- Hey there Dan Martell here, serial entrepreneur,
investor and creator of SAAS Academy.
In this video, I'm gonna teach you how to plan
a team offsite that builds connection and clarity,
so that you don't waste a bunch of time,
try to overload the calender or schedule,
people get frustrated.
And more importantly what you want is
to have people walk away with a clear sense of purpose
and rocks in strategy,
so that they can move the business forward.
Be sure to stay to the end
because I'm gonna make it easy on you.
I'm gonna share with you
how to get access to my Team Offsite Planner worksheet,
that's even got some specific exercise
you could be doing with your team
to deepen that build trust.
Deepen the connection and build that trust, let's get going.
(upbeat music)
So, I've been building companies for over 20 years.
I've hired over 500 people in various companies.
I've exited, I've sold, I've scaled, I've invested,
but when I started I was literally the worst leader
as they came.
And luckily, I read a bunch of incredible books,
one of them was "Good to Great",
where it talked about just the concept of getting everybody
on the team focused in the right direction.
They call it you know, the right seats on the bus.
But more importantly is just the value of getting,
taking your team and getting out of the office
and doing an offsite.
So, typically when people ask me like who that should be,
it's executive leadership team.
And just cause you have the right people
doesn't mean you're gonna have a great meeting.
You know, when I started,
it was painful because I wanted to accomplish
way too much in the meeting.
I was trying to accomplish more project management,
not really understanding the value of it
is to deepen the connection
and build trust amongst the team.
So, I went on a journey
and I've studied about 12 different books around
company scale, and leadership, and growth.
A lot of Patrick Lencioni's books,
you know "Scaling Up", Verne Harnish.
Gino Wickman, "Traction", and a bunch of others.
And what I've discovered is a different process,
I'm gonna walk you through today
to get it to the point where, you know,
I just had my leadership offsite
and you know, not only did everybody walk away
with a clear sense of priorities and drive,
but more importantly, my goal is when they,
after they attend that they feel more connected
and understand the motivations
and trust from the rest of the team members,
'cause that I will tell you,
will drive things more than anything.
So, let's get into it.
Number one, prep the plan.
So, before you have your offsite,
the key is to do the research, get the data,
pull the reports, get the surveys,
make sure that people come ready.
If you are their leader,
you might wanna give your team key outcomes
or targets to plan for the next 12 months,
if you're doing your yearly offsite
or maybe a quarterly offsite the next quarter.
But giving people enough information
and asking them to come ready with a plan,
some strategy, so that we can edit together,
we're not creating from scratch
is probably the most important thing.
I've seen too often with teams that I coach,
when they do their offsite,
they essentially start from scratch and build from there.
I want people to come in,
I have a framework I teach called the Slingshot Planner,
but the concept is is they should bring
to you the next three year and quarterly projects
that they wanna advocate for
to create the momentum in their area of the business.
So, make sure that you not only share with them
your estimates, and targets, and ambitions for the next year
or wherever the period you're planning for,
but that they come ready to provide some input,
some key projects that they feel committed
to moving the business forward.
Then you can co-create together and you can edit.
You're not creating from scratch, so prep the plan.
Number two, paint the vision.
It's very important,
and sometimes we feel like we're like a broken record
and we keep repeating ourself and repeating ourselves,
but it's important that right at the beginning
we remind everybody, what is the 10 year target?
What is the three year vision?
What are we accomplishing over the next year,
so that we can get everybody laser focused
on the key outcomes that we're measuring
our success against.
So that they can rally around that
and come up with the right strategies
that are gonna drive that forward.
It's too important for me to assume
that everybody already knows the vision.
It's really important to paint it again,
to describe it, describe how it feels,
describe what it looks like when we get there,
describe the energy in the office,
the ambitions amongst the team,
the quality of the people we'll be working with
at that level.
The kinda partners we're gonna have,
the accolades we're gonna achieve in the marketplace.
But make sure that we paint that vision
to get everybody aligned.
Number three, build trust.
So, for me, and I've mentioned this already,
is connection and trust is everything.
If you don't have trust amongst your coworkers,
especially at the executive leadership team,
it's gonna be really hard
to move any project outcome agenda forward,
because everybody's gonna be wondering
what's their motivation,
why are they doing this?
So, I'm gonna share with you a quick exercise
that I do every year for my team's
yearly planning or offsite.
And it's really just about going around everybody
and asking them the plus and minuses.
So real quick, everybody writes down the people on the team,
all their names, okay?
So ideally you don't have more than seven people
on your executive leadership team.
So, let's say you list everybody's name
and then in the column next to it,
there's two columns for each person.
There's things that you think their really great at
and then the area of improvement.
So everybody on the team evaluates everybody else
and then one person at a time,
you go around the table and everybody shares that feedback
with the person, okay?
They share, I like to go worst thing first
and then you leave on a high note.
So, you know, I think that this is an area
that you might wanna look to improve,
but here's something that you do that's really great.
And then what happens is everybody's open and honest,
there's no holding back.
I think too often people feel a certain way
but their never given permission,
or they don't feel comfortable enough to share that.
I'm asking for permission from the group
and encouraging them all to share those perspectives.
Again, it's their hallucination,
if you wanna say it from that way say,
"My hallucination is, that you are very forgetful
"and you don't write anything down."
You can do that, right?
But you're also an incredible visionary and,
you know, your drive and passion is really impressive,
as an example.
But what happens is everybody shares that,
everybody normalises their sentiment
for the other team members,
and then what I do is then ask everybody to go around
and ask, "What's one commitment their willing to make
"to the rest of the team that their gonna tackle
"in the next quarter or the next year."
And then that just gives everybody a chance to uplevel
and kind of upgrade their skills
based on real feedback from the team.
So it makes them a better teammate
for everybody else involved.
So, that's one example, but you need to open up the trust.
You might even do a personality assessment
and review everybody's score as a group.
You might do some trust falls,
I joke 'cause I don't think that that's very helpful.
But you wanna just share some personal stuff as a group,
you know, as much vulnerability as you want to allow
and really as the leader,
if you're watching this as a founder,
you've gotta go first
and you've gotta be the most vulnerable
and the most open to feedback
so that it sets the stage for everybody else.
Number four, retest.
So, what this means is,
you've probably already sat down and created your mission,
your vision, your values, your go to market,
how you sell in the market.
If you haven't, make that a key outcome
from your first offsite,
but every company kind of at the 12 people plus,
you should have those things kinda locked and loaded.
But, reevaluate them, retest them,
look at the values and say, you know,
are these things that we're hiring, firing against?
If they're not, then they're just words on a piece of paper
that nobody really believes in.
You know, is the mission crystal clear,
have you pivoted the product a little bit
and you've gotta reset the mission.
Whatever it is, my whole thing is
is when we get together as a group,
especially at the end of the year,
it's a great opportunity for us to retest the,
those key elements that are driving forces
for our business,
and if they're not serving us anymore
open up the discussion to maybe reevaluate and edit them.
And number five, map closure.
So, you do all this great work,
you get connected, you do some strategic planning,
you figure out what the big rocks are,
everybody's aligned with that,
we're gonna drive forward
in the next year or three years etcetera,
then it's about taking those rocks
and mapping them forward into a plan.
So what I like to do is get really detailed
on the next 12 months per quarter,
and figure out what are the big rocks
per person on the team.
Ideally, every quarter I call it,
two enhancements, one upgrade.
So essentially, one net new project.
So, two things that will amplify
a current result that you're making.
So, a key project or a big rock,
and then one thing that's a net new per quarter.
Now this is not a hard and fast kind of rule
but I just feel like too often people,
when you look at their big rocks on their list,
it's like all new stuff.
When there's still things that are currently working
that they could amplify.
So I'm a big fan of constraining it and say,
"Hey, what are the two things that are working,
"you're gonna make better this quarter, Q1,
"and then what's a new thing you're gonna attack in Q1?"
And kind of set that same pace.
Everybody on the team locks that in,
you look at the outcome goals, metrics,
and key data points that you're gonna aim for for the year
and then you work backwards
and break those into minimum quarterly goals,
and then per quarter you blow it out for the months.
So, everything should map from a month,
to a quarter, to the next quarter, to the year,
in a spreadsheet from a data point.
And if you've seen my training called the Weekly Sync,
you can search my YouTube channel for that.
I talk about the scorecard and the Precision Scorecards
in other video as well.
So Weekly Sync and Precision Scorecard kinda fit into this,
but we need to essentially set those rocks
and set the measurement for those rocks,
so that we have a pulse to progression throughout the year.
And those are the mapping a closure
at the end of our offsite,
to make sure that we capture all this great strategizing,
and reviewing, and team building, and connection,
but it actually moves the business forward.
Five key strategies have an incredible team offsite.
Number one, prep the plan.
Number two, paint a vision.
Number three, build trust.
Number four, re-test,
and number five, map closure.
So, as I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,
I wanna share with you an exclusive resource
called the Offsite Team Planner.
You can click the link below to download your copy.
In it, I talk about kind of the day one or day two.
If you're doing a one day offsite,
then just say a morning and afternoon equivalents.
But the way I think about it is day one is retro,
we're gonna take our lessons learned,
we're gonna review our previous period
to make sure that we're learning
and we're iterating and figure out what the opportunity is.
It's not there to criticise
and I've got the exercises in that worksheet
as well as day two.
How do we plan?
What do we need to set going forward
to make sure that we actually leverage
a time we're together,
to solve some big issues and discussions
and then also lock that in into the projects
that we're gonna move forward to hit our goals?
You can click the link below to download your copy.
If you like this video,
smash the like button, subscribe to my channel,
and if there's anybody you think this could serve
feel free to share it with them directly.
As per usual, I wanna challenge you to live a bigger life,
and a bigger business, and I'll see you next Monday.
I don't like trust falls.
- [Male] No?
- No, well they're dumb.
(chuckles)