email checks, the calls to the office – can wait.
It makes a noticeable difference when you’re in a room full of people who are not multi-tasking. With the devices down, everyone is focused on the conversation happening in the room right now. Wasn’t that the point of the offsite after all?
4. Food matters.
I’m not a nutritionist, and I’m still waiting for a scientific study that shows the effects of conference food on attendees’ learning and participation. But here’s my hypothesis:
Two or three hours after eating, blood sugar drops and a person’s energy level plummets. The cliff is steeper if that last meal was heavy on simple carbs. If you stuff people full of doughy sandwiches and cookies at noon, then take away all food until dinner, prepare for a pretty exhausted audience by 3 p.m.
My ideal offsite would have a continuous supply of snacks, including protein-rich snacks like cheese, nuts, and yogurt. If day-long grazing is impractical, a 2 p.m. delivery of energy bars and trail mix can hit the spot. The only thing that might work better: Bacon.
5. Structure the social.
One side benefit of an offsite is that teams who don’t regularly work together have a chance to build rapport. To maximize this, plan group meals and activities to encourage socializing. Mix up the seating and group assignments to shake up comfortable cliques and make new connections easier to forge.
Balance structure and freedom: Randomly assign teams for scavenger hunts or brainstorming sessions, but let people mingle and choose their own seats for dinner.
6. Let things sink in.
After a three-day offsite, some teammates and I took a cab to the airport and waited two hours for our flight home. I knew that we had accomplished something important because all of us were comfortable sitting together, in silence. We had said what needed to be said, and we were ready to share quiet space without filling it with small talk.
The best way to conclude an offsite is with quiet space. Let the introverts recharge and let everyone process the ideas you have stirred up, picking up loose threads of thought and following them to interesting places.
End early. Send people home for the afternoon, or encourage them to take some hours off on the following day before checking email or returning to work. Jumping right back into workday stress (compounded by a few days out of the office, yikes) is a sure way to wipe out the fresh ideas that you invested so much time and effort in cultivating.