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Setser Group hosted its annual summer retreat for the team and the advisory board this past week. Our summer retreat is a big event here at Setser Group, and we've evolved the format over time. A few years back, a client asked us for an Amazon six-pager as a part of our final deliverables. Ever since we’ve made it a part of our work at Setser Group as a send-ahead to frame our operating plan and approach for our annual and quarterly retreats. You can learn more about the six-pager in the tools section below.
The Retreat Process
We always send out a modified Amazon six-pager in advance of our retreat. This year our retreat was a one-day virtual meeting with a packed agenda, but we took the time upfront to meet new team members, reconnect with each other, and celebrate our personal lives. Our talent cloud covers six time zones, so for us, noon Eastern was the right start time.
We’ve hit a number of milestones and had some great successes in our three-year journey. Our retreats help us asses the year ahead and take on the challenges in front of us. We run a well-oiled team retreat with a number of refined processes. We thought it would be helpful to share those processes in this week's newsletter. As wayfinders, we have guided similar retreats for other organizations, and we thought you might be interested in how we work those processes.
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With virtual retreats, we create the right environment. We sent our team members t-shirts and laptop stickers this year ahead of the virtual retreat as well as ensured Door Dashed had their lunches covered. Team members wore the shirts on the virtual call, and we relied on Zoom tools and Jamboards to assemble our team.
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And finally, we always want to leave our retreats and enter into a PDSA (Plan, Do, Study, Act) cycle over the next 90 days, and that’s exactly what we were able to accomplish. To do this, we went into breakout rooms for a round-robin of discussion and feedback. | |
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We had three key challenges that we wanted our team of experts to discuss and provide us with feedback on:
- A Look at Rebranding
- Strategic Partnering
- Services Review
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We conducted a modified PDSA session to launch our 90-day cycle. For a successful PDSA single session, you need a diverse team that looks at the future broadly and honestly. We challenged the team to think about their own unique approaches to a PDSA. What are the things they look for, questions they ask, and actions they take? We were not concerned about a perfect PDSA. We wanted the team’s invaluable insights and an open discussion.
And we got it.
The feedback was extraordinary.
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Our retreats are about ideas. We only needed a few tools to bring ideas forward and advance the cause. | |
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We used the Amazon 6-Pager prototype to develop our Operating Plan. It’s succinct and filled with information and visual guides. Can’t fit everything into six pages? No problem. They often come with attachments and appendices. But the guide itself is about six pages of text content. We sent the guide out in advance, but we didn’t have the expectation that everyone would read everything. We highlighted the essential components before the breakout sessions. Here’s our Operating Plan’s table of contents:
- Mission, Vision, and Values
- Strategic Tenets
- The Setser Group Theory of Change
- Key Highlights and Learning from 2020-2022
- Envisioned Future State at the end of FY 2023-2025
- Key Challenges and Opportunities
- 90-Day PDSA
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Even if you’re in the building, provide a hybrid option for those far-flung remote workers.
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We needed an app to capture the talent cloud’s ideas in real-time. Google’s Jamboard integrated nicely into our breakout rooms.
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The Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) method is a way to test a change that is implemented. Going through the prescribed four steps guides the thinking process into breaking down the task into steps and then evaluating the outcome, improving on it, and testing again.
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How do you provide lunch in a virtual meeting? We had it covered. We sent Door Dash, Uber Eats, and eGift cards both before and during the meeting.
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We’re celebrating the team this week at Setser Group! Through their lively participation, the board and team members greatly advanced our cause during our annual retreat. A big thank you to everyone involved as we plan for 2023.
In our third year at Setser Group, we have served more than 33 clients across the country. Our strategic tenets and theory of action continue to evolve and we look forward to sharing our services with organizations in 2022-2023 as we continue to evolve, our work based on critical feedback from our team, board, and partners. The continuous improvement journey never ends, but the learning is why we continue to believe that our finest hours await.
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Setser Group Theory of Change | | | |
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Setser Group Strategic Tenets
- We provide wayfinding services to leaders, teams, and organizations.
- We are confident that the grand challenges of tomorrow will be solved by talent networks and collective flexpertise that is often found in evidence-based research hubs, teams, hive minds, and the wisdom of crowds.
- We provide advisory services, design labs, and lead implementation efforts to transform the future of learning and work for our clients.
- We model behaviors for a people and family-first firm that cares about our team and clients in the pursuit of healthy work-life balance in a modern world.
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Annual and quarterly retreats allow you to connect with your team in person and virtually. There is no substitute for celebrating each other, the work you do together, and walking in your values on a quarterly basis to see how you are doing. We have a real problem in this country with autopsies on organizations. Well, it is the end of the year, did we live or die as a group? Instead, we favor a diagnostic approach to understand how we can improve together. We ground that work in data, observation, insights, and market trends to better understand the outcomes we seek for all. | |
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Advisory Services
Include:
Public Speaking
Strategic Retreats
Innovation Audits
Market Research Scans and Reports
Digital Maturity and Readiness Assessments
Strategy Sprints
Genius Bars
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Design Services
Include:
Strategic Positioning and Planning
Learning or Business Model Design Sessions
Design Thinking, DEI, and Prototype Coaching
Implementation Roadmaps
Design-a-pa-looza Sessions
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Implementation Services Include:
C-suite As-a-Service
Innovator-in-Residence Services
Leadership, Training, and Coaching
Project Management
Full-service Operational Planning Design and Execution
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Want to share Setser Group on social media?
Is your school, organization, or team planning a strategic retreat? Would you like to learn more about how to leverage the Amazon six-pager? See how Setser Group can help. Learn more here: https://www.setsergroup.com/advisory
#SetserGroup #FutureOfWork #FutureOfLearning #TalentCloud #TeamRetreat #SummerRetreat #OperationalPlanning
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