S1E8: What Makes for a Productive Offsite?

Show Notes

Summary

In this episode of The Intentional Organization Podcast, Mathias Meyer and Sara Hicks tackle a format most people have opinions about but few teams actually do well: the offsite. They open by defining what an offsite even is (a multi-day gathering away from day-to-day work where topics and activities are deliberately worked through to strengthen the team) and poke at the baggage the word carries, from forced icebreakers to long, boring slide decks to the sense of money spent just to end up back where you started.

From there they trade stories of offsites that worked and ones that didn't. Mathias describes an early offsite with his co-founders where he tried to facilitate, take notes, and participate all at once, and why that's a losing combination once stakes and emotions are high. Sara shares a co-located leadership team that discovered, through a pre-offsite survey, that everyone was quietly operating from a different strategy despite sitting on the same floor every day. They walk through how offsites serve co-located, hybrid, and fully remote teams differently, including the particular empathy gap that can form between people who are in the office and people who aren't, and why remote teams especially need intentional, non-business moments to build relationships that would otherwise happen by accident.

The back half is a practical playbook: get clear on the one thing the offsite needs to accomplish before you plan anything else, assign homework and run pre-offsite surveys so people arrive with thought-through opinions instead of cold-starting in the room, bring in a neutral facilitator when the stakes or the tensions are high, use small groups and silent reflection instead of open-floor brainstorming, and resist the urge to overprogram. They close on what happens after everyone goes home: documenting decisions and owners before the offsite ends, setting explicit follow-up timelines, and why leaders (including the two of them) showing up vulnerably and "shoulder to shoulder" sets the tone for how honest the rest of the room is willing to be.

Keywords

offsites, all hands, team building, leadership, remote teams, hybrid teams, facilitation, strategy alignment, workplace culture, executive coaching

Takeaways

• An offsite is a multi-day gathering away from day-to-day work where topics and activities are deliberately worked through to strengthen the team, not a synonym for trust falls and forced fun.

• Don't ask one person to facilitate, take notes, and participate as a stakeholder in the same offsite. When emotions or stakes are high, questions from a facilitator who is also a co-founder or CEO land differently than questions from a neutral party.

• Offsites matter even for fully co-located teams. Physical proximity makes day-to-day communication easier, but it doesn't guarantee shared clarity on strategy or priorities.

• Hybrid teams face a specific risk: people who are in the office regularly can lose empathy for what it's like to not be there, and an offsite can turn "a rectangle on a screen" back into a real person.

• Fully remote teams need intentional, non-business moments built into the offsite (and into regular team life) because relationship-building doesn't happen by accident the way it might around an office water cooler.

• Preparation should start weeks in advance. Get explicit about what the offsite needs to accomplish (repair trust, set strategy, realign priorities) before deciding on the agenda.

• Homework and pre-offsite surveys matter: when people show up having already thought through a topic on their own, the group conversation is far more productive than a cold-start brainstorm.

• Good facilitation techniques include silent individual reflection before group discussion, breaking into smaller cross-functional groups, and building in real unstructured time rather than programming every hour.

• Momentum from an offsite dies fast without a plan: document what was decided, what wasn't, who owns what, and what the follow-up timeline is before everyone leaves.

• How leaders show up sets the tone. Sara and Mathias's "shoulder to shoulder" opening at their own team offsite, being vulnerable about their own partnership, made space for other pairs on the team to have more honest conversations too.

Chapters

00:00 Rethinking Offsites: Beyond Trust Falls

00:26 The Lasting Impact of Effective Offsites

01:00 Understanding Off-Sites: Definitions and Misconceptions

04:29 The Importance of Effective Off-Sites

09:27 Learning from Past Off-Sites: Successes and Failures

14:50 Why Off-Sites Matter for All Teams

20:17 Strategies for Hybrid and Remote Teams

27:20 Preparing for a Successful Off-Site

28:35 Setting Clear Objectives for Offsites

29:52 The Importance of Preparation and Homework

31:00 Addressing Tensions and Building Trust

33:00 Effective Facilitation Techniques

35:35 Creating Space for Open Conversations

37:27 Balancing Structure and Flexibility

38:52 The Role of Leadership in Offsites

Transcript

Sara Hicks (00:00) Okay, y'all, let's let's be honest. When someone says to you the word offsite, what comes to your mind? So for a lot of people, it's trust falls, it's awkward, icebreakers, it's a slide deck that goes on and on and on. And so in this episode, Mathias and I are talking about how to actually do offsites well, because we think that when it's done right.

An off-site can really change how your team works together for a very long time. We get into why off-sites matter, even for teams that are sitting in the same office every single day. We talk about what it actually takes to prepare one and how to make sure it doesn't evaporate the moment everyone returns back to their desks on a Monday. I also happen to

Ask Mathias to share the Palm Springs tennis story. Hope you enjoy it. Let's get into it.

Sara Hicks (01:06) Okay, here we are again. should be fun. I

Mathias Meyer (01:09) Uh-huh.

Sara Hicks (01:10) think it's, well, I guess it's always fun, Mathias.

Mathias Meyer (01:12) It

is, yes it is.

Sara Hicks (01:14) But we're going to be talking about something that a lot of teams do. But what we found is very few teams do this well. And we're talking about offsites or all hands. Some companies call them all hands. some people,

Mathias Meyer (01:31) See ya

Sara Hicks (01:32) there's all sorts of phrases for this. So I thought I would just start out by like, what do we mean when we say an offsite?

And here's what I've got, Mathias. I'm curious what your definition would be. Mine's a gathering,

Mathias Meyer (01:43) Mmm.

Sara Hicks (01:44) often across multiple days, but not necessarily, but usually it's across multiple days. And it's usually at a location that isn't where day-to-day work takes place. And it's where during those days, topics and even activities are, I wrote the word contemplated to help

strengthen companies and teams. That's a big definition. Mathias what? What? It is, I did manage

Mathias Meyer (02:10) It's a big definition, yeah. It is one sentence, which is nice.

Sara Hicks (02:15) to get it in one sentence, but Yeah, tell me what what did I miss?

Mathias Meyer (02:20) I think that's a fair description, a fair definition. I

Sara Hicks (02:22) Alright.

Mathias Meyer (02:24) mean, I've come to appreciate that companies now call, where something like this happens in office as an onsite, which, you know, can be a different take on this, but,

Sara Hicks (02:36) Yes, I

was going to say yes and there are things called on-site offsites. In fact, I've even been to an on-site offsite.

Mathias Meyer (02:44) Yeah, some of these on-site serve a similar purpose and sometimes it does happen with companies that are mostly remote but do have an HQ somewhere like

Sara Hicks (02:56) Right,

which we did an onsite, offsite at

Mathias Meyer (03:00) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (03:01) our company, Reaction Commerce, because we had the office in LA. I bet some of these things we will discuss.

Mathias Meyer (03:07) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (03:09) Okay, anyway, I had a coaching session this week and I was preparing and thinking about this topic, so I asked my coaching client they thought of when they even hear or think of, you know,

offsites or attending an offsite and the first thing she said the very first thing was really awkward games and ice

Mathias Meyer (03:29) huh, trust faults.

Sara Hicks (03:31) and and icebreakers and i we just laughed i just left so that's yeah when people think of offsite they also think of long slide decks boring long slide decks forced fun

of sitting because of those long slide decks.

Mathias Meyer (03:48) huh.

Sara Hicks (03:50) And some folks even said like they think of a lot of money wasted being spent to kind of end back right where you started, which is kind of harsh, but

Mathias Meyer (04:02) These things do

cost money. The cost of game costs a lot of money.

Sara Hicks (04:07) It is an investment, yes. It's an investment for sure. So that's our topic today. And we're going to talk about can make an offsite truly great, that they can really change how teams work together for a very long period of time, why they matter, even when your team is sitting together and co-located every day, why they still matter.

how to prepare and design an offsite.

also what happens once the offsite is over. It doesn't end when everyone goes home. What are some of the frameworks or techniques to think through keep the offsite going even after it's technically over? So I thought it'd be fun with that opening to ask you a little question, Mathias, about, I don't know.

Have you attended an offsite that wasn't so great? And if so, what went wrong? What broke down in your opinion? And then conversely, of course, do you have a favorite offsite? A very Sarah question. Is there an offsite

Mathias Meyer (05:04) Who is?

Sara Hicks (05:05) that you attended that was super productive and what made it so? And I really hope that you talk about us playing tennis in Palm Springs at some point, but I'm just gonna, I'll

Mathias Meyer (05:14) I mean,

Sara Hicks (05:15) leave that there.

Mathias Meyer (05:16) that's a lot of pressure. I'm not allowed to pick another one at this point. Okay, first question. Have you attended an offsite that wasn't effective? I guess there's some philosophical thing about when is an offsite effective, might emerge in our conversation.

Sara Hicks (05:38) Great.

Mathias Meyer (05:38) But maybe...

you know, leaving that aside. I think just back to the very first offsite I organized for my team of co-founders. It was like five of us sitting in a small room around a table and we were, taking some time to reflect on.

how we've got to this point. This was a couple of years into our journey. What's important to us, what we want moving forward just trying to get everyone to open up a little bit. This included myself. Like at this point, our company was growing and it just never seemed like there was time to do these

Sara Hicks (06:19) .

Mathias Meyer (06:20) things.

And why it is memorable in terms of, ineffectiveness, it is because like we, it was just the five of us. Like I was facilitating, I was also taking notes, and I was also an active participant in the discussion.

Sara Hicks (06:39) Wow.

Mathias Meyer (06:40) that's not a great spot to be in, like for many reasons. One is,

Say when you ask the group questions, those questions aren't just, know, they can be interpreted as more than coming from the facilitator. When you wear like these three or four different hats, they also come from you, the co-founder. And depending on, you know, where relationships are, there were always challenges. And we, this was the first time we had taken the time and also asked.

Sara Hicks (06:58) Okay.

Mathias Meyer (07:10) maybe slightly uncomfortable questions. And it was a weird position. Like these questions didn't just seem like they came from me as the facilitator. They also came from me as the CEO and as the co-founder with whatever

Sara Hicks (07:25) Great.

Mathias Meyer (07:27) assumptions, emotions, and all of that came along with that were put into it.

Sara Hicks (07:35) Right.

Mathias Meyer (07:36) And I bring that up because we spend maybe two days or something and we still, it was not a bad time, not a wasted time, felt like it just, I think that was the one where I learned, these just on your own is probably not useful especially when it's a leadership team or a group of equals, whatever level they're on.

you want to be an active participant. And when you have to

Sara Hicks (08:04) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (08:05) pay attention to notes and when you have to facilitate a discussion and ask the questions, it's similar as in other meetings. can't really wear all of those hats.

Sara Hicks (08:17) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (08:18) And I think it's stuck with me because it just, from that on I learned know, either you do offsites in a different way, it's not impossible to do these without

Sara Hicks (08:24) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (08:27) a facilitator, but it also depends on what the stakes are to use some business terminology. we go through a couple different formats today, but for example, when these are things where, you know, there's a brainstorming session or there's just a workshop

Sara Hicks (08:31) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (08:45) you can rotate the responsibilities.

Sara Hicks (08:48) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (08:48) But in this

case, when again, like emotions can run high, when everybody's very opinionated about where things should go, then it's better to have

Sara Hicks (09:02) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (09:02) somebody else facilitate, ask questions, make sure that everyone gets their say and nobody dominates the meeting, all those things that a facilitator would do in a meeting.

Sara Hicks (09:15) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (09:15) And also

somebody to take notes. Whether

Sara Hicks (09:18) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (09:18) you need to take notes throughout the entirety of an offsite is an entirely different question, but I

Sara Hicks (09:24) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (09:25) think that's maybe expectations.

I

Sara Hicks (09:27) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (09:27) I learned a lot from doing the offsite this way.

And also, it's worth spending some money on getting an external party involved. And it can also be useful if that party is neutral. I'm not

Sara Hicks (09:41) Right.

Mathias Meyer (09:42) saying this is an advertising for us because now we do something like this for other teams. it is just useful.

Sara Hicks (09:48) Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a great example. Okay. shifting to the other other side. Have you been to an offsite? It doesn't have to be Palm Springs. Doesn't have to be that one. Have you attended an offsite that you felt was more effective or more productive or maybe not all of it but at least parts of it or

Mathias Meyer (10:07) Hmm...

So I'm thinking of maybe two things and they kind of also belong together. we had a big team offsite in Palm Springs where it was freakishly hot and still people were playing golf, which I do not understand.

And leading up to this, You came to Berlin and we had a teeny weeny little tiny offsite just at a little town outside of Berlin, I mean, I like the place for offsites. It's nice, not.

like it's relatively easy to reach from Berlin in an hour and you're still by a nice lake it helps having a lake and having just some scenery rather than meet in a very corporate hotel by an airport

And I think in the first offsite, a very clear idea of what we wanted to discuss. There were flip charts, were post-its, there were arrows on that flip chart.

Sara Hicks (11:07) There were long walks.

Mathias Meyer (11:08) There were long walks. we talked about

strategy, very, very on point for offsites to talk about strategy. talked about what we would change about this strategy and then also how we would involve the team. And part of what follows from all of this is what we talk about in our book, which is also nice about it. We talk about intentional collaboration in there. And this was the starting point. And I

Sara Hicks (11:33) And we'd even done a

survey. of the team, right?

Mathias Meyer (11:36) We

had done a survey before. Like speaking of prep, we came fully prepared. Like we had, qualitative data, not necessarily quantitative, but it was also not the goal of the survey to get qualitative, quantitative data. We wanted to get a feel for how the team was interpreting the business.

that offsite because we did have a mix of quite couple of hours every day and then also nice walks outside. I think it was May or late April. It was quite nice. You had some German

Sara Hicks (12:07) It's beautiful.

Mathias Meyer (12:09) food.

Sara Hicks (12:11) I had

my first ever, I think, I don't, as far as I can recall, white asparagus, I think.

Mathias Meyer (12:17) Yeah, it wasn't the best experience

for White Asparagus, but we will, we'll, we'll,

Sara Hicks (12:21) we'll fix that.

Mathias Meyer (12:22) we'll fix that. We'll fix it in post. And then following

Sara Hicks (12:25) Hehehe.

Mathias Meyer (12:25) that, we had the, the offsite in Palm Springs with the entire team. where, we put a lot of time in preparing this. we, you know, speaking of long slide decks we had our slide deck wasn't too long. We did an introductory talk, early on.

And then we just had like a good mix of workshops smaller groups that were cross-functional, that weren't limited to a particular team about specific topics that are all tied into the strategy discussion we had before. And we, mean, the two of us went to play tennis, which was nice. I had at that point forgotten how much I liked tennis.

Actually quite fun and I think you were surprised of how relatively good I can play tennis.

Sara Hicks (13:16) True.

Mathias Meyer (13:17) I got to experience Olive Garden for the first and so far only time.

Sara Hicks (13:23) I don't know if

that is maybe the highlight, but you did get to, and it is part of the story, yes.

Mathias Meyer (13:28) It

is part of the story, yes. This is not what made the offsite great. Although it was just like going there with a couple of folks from the team and eating unlimited breadsticks. It was memorable.

Sara Hicks (13:44) You got to go to Elmer's and experience a German pancake or so they say.

Mathias Meyer (13:49) That is true. That is very true.

At that point, I'd only recently learned about a Dutch baby a thing that exists in the US. And I was very intrigued by the fact that they call it German. But then I also learned that the Dutch comes from Pennsylvania Dutch, and the Pennsylvania Dutch were actually German. And how the word Dutch in this case actually stems from the word Deutsch.

which is German, in German. Sidebar, just a little fun fact sidebar for you. But anyway, this was

Sara Hicks (14:17) There you go. Interesting. Sidebar. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (14:25) a long arc, but those come to mind for me. Like those two, because they belong together.

Sara Hicks (14:30) Those are great.

Such good answers. let's shift a little bit. We've already gotten some examples, but let's talk offsites matter more than folks And we've already touched on this, but one of the biggest misconceptions is that folks feel that offsites are really more suited for remote teams.

Mathias Meyer (14:50) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (14:51) But...

The reality is and the truth is that every team starts to drift. Whether you're sitting with each other day to day or hybrid fully it's really helpful to reset and offsites are a way

Mathias Meyer (15:05) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (15:06) to do that. Offsites are a way, especially if you do them on a regular There's all company, there's the leadership team or just the founders, there's ways.

you know, to

Mathias Meyer (15:16) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (15:16) figure out like how to do that. And so I thought it might be good for us to talk about just some of the different scenarios from different types of teams, whether it's co-located, you you're in the same office every single day or you're hybrid. You might have an office or two, but, you know, half or more of the team is not in the office. And then the last one would be fully remote. There's no headquarters. There's no

full-time office, on video. So the first scenario I'll take, I'll talk about co-located. have worked on co-located teams. I worked with a leadership team. This is the story that came to mind. We were, again, fully co-located. We had one office. We were all actually on the same floor. I've actually been co-located where we've been on different floors, and I can tell you every different...

floor felt like its own, like we were hybrid. But anyway, we saw each other constantly is the main thing. You know, and on the surface, you might think like, everything seemed But we were preparing for an offsite and I helped to put together with the CEO this kind of pre-offsite survey, which is a good thing to do. And it shed some light on the fact that

many of us were just all not on the same page about what our strategy was and what was important in terms of our priorities.

Mathias Meyer (16:41) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (16:43) And, I thought it was one thing with like this particular initiative was speed, get it out to market. The VP of engineering thought it was different. The CEO was over here. Like we were all clearly there was some overlap, but we we

Clearly we're not operating from a shared sense of strategy or And so here we were physically together nearly every day.

But strategically, we were essentially living companies or three different priorities and three different strategies. so.

you know, this proximity because we had access to each other it helped to facilitate communication in ways that it's just easier, but it

Mathias Meyer (17:28) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (17:28) didn't help us with clarity. And so the offsite really gave us the time and the space to like get clarity on what really matters the most right now. And to come out of that offsite with, the same exact

sentence or understanding of what was the most important thing right now. And I would say that session of that offsite, which was probably just like 90 minutes or something, where we really kind of looked at the survey and we realized, we're not operating on shared assumptions. We're not operating from a shared strategy. we don't all agree on the priorities.

And so that one session helped to reshape everything for us. So anyway, that's a co-located team example and why it's important to actually do those offsites to kind of step back and reset. Because had we not, we would have kept going in those different directions, right? Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (18:25) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (18:26) Do you have a scenario of an offsite from either yourself or a client?

Mathias Meyer (18:30) have multiple. I think hybrid

Sara Hicks (18:31) greet.

Mathias Meyer (18:32) teams are particularly interesting because, in a way there's commonalities to the co-located teams. Just like instead of having another floor, you have maybe one floor and then there's everybody else. And then you have really many, many, many floors that depend on how much and how often.

people who are not at the office interact either each other or with folks from the office. One of the challenges that I've experienced, and also this really only came out in the actual offsite or afterwards,

what we learned was for the entire team,

Sara Hicks (19:05) Thank

Mathias Meyer (19:07) People at the office just had very different levels of relationship and also just turned out a different level of information. And I was also in the office, like, which means, you

Sara Hicks (19:14) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (19:16) know, people at the office had easier access to me as the then CEO, which, you know, wasn't helping. and think one key thing about hybrid teams, like people who are in the office who are still co-located

risk to lose an empathy for what it's like for everybody who's not there.

Sara Hicks (19:34) Yep.

Yep.

Mathias Meyer (19:37) And I think that's where an offsite important in the way that it's important for all of these teams But in this case, helps, people who are in the office see people who are not there

Sara Hicks (19:50) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (19:51) as people and not as a little rectangle on their screens. That's helpful.

It's like,

Sara Hicks (19:57) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (19:58) oh, this is a, this is a real person and we usually talk very businessy and it's nice that we actually just get to chat while we're here all together. But then again, it might also come that they are in the company, in the culture, there are gaps in the communication where there's still a water cooler thing that

many people aren't a part of. so offsites can be a great way to reset and then also

can bring up these tensions and then you get to ideally you respond to them.

Sara Hicks (20:30) Yeah, such a great example. And we had the same concerns Reaction Commerce at our company you know, there was an office in Los Angeles but the majority of the team was not in Los Angeles. We were distributed first team, but I was in Los Angeles

And those are things that, know, in the offsite, as you think about that, there things you can do with offsites to help get different folks to communicate or, know, even where folks sit in an offsite

did a little kind of secret buddy thing or, you know, paired people up just so they could have...

longer conversations, go on walks, have lunches together, personal stories, just that connection that you can get face to face so folks can really feel like they're part of the team. But as you point out, it's a great, great lesson because what are some of the things that you could do besides an offsite to encourage some of that? How about fully remote?

Mathias Meyer (21:19) Yeah,

fully remote, think of two scenarios here. One is a fully remote team does a remote offsite,

you know, it's, feels like forever ago, but a couple of years ago, we had this pandemic thing. And I did facilitate an offsite that was for

Well, at that point it was a fully remote team because nobody could go to the office. And it was wild in that there were some folks here in Berlin and there was someone also on the US West Coast, which there's a very small window that you have in this scenario.

Sara Hicks (21:56) Various.

Mathias Meyer (21:57) And I mean, to be fair, like when you get a team like this together, you actually have to account for that and how you plan it

if say you fly somebody in from the US West Coast and you're flying them in the day before, they're just gonna be...

They're not going to be in a great shape on the first day. Like, so it's, there's always something about when you plan for an offsite where people arrive, like from other parts of the globe or when there multiple time zones involved, it is worth planning a little buffer so that people

Sara Hicks (22:30) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (22:31) up to the time zone as much as possible.

So these two things come to mind for me. with remote teams, I would argue that when a team is fully remote, there's a good set of practices in place. There's a whole bunch of meetings. There's a certain level of intentionality of bringing about water cooler moments intentionally.

Like, rather than you

Sara Hicks (22:53) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (22:53) randomly pop into someone by the water cooler, by the donut box, or the coffee machine, can't rely on that serendipity. You have to create those moments as weird as it sounds, even when I explain this to clients. You just have to create moments where people can connect that are, you know, not the typical business meeting.

But I mean, because relationships are so... They happen on a different level at remote teams. Because you don't see each other face to face, but almost exclusively, like in a tiny rectangle on screen, relationships might be different. It's just, you know how to talk to each other in an office environment, but then you might not even know...

how tall the other person is. I remember the first time

Sara Hicks (23:40) Ha ha.

Mathias Meyer (23:40) I flew to the US for an offsite when we met. I remember you and our then director of engineering had a bet going for how tall you think I am. Which is funny, we just only see each other as stamps. Anyway.

Sara Hicks (24:00) I forgot about that.

It's just funny. Yeah.

So many people have been like, you're taller than I thought, you know, when I, when I started to meet some of my MailChimp colleagues after the pandemic was starting to lift, you know, they were like, wow, you're tall. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (24:17) anyway, think the because also there is no explicit like nurturing of or there's less explicit nurturing of relationships, right? It's sometimes also just easy to ignore all of that and just be all business and remote and then also just as a remote person doing your own thing, which

Sara Hicks (24:36) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (24:36) is difficult and challenging at times because we do need

some level of social interactions, right? We need some contact with other people that isn't just, we talk about strategic priorities for the next quarter where we expect to leverage our partner network to gain synergies, something like that. it's,

Sara Hicks (24:58) Buzzword bingo.

Mathias Meyer (25:00) the problem there is like if you don't spend time nurturing the relationships along the way.

There can be tensions, maybe even frustrations or resentments that can arise, but there's also no outlet you can let those out.

Sara Hicks (25:16) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (25:18) sometimes, or not sometimes, you know, in this scenario like this, yes, it can be useful to focus on that strategic sentence and figure out what you're going to prioritize.

But it is equally, if not more important to prioritize relationships and to

Sara Hicks (25:36) For sure. Yep.

Mathias Meyer (25:38) have a forum where people can talk about what frustrates them, what tensions they've been holding back. And also maybe to have a joint understanding of what has actually gone well. Like one of the... I

Sara Hicks (25:50) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (25:51) did this with a team that hadn't done like a retrospective or even just like an acknowledgement of all the work that happened.

in the previous 18 months. And we just started that conversation with a retrospective where, yes, it was useful to also understand that there's a lot that didn't go well, but also like this, know, there's stuff that we did do.

Sara Hicks (26:13) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (26:15) But yeah, the relationship aspect in those teams, I find, unless it is really ingrained, they meet regularly, and this

Sara Hicks (26:22) So important,

Mathias Meyer (26:23) is all taken care of, or they have means where they trust each other outside of this, or where feedback is flowing openly, stuff to pay attention to, because in remote teams, in a remote setting, feedback in particular can actually be more difficult.

And so this might be this could be a time where you put feedback on the table or you you start really almost like in the spirit of the five disfunctions of a team you start by a sharing something very personal or just

Sara Hicks (26:56) Great.

Mathias Meyer (26:57) Being open and honest and candid with each other without the radical just just candid Yeah

Sara Hicks (27:01) Yeah. Just do it. Yeah.

Yeah. Just as you were talking, thinking about some of the challenges you and I have had. We're

Mathias Meyer (27:10) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (27:11) remote. We generally only get together in person once a year.

And we did an offsite last year in the Cotswolds. we had a

a of brewing frustrations and tensions because we stressed. We published our book and

Mathias Meyer (27:28) Uh-huh.

Sara Hicks (27:28) that brought a lot of great things and also just a lot of stress. So even two facilitators here, your podcast hosts have to do the work. And so maybe that's a good segue into what is the work? How do you prepare and plan?

What are some of the things that we've learned? We've already talked about some of them, but what makes for an effective offsite? I'll hand that over to you. We've talked

about some surveys. We've talked about facilitation, like either having someone else come in to help facilitate or rotating responsibility amongst the group and using different facilitation techniques.

Mathias Meyer (28:12) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (28:14) What are some of the preparation and planning techniques that are important, Mathias?

Mathias Meyer (28:21) even start.

for me in my mind, it starts weeks before. And sometimes I don't actually have a lot of time, like organizing it offsite. Sometimes you're just called in.

at a very last minute, usually, yeah, this, it should be clear what you want to get out of the offsite when you organize it. Like, is this a thing where you want to focus on building relationships, repair trust in your team where you need to come out with a strategy or with a clear set priorities, whether that's for the next quarter or for the next year.

you need to abandon whatever the company has done so far and shift direction completely.

Sara Hicks (29:03) But.

Mathias Meyer (29:07) a lot,

Sara Hicks (29:07) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (29:08) but it's good to be clear on what that is supposed to be. Because when that doesn't happen, people just show up.

They come to the offsite and then the first half of the day you'll spend trying to figure out what you're gonna do.

Sara Hicks (29:26) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (29:27) I've seen that happen. I've been, I've had discussions about this with clients where I said like, I'm, I'm going to prepare the hell out of this. And everybody gets homework, which to me

Sara Hicks (29:39) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (29:40) is the other secret ingredient brainstorming meetings to me are not the most effective meetings. They are when people have some, have spent time thinking about a problem on their own.

then they

Sara Hicks (29:52) Right.

Mathias Meyer (29:53) can bring in whatever they came up with without necessarily the dynamics of a brainstorming meeting.

Sara Hicks (30:00) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (30:01) it's... it's...

mean, sometimes to be fair, when you're like a new, say you're a relatively new CEO or a first-time founder, it sometimes isn't easy to see what you actually need.

or where

Sara Hicks (30:16) Right.

Mathias Meyer (30:16) your team is at. You might not see the tensions. You might not even you know, agree with the statement that there are some tensions or there's a resentment,

Sara Hicks (30:24) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (30:25) whether that's with one person or whether there is pardon my French, there's a misalignment, like in the leadership team, which I've seen happen. And I've only seen this happen because I talked to people on that team individually.

about their frustrations. And that's where it really bubbled up, right? It's where I found some pointers for myself for running this offsite that I need to, well, poke at. And also where there needs to be some decision at the end of this on what is going to happen about this misalignment

even in an offsite, it can be challenging when everybody knows there's something

Sara Hicks (31:05) right.

Mathias Meyer (31:05) brewing, there's a tension there, but everybody's skirting around the issue.

Sara Hicks (31:11) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (31:12) Not saying what they really think for whatever reason. And then the

Sara Hicks (31:16) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (31:16) end result is just not what it could be, if people would really have an open discussion.

Sara Hicks (31:23) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (31:24) and can like speak candidly and freely.

Sara Hicks (31:28) Yeah, I've definitely experienced that when you come into the offsite. that tension. Folks aren't able to for whatever reason, like you just said. There's maybe not a trust or there's no space to have real conversation. Real issues don't get addressed. People then are frustrated after.

the offsite because

Mathias Meyer (31:48) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (31:49) like nothing changed, nothing happened, nothing, you know, the real concerns or the real issues of the real purpose they felt didn't get talked about. And, and this is where it's hard, right? Like, yeah, it's hard as a founder. I've been there, we've been there to know and to see these things and where doing the preparation ideally weeks before to really

have the conversations, the survey. And

Mathias Meyer (32:15) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (32:16) not just do the survey, but then as you start to get some of the results, maybe do some follow-up conversations. to really understand what's the one thing that folks or saying that is not being talked about that should be talked about. I

Mathias Meyer (32:32) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (32:33) can't remember. Did we put?

some survey questions that we used in our book? I think we did. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (32:37) Yeah, the survey questions

that we use were in the book.

we wanted to figure out what the misalignment, pardon my French, was in our team. Really figure out what people thought what our product is, who we're selling to. And

Sara Hicks (32:49) That's right. Yep. Yep.

Mathias Meyer (32:52) we threw in a few more couple of questions and I, still one of the favorites, my favorite surveys I've ever done.

because the results were actually really interesting. as we were approaching our tiny offsite by Scharmützelsee we had a hypothesis about what was not working, but the survey really helped us point to that and like it confirmed our hypothesis in a

And I like that. I mean, I'm generally, you know, when I planned offsites now, like I talk to everybody who's going to be there, ask them like a similar set of questions. That depends on what the purpose of the offsite is. Or sometimes I ask the very open ended questions when this purpose isn't entirely clear yet. And after that discussion, I can make a few suggestions.

Sara Hicks (33:47) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (33:48) But yeah, it's doing the homework, like we're doing some level of surveying or distributing homework before so that people actually show up prepared. That to me

Sara Hicks (33:57) Yep. Yep.

Mathias Meyer (33:59) has been like some of the most useful stuff there is a danger that people come in with opinions that are too set because they've already put work into this.

And whatever

Sara Hicks (34:09) Right.

Mathias Meyer (34:10) they present they might have, you know, some level of attachment But I It's just a different thing when you can when you spend that time upfront and then have discussions about the thing rather than spending one or two days of the maybe three days you have together actually

Sara Hicks (34:27) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (34:29) Putting things together and then it's even slower because everybody's staring at a flipchart

or people are going through all different types of exercises of putting stuff on there and then someone has to collate everything, summarize

Sara Hicks (34:44) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (34:44) it, all of that. That's a lot of work and ideally as much as possible that work needs to happen upfront. So I always, even when it comes to strategy planning sessions, I distribute the work upfront because it also contributes to people thinking freely and on their own.

They were going to put stuff into writing on their own that they might not say in a setting where the CEO is present, where there's a power dynamic, or where there's generally group dynamics in play.

Sara Hicks (35:15) Yeah, yeah, it's so important. Yeah, I kind of put this in our notes, but it's like that homework preparation work so helpful because you get different perspectives that you might not get if you try to open up a conversation room. You might get the usual voices that are more apt to talk in a group setting and

Mathias Meyer (35:35) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (35:36) And I think great or effective offsites do things like that. help with, I put kind of silent reflection, but one of the best techniques, facilitation techniques is to propose a topic and then tell everyone to spend the next 10 minutes on their own, putting down some thoughts and ideas. And then in smaller groups.

you know, maybe talk about it and then from there, you know, go back to the larger group. And those things take time, but it's not just eight hours of talking. These are facilitation techniques and these are things you can do at the actual offsite in addition to, you know, the homework and the surveys and having conversations one-on-one in advance

Mathias Meyer (36:16) Yeah.

Sara Hicks (36:17) with every participant and making sure, I mean, you're going to be together morning till

evening most likely and in there make sure there's time for tennis or walking or eating and talking informally. It's not overly programmed. That's probably the mistake I've seen that happen the most is overly programmed offsites. You try to pack so much in and then it's

Mathias Meyer (36:37) Yeah, it's... And usually it's

way more than you will ever reasonably achieve. And then, yeah, there's no time at all.

Sara Hicks (36:45) Yep. Yep.

Mathias Meyer (36:47) we over the years, before I joined Reaction, at my company, Offsites evolved from a few days maybe and trying to make it as productive as possible to really actually at least maybe a half and a half

not the milk cream thing, a 50-50 time and then leaving plenty of time for people to do stuff on their own. Not like to do like planned fun, but really like whatever you do, like it's your own

Sara Hicks (37:21) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (37:22) time. So then groups start to gather. Some people will still sit around.

at the venue and hack something together, that's what helps them, or that's how relationships are built. Yeah, that is an important thing. And also for me, small groups, An offsite where you have more than a reasonable number of people present and you want them all to participate.

Sara Hicks (37:45) Yeah. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (37:46) It's just

not, that's not working out. I like to think back at what people like to say when they think about what they get when they move into the upper echelons of leadership is they get a seat at the table. But then the table actually gets really crowded at the literal table at an offsite or in a meeting. And it's, it's really hard.

for everyone to contribute and participate.

Sara Hicks (38:13) Yeah. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (38:14) So I prefer smaller groups and then having larger groups having everybody come back together and then present results or talk about results in whatever way. I rather do it this way if you're talking about entire company or a larger organization and a subgroup in that.

Sara Hicks (38:32) Right, Yeah, really good stuff. Yeah, this preparation, this planning all leads to ideally making the offsite more productive, more effective, more enjoyable, right?

Mathias Meyer (38:47) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (38:48) Like, there's a space for conversations that...

aren't happening and you actually know from the conversations and from the surveys and from the prep work what some of those things are. You have facilitation where there's homework, people are doing smaller group stuff.

I guess the one thing I wanted to share made me think about was how important it is for the leaders, especially the folks facilitating the offsite, but the CEO and the founders show up and create that space where those conversations can happen, right? To

Mathias Meyer (39:22) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (39:24) make it safe. And one of the things I was thinking about as I was...

I was preparing for this conversation was what we did in in Palm Springs and we called it shoulder to shoulder. And

Mathias Meyer (39:33) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (39:35) it was really important to me, I think to us that we showed up as partners as business partners and we showed up equally shoulder to shoulder. And so when we kicked off the actual offsite, we stood together up front, you know, in front of the whole team and

we demonstrated and we talked about, I think just some of our own challenges and some of what we worked through in, I have to say it again, in Scharmützelsee in our own

pre-offside. And, we talked about in funny ways, some of our own personalities as a Californian and as a German.

Mathias Meyer (40:13) Mm-hmm

Sara Hicks (40:13) I, I actually think that single step that we made and talked about,

actually helped to shift the tone for the rest of the offsite. It was a vulnerability that

Mathias Meyer (40:26) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (40:26) just created, I think, a little bit of more safety for others. And I even had someone on the team come and say that they wanted our business relationship and our friendship and what we had created as executives and as leaders of the company, that they were wanting to create that

with their counterparts and with their their folks on the team and I thought that was just so lovely. I don't know just came to my mind.

Mathias Meyer (40:49) Yeah,

I agree. Sometimes the temptation is there for the CEO or whoever is, you know, highest ranking person, Temptation is always there for them to make it all business. I think, know, depending on what kind of company culture you want to have, and also like maybe what you want to get out of this offsite.

If it's a two day and we really need to hammer in the strategy, then so be it. Like that's what we're going to have to do.

Sara Hicks (41:18) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (41:20) But, know, they tend to come in an all business kind of mindset where, you know, and this was maybe our realization

how we transferred this into the team was that the work comes from the relationship, or rather, a good relationship is the prerequisite for doing the work, doing good work.

Sara Hicks (41:41) Good work. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (41:44) I think about that, and I also understand how it's just so easy to be all about business, and everybody has full calendars and all of that, but then again, it's...

Sara Hicks (41:56) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (41:56) You know,

everybody's traveling potentially a long distance. Everybody's there. And yes, it might take, you know, people have life stuff to organize. But like if you all say you only do like these all business meetings where you talk about like what we're planning for the next quarter that leaves, you know, we talked about tensions unaddressed and

Sara Hicks (42:03) Okay.

Mathias Meyer (42:19) to me, it's a lost opportunity.

Sara Hicks (42:21) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (42:22) So

my, it's like, it's, it's a lost opportunity in slowing down. And you wrote here to think better. I also think to, to eventually go faster. And that's how I always like to describe it to my clients is like you slow down as you delegate, as you get your team up to speed, as you do an offsite like this and not just make it business, but relationships,

Sara Hicks (42:45) and keep going.

Mathias Meyer (42:47) you slow down so that you can go faster in the future.

Sara Hicks (42:50) Yep. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (42:51) But yeah, I agree.

Like it does need to, it starts with the CEO

Sara Hicks (42:55) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (42:55) and also like in, you know, how they show up, how vulnerable they are. And also like how much space they leave to everyone else who's there in terms of contributions. Like if you're there

Sara Hicks (43:02) Great. Yeah. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (43:07) and you have a, a predetermined notion of what you want to happen or what the outcome is,

then the maybe it's not an offsite maybe it's just a an elongated meeting where you

Sara Hicks (43:18) Heh.

Mathias Meyer (43:18) monologue it everybody and maybe that's fine as long as you're clear about that but then you yeah

Sara Hicks (43:23) Right? Yeah, sometimes that's needed. Sometimes as

long as you set the expectations for it. Yeah. So why don't we shift to our last little bit talk about what happens after the offsite how to take everything from the offsite and continue that so that it doesn't just die

when the offsite ends that you that momentum or those learnings or those decisions. so, Mathias, I think you're exceptionally good at this. And certainly, I

Mathias Meyer (43:54) thank you.

Sara Hicks (43:55) think I learned a lot. it really, capturing documenting the decisions, Ideally, you're doing this during the offsite.

you assigned different folks as note takers and kind of, documenting the things, but really being clear around what was decided, what was not decided,

Mathias Meyer (44:13) Hmm.

Sara Hicks (44:14) what changed, if anything, in the priorities. And making sure ownership is clear.

But what are some of the techniques or things or frameworks that you've thought of or used that help

take an offsite and then to make it so that it's not lost once you go back to work on Monday.

Mathias Meyer (44:30) Hmm. Yeah, because I mean, that's what usually happens. And I think that's what many people fear going in, probably because that's what used to happen in the past. Everybody

Sara Hicks (44:41) What happened there?

Mathias Meyer (44:42) gets back to business really quickly. mean, it's not, you know, their fault necessarily. also comes from how their leadership shows up and how important...

any follow up is to them because as I think I've already said, usually companies plan way more for an offsite than they can actually meaningfully fit into the time. And I've made this mistake still make it slowly reducing and reducing is like, how about we just do two topics like for this and not five.

Like for me,

There's a feeling of momentum that when people are in room together and they're steering at a flip chart and there's some great ideas on there. There's a sense of momentum and maybe opportunity possibility and that exists and you really, really, really want to use that and give people an impression that whatever they built

wasn't just built for fun or for bonding, but that could have some lasting impact. Like at a hackathon, maybe two or three teams came out with a prototype for something, for a new idea. But if you don't use that proto, if you don't use any of this, maybe even as an idea of what you could build for the product itself or for, you know, to help you internally, that's just wasted opportunity. Like everybody talks about

Sara Hicks (46:08) Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (46:08) innovation.

But then opportunities like this are usually... just fall by the wayside really easily. Anyway, I'll talk

Sara Hicks (46:16) Yep. Yep.

Mathias Meyer (46:18) about my German efficiency here in terms of follow-ups. I think even at the offsite, it needs to be clear what happens afterwards.

Sara Hicks (46:28) Yes.

Mathias Meyer (46:29) I think that's a key thing. You talked about documenting what's been decided, what's not decided.

Sara Hicks (46:34) Who owns what, but yeah.

Mathias Meyer (46:36) Who

owns what? I think those things are important. But then even figuring out, having teams think about why they're still there, about what's a reasonable timeframe or what do you still need to happen finish this up or to get this to a point where it is presentable and we can actually implement this in some way, whether this is a process or...

a new strategy, whatever it is, right? Talking about those things and then making sure individual groups have permission also to stay together and that follow-up is expected. To me, that's like step one. And then also giving people a path to how can we actually integrate this? Again, if you keep doing this and people will do the work and then four weeks later this presented and then nothing happens.

Sara Hicks (47:29) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (47:29) that

is very demoralizing and people start being more more cynical about future offsites and probably also about company leadership in general.

Sara Hicks (47:39) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (47:39) So there's the other side, is that willingness to actually do something with the results? Because to be fair, if you don't, you just spend a lot of money on getting a group of people potentially flown in from across the globe. They build something cool.

that could help the business in whatever way. And it's just like, yeah, we just, we don't have time. Like we don't have time or resources. Then, you

Sara Hicks (48:05) Yep.

Mathias Meyer (48:05) know, might as well be honestly going into the offsite about what the expectations can be, which I think is the truest thing you can do either way. Like set expectations upfront about what happens afterwards, right? Or what

Sara Hicks (48:18) Yep. Yep.

Mathias Meyer (48:19) you want to happen. What do you, even when you do a hackathon,

what you want the team to try out and what you are hoping to get out of it and what could happen if you find say a solution that is good, useful or that points into a direction.

Sara Hicks (48:36) Yep. I think you said

Mathias Meyer (48:37) And so they were.

Sara Hicks (48:38) the key thing, is at the offsite, before it ends, having that conversation kind of shared understanding of, the steps? What are the things that are going to happen once we go back? What are some of the

Mathias Meyer (48:56) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (48:57) just action items and owners, but what are some of the

the things we're going to continue, who's accountable, what are dates or timeframes? Here's how we're going to check in with each other and just as explicitly as possible, outline the offsite. Yeah.

Mathias Meyer (49:12) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (49:13) Well, I think done it. I think we've had a good conversation on offsites. can wrap up. It's a great, it's our own mini-off-site.

Mathias Meyer (49:18) This was a great offsite.

Sara Hicks (49:22) I think it's just critical. We felt like it deserved its own podcast topic. We talk a lot about offsites and workshops for teams and companies.

We've all participated in offsites that maybe weren't as effective as they could have been, and that they really are a vehicle to help reset, increase understanding, all those buzzwords, build trust, identify all the trade-offs. Yeah, they can really, when done well and on a cycle, on a frequent.

cycle, whether it's every quarter, every six months, or every year, help to build your team and your culture.

Mathias Meyer (49:58) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (49:59) So with that, why don't we shift to our little, any fun things you want to share about Mathias Any fun or interesting or just different books, food, activities you got going lately?

Mathias Meyer (50:20) I will get to that. I will just say one closing thought about offsites. think one thing that is really important that we haven't discussed is the importance and presence of snacks.

Sara Hicks (50:32) right.

Mathias Meyer (50:33) And also great coffee. which is... And

Sara Hicks (50:38) And hot sauce, wait, hot sauce.

Mathias Meyer (50:40) hot sauce is also very important, that is true. But yes, snacks are very important. Not like the, you know, always just sweet treats.

But it is a draining experience, so snacks are important.

Sara Hicks (50:54) Such a good addition. I'm so glad.

Good snacks, great coffee, maybe even some special swag doesn't hurt if

Mathias Meyer (51:07) That is true.

Sara Hicks (51:08) you can pull it off. Mathias

Mathias Meyer (51:11) That is true.

Sara Hicks (51:12) did bottle some homemade Mathias hot sauce for the whole team. He actually cooked it here at my house in Los Angeles before we headed out to the

to the Palm Springs offsite, bottled it with special labels. So, you know, don't have to go

Mathias Meyer (51:27) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (51:27) that far, but I'm just saying, you know, you might want to go do something.

Mathias Meyer (51:30) Yeah, no, think

that's something fun. used to, did that on a previous occasion as well. And I called it our secret sauce.

Sara Hicks (51:39) Yeah

Mathias Meyer (51:42) Anyways, things that are fun. This is maybe slightly nerdy. I have enjoyed working with Obsidian lately. And this

Sara Hicks (51:52) nice.

Mathias Meyer (51:52) like this.

very, very, very structured and networked approach to taking notes and keeping notes. I'm still getting into it. But for the new year, I've been wanting to try different things or try to do things differently than I've done before. so obviously also as a note taking nerd, sometimes you have to mix up your tools to keep it interesting, obviously.

And the other thing, I've been reading a book by Steven Pinker called When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows, where he writes about common sense and what that actually means and what's required for it. there are some odd parts where it is about, one Friends episode where

I quote Friends episodes a lot where it is The One Where Everybody Finds Out and it is where Phoebe very specifically says to Joey and Rachel, they don't know that we know they know we know.

And of course that scene is quoted in the book, which I enjoyed very thoroughly. It is mind-bending thinking where you think about what somebody else might think. And

Sara Hicks (53:08) Hmm.

Mathias Meyer (53:10) then in turn, if they know that you're thinking about them thinking something. And there's

Sara Hicks (53:14) Woo.

Mathias Meyer (53:15) like a big presence in there is the Nash equilibrium, which is one of my favorite tools, even in management dynamics in a group. And I'm enjoying that book.

quite thoroughly.

Sara Hicks (53:28) Well, it sounds like a good one. Yes, we do even talk about the Nash equilibrium in our book. Yes.

Mathias Meyer (53:33) is true. That is true.

Sara Hicks (53:35) Those are good answers. I'm a big Obsidian fan, that's a good one. I'm I guess something I've been enjoying. I started at beginning of the year. I won't say it was a resolution, but it was kind of an intention.

commitment. But I've been setting a timer for 45 minutes and shutting down everything and just writing for 45 minutes. And I'm not doing it every day, but I'm doing it. kind of like three to five days a week. And it's just been...

Mathias Meyer (54:05) That's nice. Yeah.

Sara Hicks (54:07) And really lovely and all over like I have no expectations that anyone's going to read it or I'm not really even sure where it's going or what's you know, I'm just sort of free flow. And I'm not editing. I'm not going back in reading and reviewing and it's It's a technique that.

Obviously a lot of writers and folks talk about Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird, Julia Cameron, The

Mathias Meyer (54:26) Mm-hmm.

Sara Hicks (54:26) Artist's Way. These are nothing new here, but I've been enjoying that. Let's see, the second thing I'll talk about is I have a cousin coming into town and some family stuff coming up, which I'm really looking forward to. haven't connected with my

my cousin or my aunt in a little bit.

All right, let's

Mathias Meyer (54:48) Great.

Sara Hicks (54:49) call it an episode.

Mathias Meyer (54:51) Calling it.

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