There are many benefits to offering executive retreats and team building. At the end of a particularly successful corporate retreat that I recently facilitated, I overheard employees making comments the following comments:

"It's because of sessions like this that this is one of the best places to work."

"This company must really value its employees to invest so much time and money in us."

Here are some tips to help you ensure that your next executive retreat is just as successful.

Clarify Your Objectives

Before you plan your executive, it is important to be clear about your objectives. Far too often, companies end up disappointed in the results because expectations were not clearly identified and articulated.

The first mistake that many companies make is to give one of the least experienced employees the task of sourcing suppliers without providing enough guidance or direction about the goals of the session, budget, selection criteria. It must be really frustrating for the person making the calls. Also, by the time the information gets to the decision maker, it is really watered down.

Why not provide the person doing the initial screening with more guidance and give 3 or 4 of the potential suppliers 5 - 10 minutes to speak directly with the decision maker so that a targeted proposal can be prepared?

Ideally, outcomes should pinpoint the desired impact on the business and be stated in measurable terms. Unfortunately, many organizations treat team building as a discretionary event and don't attempt to link it to the needs of the business.

Examples of Team Building Objectives

• Improve customer satisfaction by 15%
  
• Improve employee satisfaction by 10%
  
• Reduce churn by 5%
  
• Improve the closing ratio of the sales team by 12%
  
  

Even "softer" outcomes like these could be stated in measurable terms if one takes the time to think through the specific impact on the business:

• Identify new target markets
  
• Forge stronger alliances between geographically dispersed teams
  
• Fine-tune your marketing and sales strategy
  
• Reduce friction and "turf wars" between organizational levels and departments.
  
• Improve communication between teams and departments
  
• Improve your decision making process
  
• Identify strategies to reduce red tape and duplication of effort
  
• Brainstorm and generate new strategies to resolve business issues and overcome challenges
  
• Manage projects more effectively even within tight time frames
  

Planning Considerations for Team Building

Once you are clear about your objectives, it is important to determine:

• number of participants
  
• positions and levels of participants in organization
  
• physical disabilities and constraints
  budget
  
• time frame
  

If you are using an external team building consultant for your corporate retreat, identify a clear decision making process and decision making criteria. Ideally, you should be in a position to make a decision no more than 2 weeks after contacting prospective vendors. You should allow at least 6 weeks, preferably 2 months for adequate planning of your session. It amazes me how often we are contacted with companies who want to pull together an executive retreat with a complex simulation in a two week or less than one week time frame.

Select Your Theme

One of the best strategies for "spicing up" your team building sessions and corporate retreats is to come up with a theme. Based on your theme, you can select an appropriate venue, energizers, session starters, music, video clips, graphics for slides and handouts, and menu items. The key is to let your objectives and content drive the theme. To come up with your theme, create a mind map. Put your content and topics in the centre and come up with as many themes as possible that relate to your topics.

If you want to fine-tune your sales and marketing strategy or prepare your team for "uncharted territory" and change, a Survivor team building session would be the most appropriate choice. If you want to hone project management and leadership skills or help them improve their effectiveness in pulling projects together within tight time frames, a team building session based on the TV show the Apprentice would be a perfect fit. If your team needs to improve its ability to cope with a fast paced environment, a surprisingly affordable polo team building sessions would fit the bill.

Select the Right Locations for Team Building and Corporate Retreats

Your choice of location can make or break your team building session or corporate retreat. Let your objectives and theme drive the location selection decision and not vice versa. I recall a time when a prospective client had blown most of the budget on a high end conference facility. The result? There was little left in the budget for a facilitator.

Determine if you will require assistance with location scouting and be fair about it.

An experienced team building firm should be able to help you find a location to fit your budget. However, it does take time to call around, check availability and come up with just the right fit. For foreign locations, long distance charges are often incurred. It is not kosher to expect consultants to do your location scouting for free. It is also not appropriate to do the event on your own and use the location suggested by a team building service provider without compensation.

If your budget is limited, scout around. You may be able to find some unique and cost effective locations for your events. You can stretch your budget by using summer camps during off-peak season, amusement parks, acting studios, the catering department of community colleges to save on the cost of refreshments, movie theatres, campsites, and conservation areas.

Id you're looking to save money on location, it is important to book your session WELL in advance.....3 - 4 months in advance. To book a group camp site and shelter, you would need a 5 - 6 month lead time.

Set a Realistic Time Frame

The BIGGEST mistake that most organizations make is not allocating enough time. If it's an off-site, it is not unusual for people to arrive late. Sometimes it's due to road conditions during the winter or traffic jams. It then becomes a struggle to balance all aspects of the agenda and cover everything at a pace that will be comfortable for all participants.

Something has to be cut. It becomes a choice between cutting the time allocated to recreational activities, reducing the time for group exercises or covering material at a much faster than optimal pace. What typically gets sacrificed are the introductions, summaries and debriefing to the point that analytical learners are left without enough time to process the experience and make links back to the job.

Often, companies are totally unrealistic about the time frame for a retreat. It is surprising how many people think that they can do a full blown simulation with debriefing, application exercises, and a presentation by a member of the senior management team in half a day. Let me stress this in bold. A half day simulation with adequate time for debriefing and business application exercises is just not doable. The only way that it can work is if the simulation or activity is very simple or short and you have one very clear and specific objective or core message that you want to convey.

Of course, you can always find team building companies that will take your money and promise you the moon within a half day or even 2 hour time frame. Buyer beware. You have been warned. Of course, if your goal is strictly recreational, that is doable in half a day or two hours.

When determining an appropriate time frame, consider if there are items other than team building that you need to include in your agenda. A number of the companies with which we work have included vendor and client presentations, departmental presentations, and presentations about plans for the upcoming year into their corporate retreats and team building sessions. The key is to determine the content THEN select the appropriate time frame, not the reverse.

Stick to the Schedule

Sure, if you're the one picking of the tab, it's natural to want to get as much face time as possible with the troops. When your executive briefing is planned for an hour and the organizer has built in an 1 1/2 just in case, you can't expect to get the desired results if you drone on for 2 1/2 hours and the rest of the session has to be crammed into a tight timeframe.

Don't Panic and Don't Cut it Short

Simulations take time to unfold and debrief. For analytical learners, they won't "get it" until the debriefing and application exercises have been completed. To panic and truncate the debriefing and application exercises because a couple of people don't don't "get it" based strictly on an experiential learning activity, is a waste of your investment. Let the debriefing and application exercises unfold as planned. If you need to shorten something, let it be one of the recreational activities or the evening reception before dinner.

Executive retreats are the perfect opportunity to help your team improve its effectiveness and generate breakthrough strategies for business success. Here are some examples of sessions that combine recreational activities with powerful business simulations.

Visexecutaries, a powerful Apprentice style simulation for executive retreats, will assist you and your team in your quest to improve organizational performance. This interactive session will give your team a chance to devote quality time to:

- developing a better understanding of the needs of increasingly sophisticated customers
- defining and articulating a clearer vision
- fine-tuning your marketing strategy
- overcoming barriers to marketplace success

Best of all, nobody gets fired.

A range of Survivor team building programmes inspired by the popular TV series. Your team will be exposed to valuable business and brainstorming tools that are perfect for fast paced, rapidly changing organizations. You'll compete in a variety of outdoor team building challenges including firestarter challenge, cooking challenges, mini-soccer challenge, orienteering, GPS treasure hunts, and more.

In Jamaica, go beach riding on horseback, experience treetop walking, go mountain biking, climb waterfalls. In Canada, you can go canoeing, white water rafting, tubing, treetop walking, snow shoeing, and dog sledding. You can even experience the thrill of a zipline, go abseiling and sleepout in a quinzhee.

Experience the thrill of dune bashing, go on a camel trek, compete in a camel watering relay, camp out in the desert in a traditional Bedouin tent, try shisha, enjoy belly dancing entertainment, go abseiling, and build a raft at a lagoon to get back to civilization.

Go abseiling, rock climbing or caving. Experience the thrill of wadi bashing or a rugged off roading adventure in the mountatins. Hunt for treasures in a traditional souk. Explore an ancient souk. Enjoy a scrumptious beach barbeque at an oasis resort upon "rescue".

Please note: this title is not available in Canada.

Stretch your team's ability to deal with change and tolerate ambiguity. Based loosely on the TV series, The Amazing Race, this simulation divides your group into teams that follow clues to reach a final mystery destination. Along the way they participate in a variety of team building activities and take various forms of transportation. Depending on your budget, your teams can travel via limousine, rickshaws, powerboats, helicopters, 4 X 4 all terrain vehicles, Hummers, horses, voyageur canoes, hot air balloons. Compete in a variety of indoor and outdoor challenges.

We are set to deliver this programme in Jamaica, Oman, Dubai, Singapore, and Malaysia. We can even combine countries to make this a truly international experience.

This experience is the perfect way to kick off executive retreats, team building sessions or sales rallies.

Team building simulations and sessions for executive retreats. Locations available in Canada, Jamaica, Dubai, Oman, and Asia (Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, India).