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One of the best ways for you to become an insider with your clients is for you to help their top management focus on business strategy.

Trends in leadership and management come and go, but the need for an executive team to get away, visualize, strategize, prioritize, organize, and energize is universal.

You can be the catalyst for your best clients when you lead them in a strategic retreat.
Most of our clients have eliminated the term retreat for a more purposeful description like go forward or advance.

The real purpose of an executive getaway is to focus the energy of a business on its mission.

Every business executive team should hold such a meeting at least once a year. Here are some ideas to help you organize a client advance. For practice, you can run an advance for your own firm.

Visualize
Plan some time at the beginning of your meeting to review the vision and mission for you and your business.

Two of our clients spend an entire weekend working on the mission of the individuals on the team as well as the mission of the business.

Managers and employees can operate most productively within an organization that knows where it is going.

Too often, when a firm’s mission ill defined, the needs of key stakeholders are not being met.

When the needs of clients, employees, families, and owners are not all addressed, serious problems undermine the success of your firm.

Only when your mission is defined can you select the appropriate systems and strategies that will lead you to your vision.

Effective business planning is perhaps the single greatest challenge facing the small business owner today.

Whether you call it a “retreat” or a “strategic planning session.” Going away from the business at least once per year to plan for the future is critical to a company’s success.

With the fast-paced environment we operate in today, it is too easy to lose sight of the vision and the goal of balancing the business’ goals with the objectives of the shareholders.

Failure to plan is like starting the Boston Marathon with no idea where the finish line is.

Strategize
During one of our client’s advance, the executive team examined their strategy for developing a technology consulting practice.

The executive team members had a clear vision of the next three years: “to be the dominant financial advisory firm for small (less than $150 million in revenue) manufacturing businesses.”

The firm’s mission is also clear: “to utilize our most-trusted-business-advisor role to help our clients succeed in a challenging world.”

The technology strategy that had been used positioned the firm as a vendor of software.

The executive team decided this strategy did not align with the vision of being an “advisory” firm and that being a vendor of someone’s product threatened the perception of objectivity on which “the most trusted business advisor” role is founded.

A more powerful, technology strategy emerged during the advance that is in alignment with the firm’s vision and mission.