An away day facilitator designs the day's activities and chairs the discussion, so the whole leadership team can take part and the day ends in decisions.
The venue's booked. Now the day needs filling with something your leadership team will take part in and still talk about. We bring the activities, the props and a neutral chair, and the day ends in decisions.
Full-day and multi-day formats, run at the venue you've already booked.
"It's a year from now and this plan failed. What killed it?" People find it easier to be critical this way, and the plan gets stronger for it.
Everyone writes their ideas silently before anyone speaks, so the most senior voice doesn't set the frame.
Think alone, then in pairs, then fours, then the whole room. Every voice is in within minutes.
Design the perfect way to miss your targets, then spot what you already do that looks like it.
Everyone shows one to five fingers on each decision. A room of threes isn't agreement, so we ask the twos what would move them.
Plus the games from our sessions, which make more sense on a call: Unicorns love Rainbows, Becoming a Time Lord, Strategy Bingo, and It's a deal, it's a steal.
A full day gives you time to agree where you really are before deciding anything, which is usually the part that's missing. For annual planning or a strategy reset, take two days or more.
Daylight, walls you can stick paper to, space to break into groups of four, and lunch in a different room so people get up and move. A U-shaped table looks smart and kills conversation.
Opens a multi-day retreat
Four hours with Collette Easton and Matt Roberts: two 2-hour sessions with lunch in the middle. Inflatable unicorns, sacks of gold and a car dealer's coat, in service of a plan your team believes in. You run the days after, or bring us back.
Gather insights and prepare to plan
Private conversations with your attendees, your customers or the customers you want, so the day starts with what people think.
A full day
We design it with you, run it and debrief with you, along with any follow-on activities.
Two days or more
Diagnosis, choices, goals and the operating rhythm that carries them, chaired from start to finish.
What we do that is hard to do from inside your own team.
One-to-ones, pre-work and the data, ready before anyone sits down.
Frameworks proven in hundreds of sessions, fitted to what you need to decide.
Timing, pace and the recovery moves when a conversation stalls.
No budget to protect, so we can challenge anyone, including the CEO.
The things people keep circling back to, which are hard to see from inside the team.
Who has gone quiet, who is holding back, and when to push or pause.
Support for the people who own the next steps, so momentum carries.
Because we do this a lot, we change the plan when the room needs it.
Whoever's in the room, every session we run meets the same standard.
More than 500 workshops facilitated, by people who have built, run and sold companies. Collette Easton is an Association for Coaching accredited executive coach.
Before we design anything, we agree with the sponsor what the session has to achieve, and build every part of it around that.
Matt Roberts has been a founder, CEO, Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Product Officer, and began his career in ad agencies. He has worked across every function, so he speaks your team's language and nothing slows down.
We talk to attendees beforehand, and chair the room so the most senior voice never sets the frame.
Decisions, owners and dates are captured as they happen, and the follow-ups are agreed before anyone leaves.
We don't teach theory. Your team learns these by planning its real year, with us alongside.
Put a rough value on each option before anyone argues for it, so the debate is about evidence, not volume.
Write goals that will move you forward faster, educate the reader, and inspire the team pursuing them.
Every silly thing in the room has a serious job. This is the research it rests on.
In 54 real team meetings, humour followed by laughter predicted how well teams performed, straight afterwards and again two years later.
of 106 C-suite executives agreed their organisations were bad at diagnosing problems. Creative answers usually come from redefining the problem first.
of groups picked the best option when the key facts were spread across people, against 83% when everyone had the full picture. One-to-ones bring the hidden facts out.
Source: Stasser and Titus, 1985, reported in Schulz-Hardt et al.
People who watched a comedy solved more puzzles through sudden insight than people shown a scary film or a lecture.
Strategy consultant, co-founder of ZOKRI
Executive coach
The ZOKRI team has worked with Legal & General, Absa, SAP, Microsoft, Sage, Chargebee, Jaguar Land Rover, Rolls-Royce, News UK, ITV, ASOS and Virgin Atlantic.
"This is the most fun planning I have ever had. Every SLT needs to do this."
Yes. Tell us the room and we'll plan around it. The things that matter most are daylight, wall space for paper and room to break into groups of four.
It does real work. A pre-mortem on next year's plan, silent idea-writing before discussion, and games that reframe the conversations people avoid. If an activity doesn't feed a decision, cut it.
No. It's a planning workshop. The games and props are how we teach serious tools so they stick, and you leave with decisions, owners and dates.
Eight to fifteen is the sweet spot for making decisions. Everyone there should be deciding, informing a decision or owning the work that follows. We run larger groups too, with more structure.
We run planning days and away days across the UK, Europe and the US, in person or online. These are the cities we're asked about most.
Away days in London, Manchester and Birmingham.
Last updated
Thirty minutes with Matt Roberts. Tell us who'll be in the room and what you need by the end, and we'll tell you how we'd run it.