The annual strategy off-site is a calendar favourite, but research suggests it should be replaced. A study by Healey, Hodgkinson, Whittington and Johnson to look at these strategy workshops suggests that a series of shorter events will be more likely to achieve better plans and better agreement.
They found that ‘serialization’ amplifies the time and energy focused on particular strategic issues, increasing the likelihood of learning, while providing the requisite space to build commitment to new ideas.
Published in the British Journal of Management (July 2015), their study concludes that if the goal is to achieve high levels of cognitive challenge, a series of workshops is likely to be more effective than a single event.
This means that we need to think about a process for the strategy development cycle, not an agenda. And make sure you have the time before the plans have to be finalised to schedule the full set of meetings into everyone's calendars.