Strategy Retreat - Day 3
This post contains the activities for Day 3 of the strategy retreat. For more information and the links to the activities from other days, please see the strategy retreat post.
Day 3
Before you start - Opening Circle. See day 1.
- Headlines & How tos. This activity will likely take most of a morning. I suggest starting when people’s brains are fresh and trying to complete as soon as possible. This is likely to generate a lot of debate and I suggest separating the debate with a break and then giving people the chance to discuss in a laid-back setting.
At the end of this activity, you will be left with output 12: a first draft of the suggested headlines for your strategy, rationales for each and with suggested aligned activities.
BREAK
- Observations & Documentation - A non-structured session for documenting the outputs of the above session. I suggest providing biscuits and lemonade and allowing people to work at their leisure around a table as things will probably occur to them from the previous session which will require clarity when documenting. .
DELIBERATELY LONG LUNCHBREAK FOLLOWED BY FREE AFTERNOON
The “Free” afternoon - AKA Retrospective time!
Well… the free afternoon was what we planned (genuinely!). Actually, we ended up doing a retrospective in the afternoon because the team actually begged. Workaholics.
I won’t reinvent the wheel on how to do retrospectives. Here’s a list of my favourite resources to consult:
- Trello sprint retrospective - for retrospectives of small projects, this asks all the right questions. For longer ones or more complex projects, you might need something a bit more heavyweight.
- The Anatomy of a Retrospective - more detailed tips (see in particular the timeline section) on how to run retrospectives for more complicated projects.