The importance of holding meetings in canoes. 

Over the years, I’ve held countless workshops and offsites with clients and my own staffs. Most of meetings have taken place in meeting rooms with good wifi and audiovisual equipment. The best meetings have been entirely unconnected, with no computers, and sometimes no chairs. They’ve been in meadows, on screened porches, and, best of all, canoes.

All of these places accommodated everyone’s abilities, though not always everyone’s tastes. Not all of them made people comfortable, exactly. Which was the point. And in this increasingly virtual world, a beautiful, slightly uncomfortable venue can spark new ways of thinking, deeper connections among coworkers and colleagues, and a renewed commitment to the cause.

My favorite retreats (isn’t that word better than “offsites”?) took place on a lake not far from the Dartmouth campus. Half of the group had never been in a canoe, and a couple had to be helped in. The day was warm, and we stayed in shallow water. No one tipped or fell out. We had an agenda, and a couple of us carried notebooks and pens. I brought a rope to tie the canoes together. When we broke up into individual working groups, we untied the rope. The ideas that came out of those daylong meetings were fresh and open. Some of them were downright crazy. Others fueled some of the best work I’ve ever been involved with.

More conventionally, I’ve held half-day meetings in the fall around a fire pit. A good fire relaxes people wonderfully; the over-talker quiets down, and the more introverted speak up. The spirit of No Bad Ideas takes over.

The point here is that retreats should look as different as possible from the office or Zoom. You don’t have to go very far. Consider a tailgate meeting in the parking lot, with snacks. Or a peripatetic meeting with strolls around a picnic tables (with a path that accommodates the differently abled).

Consider a few tips:

·       Bring snacks that aren’t the usual meeting food. Ask everyone to chip in with items.

·       Go someplace where the distractions are natural—where you won’t get human interference.

·       Provide toys for breaks.

·       Put phones on silence.

·       Ask one of you to take notes.

·       Ask another to summarize the ideas and decisions.

·       Follow up with a summary memo and a meeting—in a meeting room or by Zoom—to firm up the conclusions.

And get ready to hear requests for another retreat.