Three steps to delivering your next transformational team offsite, if you dare...

I’ve written and spoken plenty about building great company culture. I’ve done so having had some experience, some knowledge and perhaps even some wisdom. I want to share some newly acquired knowledge. But it got me thinking… when we claim to know something, we’re ignorant to the fact that knowledge can only be acquired through our own filters via our narrow bandwidth of perception. It’s then communicated and interpreted through further layers of language, perception, assumption, judgement, beliefs, biases… which makes you wonder, and philosophers have been doing this for a while now, what is it we can truly know?

Whoa! That’s a pretty heavy intro to a LinkedIn article, granted. And where are these simple steps you mentioned?

Allow me to provide some context to these musings in metaphysics and epistemology. Last weekend I had the opportunity to travel from one end of the country to the other – from my home in Melbourne to a place called Mt Borradaile in East Arnhem Land. I travelled with Pragmatic Thinking – the company I work for and met the rest of the crew in Darwin. This was one of our quarterly get-togethers, an ‘offsite’ if you like. An opportunity for us to spend some time together as a team, to connect, to experience, to learn, to grow, so that we may continue serve our purpose – to make a difference to the difference makers. 

It was that, and so much more. 

I don’t want to recount the details of the experience - the ‘what’. There is something far more important to share than that. Something less tangible, more profound and entirely transformative. I’m going to break the rules here (sorry Simon Sinek) and start with ‘how’ and save the ‘why’ till last. 

As an aside, I think this is where we often get it wrong when building great company culture. We’re well aware of the need to identify a compelling why - a purpose. But the process is where purpose is too often compromised. The how is where we can revert back to default, safe, familiar strategy and wonder why we don’t quite hit the mark. So this article is less about why we did what we did and more about how we did it. 

In three simple steps, as promised.

But first, there’s a necessary pre-requisite to these steps – courage. You’re going to need courage. Profound transformation doesn’t happen without taking a risk. This is work that requires great courage and the courage to be vulnerable. 

This is the kind of work that demands letting go and an unwavering trust in the process. Truth is, it’s hard to let go of a known and familiar strategy, we find safety and comfort in this and we crave the predicability of a known outcome. But you won’t experience transformation, you won’t find innovation, creativity, evolution of thinking or a greater depth of experience in what’s known. You’ve got to embrace the unknown for that. You won’t find profound in the mundane nor revelation in the familiar.

So, how? What is this process? Hurry up with these steps already! OK, so with some courage in the tank…

Step 1. Let go and trust, you must. (You read that in Yoda’s voice too, didn’t you?)

Trust is where it begins. It’s the first element essential to this process. Trust is the foundation and it must remain a constant, for there will be times when it’s tested. There will be times when you become impatient and want to skip straight to the outcome, the answer, the conclusion. That’s not how this process works. It requires trust, and patience. No front-loading, workshopping, frame-setting, meaning-making or debriefing of the experience – just letting go and trust in the process. 

There are two more steps.

Step 2. Allow time.

Step 3. Create space. 

That’s it. Simple, but not easy.

No busy, action-packed, carefully curated, planned, revised, reviewed, defined and detailed schedule of metaphor-rich activities for people to hurry up and participate in. 

Just time. 

No audio-visual extravaganza, complicated suite of resources or stack of support materials, tools and collateral to reference. Not even the internet!

Just space. 

Trust, time and space. That’s it, that’s how. These are the antithesis of what we’ve come to know as strategy, or default strategy at least. It’s inherently vague, undefined, ambiguous and it provides way too much room for interpretation – how can we control or curate an experience like that? You don’t, that’s the point. You allow it. This should make you feel a little uncomfortable and have you asking, ‘That’s all well and good, but at least tell me what you want people to do?’

Nothing, do nothing. 

Allow time, create space, to be. 

(Trust, remember?)

Trust in your people. Trust that in time, and with space, people will experience exactly what they need. Not necessary what you want, but what they need. It helps do this is in a place like Arnhem Land – where nature and a 60,000 year old indigenous culture speaks for itself. It has stories to share and lessons to teach well beyond the scope and scale of anything any one of us could have delivered as a curated experience. It’s powerful and valuable because it’s not replicable. It’s unique. It’s an experience you have for the sake of the experience. 

Personally, I leaned plenty of lessons, most of which I’m still reconciling and some I’ll share in future articles. Lessons about the power of stories, lessons on belonging, of place and community. Lessons that resonate deeply, that transcend time, space, cultures and context. Universal lessons. 

So, for business owners, for founders and leaders, you may be asking, “Great! Sounds like you all had a lovely time but what’s the ROI of such an investment? What are the outcomes, the tangible measurables of such an experience?”

It reminds me of the adage, ‘If you have to ask you’ll never know’. But to answer that question, some demonstrated outcomes include; a greater self awareness, a deeper level of understanding of the value of trust – to be trusted and to be trustworthy, an appreciation of space, a new perspective of what knowledge is, a deeper awareness of what culture means and what our role and responsibility is in co-creating culture, greater empathy, deeper compassion, a shared experience of the value of connection, an appreciation for our impact on each other and this planet. Just to name a few. 

Perhaps even some wisdom. 

I reckon that’s a pretty sound investment. 

And finally, to finish with why – why am I writing this, why am I sharing this experience with you, why should you read it and why might you contemplate doing something like this? Because it just might transform your organisation. It just might inspire your team like nothing else ever has. And it will transform you as an individual.

If you’re a company who truly values people and contributing to their capabilities to make a difference in this world, consider this your ‘how to’ guide for a transformative offsite. 

In three simple steps.