Offsite debrief
For team offsites and retreats: whether the time away paid off, from everyone who was in the room.
Worth a look
- Build a tower, build a teamTom Wujec, TEDThe marshmallow challenge: why kindergartners beat business-school graduates at building something together. (opens in a new tab)
- Forget the pecking order at workMargaret Heffernan, TEDThe superchicken experiment, and why a team of stars loses to a team that helps each other. (opens in a new tab)
- How Google builds the perfect teamInsider TechCharles Duhigg on what Google found when it studied its own teams: who's on the team mattered less than how they treat each other. (opens in a new tab)
- How to turn a group of strangers into a teamAmy Edmondson, TEDHow the Chilean mine rescue worked with people who had never worked together, and what any new project team can borrow from it. (opens in a new tab)
- How to build a company where the best ideas winRay Dalio, TEDRadical transparency at Bridgewater: recorded meetings and everyone rating everyone's thinking in real time. Fascinating whether or not you'd want it. (opens in a new tab)
More (2)
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick LencioniPatrick LencioniThe author walks through his pyramid, from no trust to nobody owning results. You'll know which layer your team is stuck on. (opens in a new tab)
- Postmortem Culture: Learning from FailureGoogle SRE bookHow Google writes up what went wrong without hunting for someone to blame, so people tell the truth next time. (opens in a new tab)
The conviction read: the spread on 'hard topics got real airtime' splits the people who felt the real conversation happened from the people who felt it was stepped around. A show of hands hides that split until the next offsite.
What's in the template
- The offsite was worth the time away from our usual work. puck
- We spent our time on the topics that matter most. puck
- The hard topics got real airtime. puck
- I got to know colleagues I rarely work with. puck
- I left clear on what we agreed. puck
- I'd want another offsite like this one. puck
Questions about this template
When should I send the offsite debrief, and to whom?
Within a few days of getting back, before normal work tests what was agreed. Send it to everyone who was in the room, including people who joined for only part of it, since their read of the agenda is often the one that gets lost.
What if 'I left clear on what we agreed' lands low?
Write the agreements down as you heard them and share them before anything else. A low or widely spread answer on that item often points to people leaving with different versions of the same decision, and those versions drift further apart once the usual work resumes.