Can This Off-Site Be Saved?

For International Truck and Engine, keeping it real meant sharing stories from real customers. In preparation for the training sessions, event planners at Jack Morton went into the field to videotape interviews with customers on what they liked about the new truck as well as how interacting online with the company would make their lives easier. When the salespeople showed up for training, they watched the videos of customers explaining their needs. "The salespeople weren't interested in marketing buzzwords or corporate vision. They wanted stuff that they could really use," says Kathleen Finley, a senior account manager at Jack Morton. "It was easy to get people excited about the training, because they could see that it was directly relevant to their jobs."

Take-away #6: You don't always have to beat the clock. Most off-sites exude a quasi-military obsession with sticking to the schedule. But a slavish adherence to the clock doesn't allow people to react to what's unfolding in the room or to embrace unexpected brilliance. And that can be a huge mistake, says Hammond of Play. "You have to let the ideas lead the schedule, not the other way around," he says. "If you let time dictate the process, people get worried about whether they are moving fast enough, rather than coming up with new ideas."

With Timberland, Hammond's role, along with the other coaches from Play, was to take the group through specific exercises and ask provocative questions to spur ideas. For instance, the group whose challenge was to redesign the yellow boot considered such questions as, What makes an icon? When you update an icon, like the Volkswagen Beetle, how do you retain the iconic, timeless quality and yet make it more relevant? Structured exercises such as examining other icons pointed the conversation in the right direction. But the coaches had to be careful not to manage the conversation too aggressively.

At one point, during an exercise in the group that focused on new Mountain Athletics footwear, Hammond noticed that a materials scientist in the corner was blowing on a small piece of cardboard in his hand, watching how the card curved upwards in response to the moisture in his breath. Sensing that something important was going on inside the guy's head, Hammond interrupted the exercise and asked him to share his thoughts. The scientist explained that his research involved studying how different materials responded to heat and water. "What if we were able to make a shoe with material that had pores that would expand to let out heat when your foot got hot, but wouldn't let in water from the outside at the same time?" he hypothesized. The scientist's idea, and the unscheduled discussion that followed, spurred the development of a new material that is unique to the Mountain Athletics line: an outer-shell cloth that breathes, but that is also waterproof.

At the U.S. Mint's retreat, Clement stopped the proceedings midday to respond to participants' enthusiasm about one particular topic. The teams that had brainstormed new initiatives for employee training and production efficiencies needed more time than the schedule allotted to present their ideas to the senior executives. Clement cut an afternoon session, worked with the hotel to reconfigure rooms, and found an additional 30 minutes for the presentation. "There was nothing more important at that moment than letting those people have the stage," Clement says. "While we hadn't predicted that they would be so excited, we had to respond to it once it happened. As a result, they left the off-site feeling like, Wow, I guess the top brass really does respect us. They do want to hear what we have to say."

Take-away #7: What gets measured gets attention. Even the most exciting and energetic off-site will be remembered as a failure if it doesn't produce tangible business results. The best off-sites build quantifiable goals into the event and the follow-up to make sure that everyone's time was well spent.

After the U.S. Mint retreat, for example, the depiction of the coin-minting process was turned into posters that now hang in every Mint location. Just sharing that information allowed each Mint employee to see how his or her job related to the big picture -- and how changes that they might make in their jobs could ripple through the rest of the process. The changes that employees themselves suggested over the next year helped the Mint increase production from 20 billion coins in 1999 to 28 billion in 2000 -- without increasing the resources required to produce them.

For Timberland, the off-site led to several breakthrough ideas for the company's footwear division that will guide product development for several years to come. The team that worked on updating the yellow boot came up with a boot that is 20% lighter than its predecessor, more modern in appearance, and yet true to its history: still waterproof, still rugged.