My article in the April issue of Forum magazine, featuring AADE's board development initiative, briefly described a daylong retreat in November 2007 that I facilitated. Involving the full AADE board, the CEO, executive team, and a number of volunteer leaders, this event formally kicked off what we called the High-Impact Governing Initiative.
The board committee I worked with in designing the November retreat defied conventional wisdom by specifying that during our day together participants wouldn't attempt to make decisions of any kind - or even try to reach formal conensus - regarding the strategic issues we'd be identifying or the potential change initiatives we'd be brainstorming. We agreed to a person that no faux voting techniques would be employed, and we actually put in the memorandum describing the retreat that went out in advance to invited participants that "your sticky dots should be parked at the door." We knew there'd be some anxiety about leaving all kinds of loose ends floating around, but as it turns out, the rationale for our design decision was sound:
- We didn't want any kind of seat of the pants decisions made in a very short time together that would have to be undone later.
- We wanted to encourage "out of the box" brainstorming without any tension around having to decide anything.
- And we wanted to be able to involve key stakeholders not on the board without worrying about the legitimacy of decisions involving non-board members.
Of course, we took the trouble to map out the follow-through process while designing the retreat, specifying how analysis and decision-making would be handled after the November event.
I'd be interested in hearing from others about this aspect of retreat design.
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