We design multi-day leadership retreats with you and chair them from start to finish, from the one-to-ones before to the operating rhythm after, so your team leaves with a plan it believes in and the habits to run it.
It starts with a consultation, where we design the retreat with you. Then we prepare to plan, and plan to succeed. Run by people who have been the leadership team on retreat, not just the ones running it.
Executive and SLT retreats, leadership offsites and multi-day strategy retreats, in the UK, Europe and the US.
A typical three-day retreat. Shorter or longer ones can be planned.
The opener
Serious planning. Silly props. gets people laughing, talking and thinking strategically before the hard choices arrive. It's the reason the rest of the retreat moves faster.
The detail depends on what you agree success looks like in the consultation. What's certain is:
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.
Your team works on the plan instead of watching one.
We bring canvases, visual frameworks and exercises designed for leadership teams. Each gives a messy question a shape everyone can see, argue with and add to. Because the thinking is captured as it happens, it turns into priorities, owners and dates, not a photo of a whiteboard nobody opens again.
Canvases
Best-practice large-format visuals to get the whole room thinking aligned and on task.
Visual frameworks
The tools behind good strategy, made simple enough to use mid-argument.
Exercises
Built to challenge thinking, from the pre-mortem to the confidence vote.
Senior leadership teams of companies of every size.
Size
Most are 20 to 200 employees, and larger companies are easily supported.
Group
From a single leadership team to large groups working across multiple breakout rooms.
Stage
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.
Turn the discussion into a short written strategy the whole room recognises and can explain.
Write goals that will move you forward faster, educate the reader, and inspire the team pursuing them. If you want to learn a framework like OKRs while you plan, we can do that too. It's the best way to learn.
Turn uncertain bets into small tests, each with a date to review what you learned.
Match people, skills, team structures, leads and money to the few goals that matter most, so progress comes faster.
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."
Two to three days suits most leadership teams: enough time to diagnose, choose and plan without losing momentum. A week works for a full strategy reset or a new team that needs to gel.
Rarely. The person chairing can't also argue for their own view, and the CEO's view matters. An external facilitator lets the CEO take part properly and keeps every voice in the room.
An offsite is usually a day or two away from the office. A retreat is longer and usually overnight, with time to reflect as well as decide. We facilitate both.
Agree owners and dates before anyone leaves, send a one-page summary within 24 hours and book a 30-day follow-up. We also coach the people who own the next steps.
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.
No. We work with OKRs, V2MOM, Rocks, SMART goals and hybrids of them. The method fits your organisation, not the other way round.
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.