Retreats offer getaway from the everyday.

For CEO Doug Robinson, the secret of success for any corporate retreat is to lock the boardroom door after the meeting sessions begin.

Robinson, the chief executive officer and president of Dryden-based Northern Lights Credit Union, says that his company has tried many different approaches and locations for corporate retreats before settling on one that he says works for his company. Officials at Northern Lights Credit Union have settled on holding their retreat at Quetico Centre, a secluded conference centre in the northwestern Ontario Town of Atitokan, as their getaway from the everyday.

According to Robinson, the choice was mainly one of finding a place with minimal distractions.

"We had originally used our boardroom at our head office in Dryden," Robinson says. "It really wasn't a setting that lent itself to this activity. This is an environment where you are accustomed to work, not brainstorm."

The company then chose to hold meetings in hotel conference rooms within the region. The problem, says Robinson, was the fact that the hotels were usually in areas where board and management members lived. Thus, too often these people would go home in the evening to their families and would miss many of the after-hour strategic sessions where a lot of the thinking and planning was done. He also found that once these employees went home, they would forget what had been discussed the day before, having stopped to focus on family matters.

"You tend to accomplish more at these after-hour discussions than at the organized brainstorming sessions," he adds.

What company executives found works, he states, is finding a retreat location that is isolated from the company's place of work. In the case of Northern Lights Credit Union, this was avoiding all seven branches of the credit union scattered across Northern Ontario. Finally settling on Atitokan, Robinson says they have found the seclusion necessary to achieve results.

"We've found that it doesn't work if you don't go into the right environment," he says.

Boasting convenient conference rooms accommodating 25 to 100 people, and complete with bedrooms with high-speed Internet and audio-visual equipment, the Quetico Centre, Robinson says, met the company's needs and was located in a picturesque, natural setting.

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Besides environment, Robinson says, the crucial aspect for the retreat is to clearly delineate between corporate strategy time and recreational time. For Robinson, this involves setting a specific time during the day, specifically between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. and then from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. for corporate meetings, and then quitting after that. The group is then free to do whatever they want until the next day.

"You have to give people's brains a break," Robinson says, with a laugh. "These weekends are like high school cram sessions. You set your times and stick to them." The strategy, he says, is to let the ideas simmer in people's minds. Most of the time, he says, he finds people continue on after-hours with a drink and talk about what had been discussed anyway.

For the sessions themselves, Robinson says his company stresses getting results done during the limited time they have. Employees must prepare ahead of time and know what they are going to discuss and achieve before setting foot on the conference area property.

Members also use a strategy where each staff member prepares a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges (SWOC) analysis of the company to present to the 25-member group.

The board of directors then collects that information and throws it back at the group for discussion. The board and management then decide on the main issues, usually five or six key issues, that need to be addressed and decided upon. In order to keep on those issues, the company hires a familiar outside party to keep the group on track.

"Our facilitator puts everything together. Someone has to be in control, otherwise you could spend all week on one issue and never get to the rest," Robinson cautions.

By focusing on a handful of specific, manageable issues, the group achieves certain targeted objectives, rather than scratching the surface on many topics in a superficial way.

The role of the facilitator is also to keep bad group dynamics from forming. Gary Phillips is a consultant with North-West Training and Development. He is also the facilitator for Northern Lights.

"Everybody is really clear on what to do in this," Phillips says. "Everyone comes in with the same values and goals. This way, they go in the same direction," he adds. According to Phillips, a facilitator must also be someone who is familiar with the group and its dynamics and recognize its processes-good and bad.

Examples of negative group dynamics that should be avoided, he says, are succumbing to group thinking and allowing unresolved issues to fester in a group. Phillips has been working with the company for years, and says he knows how the staff generally thinks.

Working in a group, he says, is crucial in building a consensus and allowing all staff members to come on board. Although not all members will sing from the same sheet on all issues, individual members will at least take ownership of any goals they set. When they succeed, they view it as a success for the group, because they participated in setting the goal. If they fail, they cannot simply blame bad management.

Although the group arrives at a consensus, Phillips is quick to point out that this is not an "equal collective" concept. Not all members are equal, as the decisions and momentum ultimately come from the board of directors.

"Ultimately, this is a board planning session. The board confirms the actual recommendations," he says.

So far, Robinson says he is highly pleased with the approach. The company's decision to expand its services was done at a retreat and he foresees many more important decisions to be made at the retreat level.

www.nlcu.on.ca/index.html

www.queticocentre.com/meeting.html

By JOSEPH QUESNEL 

Northern Ontario Business