Collette Easton
Executive coach
Built and sold three companies over 20 years, most recently as CEO of Yard Digital. Association for Coaching accredited, and an APMG-accredited Neuroscience for Change Management Practitioner.
Serious planning. Silly props.
Serious planning. Silly props. is a four-hour planning workshop for leadership teams with Collette Easton and Matt Roberts: two 2-hour sessions with lunch in the middle, ending in decisions, owners and dates.
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.
- Length
- 4 hours
- Shape
- 2 × 2-hour sessions
- In the middle
- Lunch
- You leave with
- Decisions, owners, dates
Games and reframed conversations
Chosen for the work your team needs to do.
We pick the games after the call, to fit what your team has to decide, and the set keeps evolving. Each one teaches a serious planning tool, like the pre-mortem, the confidence vote or goals written as outcomes, in a way people remember.
These are a few we've used. The names make more sense on a call.
- Unicorns love Rainbows
- You're going to want to sit down for this
- Becoming a Time Lord
- Strategy Bingo
- How much for your
arsesoul - Taking part that counts
- Non-trivial goal pursuit
- It's a deal, it's a steal
The shape of the day
Four hours of work, with lunch in the middle.
- Session one2 hours. Where you really are.
- LunchIn another room.
- Session two2 hours. What you'll do about it.
- OptionalA social.
Before. A 30-minute call to agree what has to be decided by the end, then three written questions for the team: the biggest issues, one thing to stop doing, and their draft priorities.
After. A one-page summary within 24 hours, and a 30-day follow-up booked before anyone leaves. You run the days after, or bring us back.
Make no mistake
The props are silly. The plan isn't.
People who are relaxed say what they actually think, take more creative risks and argue without falling out. That's the whole reason for the unicorn. The laughs come from the process, never from forced fun, and you tell us your team's limits.
Why do we sometimes use props and humour?
Every silly thing in the room has a serious job. This is the research it rests on.
2 years
In 54 real team meetings, humour followed by laughter predicted how well teams performed, straight afterwards and again two years later.
85%
of 106 C-suite executives agreed their organisations were bad at diagnosing problems. Creative answers usually come from redefining the problem first.
18%
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.
Comedy
People who watched a comedy solved more puzzles through sudden insight than people shown a scary film or a lecture.
Who'll be in your room
A coach and a strategist, in the same room.
Matt Roberts
Strategy consultant, co-founder of ZOKRI
Two-time SaaS founder who led Linkdex to a trade sale, then spent eight years building operating systems inside companies from tens to low thousands of people.
"This is the most fun planning I have ever had. Every SLT needs to do this."
Questions people ask first
How long is the session?
Four hours: two 2-hour sessions with lunch in the middle.
Can it open a multi-day retreat?
Yes. It sets the tone for the whole event. You run the days after, or bring us back.
Is this team-building with a plan bolted on?
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.
What does it cost?
We quote after a 30-minute call, once we know the size of the group, how long you have and what you need decided by the end.
Related
Last updated
Tell us what has to be decided.
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.