Want to creatively examine problems or generate new ideas – without spending days away from the job? Consider a “mini-retreat.” This brief, but action-packed, activity can get you and your people focused on whatever need or opportunity happens to be facing you.
Schedule your mini-retreat in a corner of a staff meeting – say, 30 minutes of tight discussion. Or use a series of focus questions to marshal wide-ranging thoughts on a topic of concern. Or lead ten minutes of intense brainstorming. Or split your people into two-person teams and give them a limited period of time to re-engineer a process. Or turn your problem into a game, and build your mini-retreat around some simple competition. Or give your people a short period of silence – and instructions to visualize solutions to a problem.
Whether you use any of these mini-retreat formats, or develop one of your own, the focused retreat can be a refreshing change of pace – and an ideal way to generate ideas and enthusiasm.