Strategy day agendas.

How to run a strategy day

A strategy day has three jobs. Find out where you stand. Choose what matters. Commit to a plan. Most days spend too long on the first, rush the second and skip the third. Each format below is built around those three steps, in that order.

1. See where you standStart with evidence about the present. How the team rates itself, how clients feel, where the week goes. It stops the day opening with opinions about the future.
2. Choose what mattersRank the options against each other. An Eisenhower matrix vote shortlists. A 100-point budget ranks the shortlist.
3. Commit to the planPick 90-day priorities with owners. Run a pre-mortem to find weak spots. Close with a confidence vote, so you know before you leave whether the room believes it.

The full strategy day

For a leadership team setting the year's direction. It opens with a team health check, so the plan reflects how the team is actually working. The Eisenhower matrix and 100-point budget narrow the initiatives. Rocks turns the winners into 90-day priorities with owners. The pre-mortem asks: it's a year from now and the plan failed, what went wrong? The confidence vote closes the day.

The client experience workshop

For a client-facing firm reviewing service. The team maps the client journey stage by stage: how clients feel now, how you want them to feel, how consistent you are, and who owns each stage. The experience check then rates how well you deliver against how much each thing matters to clients. The matrix turns the gaps into priorities.

The team offsite

For a whole team, not only leaders. It's lighter on strategy and heavier on how the team works. Team health and time allocation show where effort goes now and where it should go. A 100-point budget decides what to change first.

Quarterly planning

Two hours for a team that already has a plan. Propose 90-day priorities in private, vote, name owners, run a short pre-mortem and check confidence. The format comes from the Rocks idea in Gino Wickman's Traction.

Tips for the day

• Send a short pre-read. The decision you need, the options, and the definitions you'll use.
• Hold the day away from the office. Or at least away from email.
• Use a facilitator who isn't the boss. If that's not possible, the boss speaks last.
• Vote before every discussion. It's the simplest guard against groupthink.
• Leave with owners and dates. Then book the 30-day and 90-day check-ins before people go home.

Need more detail on the ranking part? See how to run a prioritisation workshop.