Kettle & Fire started as a fully remote company and now roughly half the team is based in Austin, TX. We have 1 annual department retreat and 1 annual company-wide retreat, so 2 retreats total per year. In an ideal world, we’d be able to all meet in person once per quarter.

I truly believe getting face-to-face time is incredibly valuable. It’s much easier to work through strategic planning and thornier issues/challenges in person, and meeting face-to-face helps build a more cohesive team and is good for culture. In my opinion, being fully remote all the time leads to more transactional relationships

This includes everyone within the marketing department, not just leadership. For reference, we have ~10 FT employees on the marketing team.

We intentionally designed the survey to ask for topics in both a department and smaller break-out setting. Topics to discuss as a department are typically more broad since they’d involve everyone. Some examples: 

Review the marketing structure and make sure we are all aligned about who is involved in each channel. 

BIG picture team focuses / pivots, not individual projects. What are the 2-4 top things that K&F as a whole company is looking to achieve? What 1-3 things is Marketing going to contribute to getting us there

I'd like to present a flow chart I'm creating for Creative Teams + Needs to show processes, who owns what (esp when requesting things), where to find stuff (links, scopes, marketing plans, etc.), and more.

A common piece of feedback from our first few retreats is that folks loved all the team building activities but didn’t feel that there was enough time to get into the meaty discussion topics.

I’ll typically send a post-retreat survey after to gauge folks’ experience and make improvements for the next one. Definitely an iterative process.

I haven’t encountered a situation where the vibe is too heavy or unproductive, though I think that’s likely due to the fact that we’ve already built trust with one another as a team. I can definitely see the likelihood of situations getting too heavy if a team hasn’t done the work to build trust and be comfortable with vulnerability beforehand.

There have been situations where I haven’t totally approved of the roadmap. In these cases, we’ll table it for back to the office post-retreat.

Jack Meredith

Meeting in person is critical for strategic planning and team-building, especially in a remote work environment. Here’s how I put together an effective department retreat that pays dividends long after it’s over.

This doc is a guide for planning department retreats. After planning many marketing retreats, I’ve found a good structure that maximizes our time spent together. Below you’ll find details on my planning approach. As always, hit me up with any questions.

I view retreats as a great opportunity to empower 

 to work through some of our hardest department challenges, come up with solutions, and own their execution. To accomplish this, it is critical to build a plan going into the retreat so that the team has clear expectations on what we’ll be discussing. Here’s how I do it.

I send a simple survey to team members two weeks ahead of the retreat dates. In the survey, I give folks an opportunity to request certain topics they’d like to discuss along with getting a pulse check on how everyone’s feeling - what’s working well, challenges. etc. The survey is super helpful in creating the retreat agenda since it gives me clarity on what’s on everyone’s mind.

Ideally the survey is filled out one week ahead of the retreat dates. Here’s a link to the last survey we sent out. You can also find the survey questions I ask below.

What topics do you think we should discuss as a department?

What topics would you like to discuss as a smaller group? (not the entire department)

What are some things you think we should STOP doing as a marketing team?

What are some things you think we should START doing as a marketing team?

What are some things we should CONTINUE doing as a marketing team?

What gives you the most energy and excitement at work?

What is blocking you right now from achieving your goals or maximizing your potential?

What has been your biggest struggle or challenge at work in recent months?

If you had unlimited resources at K&F, what is the #1 thing you'd want to make your job easier?

What would make this retreat a 10/10 experience for you?

I’ve learned over time that we never get to every discussion topic at a retreat. This is why I try to choose ONE focus area that is mandatory for discussion. This is typically a major challenge that’s big and important. More often than not, I can usually determine what that focus area is based on the survey responses. By picking ONE focus area, the team will go into the retreat with the expectation that while we might not get to all the topics, we’ll at the very least knock out the big one.

One week before the retreat, I’ll send a pre-read packet to the team to review. The packet contains the retreat schedule along with a detailed agenda on what will be discussed. We’ll also include general info regarding flights, lodging, grocery list etc.

Here’s a few tips for facilitating a productive retreat:

Make discussions efficient and effective:

 Be clear on what the purpose of each discussion is, keep conversation on track, and capture notes + action items. Act as a hard-ass moderator that doesn’t let discussions get too off-track.

 It’s critical for the entire team to be aligned on our retreat goals and what we’ll be discussing. Make sure that this is clearly understood by everyone.

Create environment for candid conversations:

 Ensure every team member feels comfortable being heard and sharing their unfiltered thoughts.

Don’t overlook this! I want folks to be vulnerable and not hold back. To help build trust from the start, I’ve found the Trust/Deep exercise to be great.

 I’ll schedule the meaty discussion topics in the mornings when everyone is fresh. Afternoons are left open for smaller group chats or work catchup.

Don’t let team building overshadow the business stuff:

 While it is important to build culture and have fun, the bulk of the day time should be for productive work. Plenty of time for team building after work hours and over dinner.

Don’t pack it with presentations, they suck

: No one wants to fly out meet w/ co-workers at just to look at another Powerpoint. People always check out after 10-15 minutes (even though presentations go for an hour or more). Use this time for active discussions.

Below is a loose structure I’ve used when setting the agendas for each day.

Everyone is flying in so I keep the agenda light with no heavy work stuff. Usually just setup a dinner reservation and hang out.

The objective for day 2 is to get everyone aligned on “The What” - our goals for the upcoming year or quarter. We’ll start the day by going around the room by asking each team team member what would make this retreat a 10/10 for them. This let me know what was on people’s minds and to adjust accordingly. Next, we’ll do an hour long retrospective to capture learnings from the past year and let people voice their concerns. The answers from the survey will help guide this.

Finally, we’ll spend the next 2-3 hours aligning on our goals (aka ‘The What’). I’ll kick off the discussion by sharing my views on our desired future state and targets for the year. After sharing my views, I gave each team member a sticky note. I then asked them, “on a scale from 1-10, how aligned are you on the DFS and our goals?” After collecting all the sticky notes, I asked the person with the lowest score, “what would it TAKE for you to get to a 10/10?” This invited the person to provide a productive solution or change to the plan.

Objective: Get peeps pumped, set the ground rules for the week’s discussions 

Ask each team member what would make this retreat a 10/10 for them

Agreements - be engaged, be candid, have fun etc.

Objective: Break the ice, create environment for candid discussions 

Trust, Deep Exercise “if you really knew me”

Objective: Capture learnings from past year + let people voice concerns

Review survey responses to Start, Stop, Continue

What went well in 2022? What did we learn in 2022?

What will sink us in 2023? What’s holding us back?

Unpack issues that are too emotional/strategic to solve in regular meetings  

Objective: Get team alignment on our goals for 2023 and H1 (aka “The What”)

Part 1/2: Jack shares leadership views for desired future state (DFS) and H1 Goals

Our desired future state for ‘23 - vision for where we want to be in 1 year

On a scale from 0-10, how aligned are you to the DFS (and then separately the Q1 priorities).

Everyone throws up their number at the same time

Pick person with lowest score and ask “what would it TAKE for you to get to 10/10”

invites someone to provide a productive solution/share a specific edit/change to the plan.

Go around room and ask each person the same question

If its something small, we quickly added it to the plan. Bigger stuff, we tabled as discussion items.

Also ask why they were their number and not a zero. This shows where each person most agrees.

For bigger items, prioritize via a quick vote decision and discuss until there is some alignment across each.

Do the survey again to see where everyone stands now (ideally, everyone should be at an 8+)

Now that we’ve aligned on WHAT our goals are for 2023, we turned our attention towards aligning on HOW we’d go about achieving them. After doing some fun icebreakers that Wheela led, we jumped right into a brainstorm session.

Objective: Break the ice, Create environment for candid discussions 

Provide overview of focus for today’s work block (”the how”)

Objective: Brainstorm and capture all ideas for reaching our goals. Then, prioritize ideas and create a ranked list of the most promising ideas for tackling our goals.

The focus of the brainstorm sessions will likely come from what we uncover on Day 1. Prior to the sessions, we’ll just want to make sure to plan out the brainstorm prompts, where we’re capturing info, and designate people’s roles. 

End sessions with readout of the proposed ideas from each of the brainstorm sessions. Should be in the format of a ranked list of most promising ideas.

At this point, we should have a list of the most promising ideas or solutions to reach our goals. We’ll now break out into groups to flesh out the roadmap for executing on each idea.

Provide overview of focus for today’s work block (”the how” part 2)

Objective: Flesh out the project roadmap for each idea and align on steps, timelines, and task owners.

Designate areas in the Airbnb that will tackle each proposed idea and ask people to go to those areas based on where they can add the most value

Retreat Planning Guide at Kettle and Fire

Preparing for Retreat

Survey

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