The Recipe for Successful Strategy Days
What is the recipe for a successful strategy day?
When you say ‘Strategy Day’, I wonder how many employees will groan and book a day off? We recently had a very informative, engaging and fun strategy day so we thought it might be helpful to share the secret to success. Providing you like the people you work with, it is a great opportunity to join forces, understand more about the staff, and create a shared vision.
The Butterfly Data team are spread far and wide across the country, working mainly from home so our assumptions for our staff were:
People will roll in at different times due to transport issues or awkward time tables so have an ice breaker that allows people to join in whenever.
New people might feel awkward walking into the room for the first time so meet, greet and help them integrate.
People will be looking forward to lunch, so make it good.
People will have a post lunch slump, so plan an energiser and keep people moving
Taking these assumptions into account we worked to produce some sure-fire methods, to keep people happy and engaged throughout the day.
Here are our 7 ingredients to a successful day:
Empower your staff - tell them what is going on in the last year, the present and the future. Inspire them with your aims and aspirations but as you do watch the body language to gauge whether they are with you or if you are on your own. Where do you want to get to in 1 year, 5 years, 10 years? They will feel more a part of the vision if they can see it laid out, hear it said, and feel the passion in your delivery.
Give, give, give- make the team feel valued and a part of a team. Hand out company merchandise specifically for staff which generates a sense of belonging. Provide a great lunch, give them your fully focussed time in a coffee chat and give encouragement.
Receive - offer many ways in which your team can express their opinions, ideas and feedback recognising that not everyone is happy to offer feedback verbally in front of their peers. See the icebreaker below that we used this time.
Use your team - no one really wants to just listen to the boss all day, they want to see their colleagues get a slice of the limelight so spread the love, delegate the tasks, review their content and then support them on the day. Use the movers and shakers to motivate the team with interjected fun tasks throughout the day and use the organisers to keep you to the agenda. Identify facilitators that can run a brainstorming session and coordinate a review session.
Get physical, get close, get happy - not grappling with the person next to you but incorporate an energiser after lunch or a fun team activity. Something where you can connect with your colleagues. When we are around people and interact with people that we like, our brain releases oxytocin ‘the bonding hormone’ which also stimulates the release of other happy hormones such as dopamine and serotonin.
Time keeping - set the agenda, add the agenda to the invite then display the agenda in clear bold so that everyone is responsible for timekeeping.
Document - keep a record of the ideas, thoughts and feedback. It's been proven that it makes you focus and clarify your idea but also those words can motivate others and trigger imagination leading to a fireball of ideas which is why we get people together in the same physical space.
As a bonus on top of these tips, consider the icebreaker activity we undertook, to mix up the day and get people into a collaborative spirit.
The aim of the ice breaker is to offer a platform or a talking point by which people can connect/communicate with everyone else and we end up finding out random facts about your team members.
What you need to do is put A3 sheets around the room with questions on for people to wander around and populate.
Make a variety of questions to find out about opinions, wishes, feedback and drop in a few fun ones. We used the following:
Finish the sentence “I wish we had more….”/”I wish we had less….”
If I was going to be taught something by someone else in the team it would be….
If you had to run a session teaching something what would it be?….
What is on your bucket list? (work/life/social)
One word/sentence/picture to describe working at Butterfly Data?
Write a marketing strapline for Butterfly data?
Dress the figure by drawing their outfit appropriate for the situation.