To Move Forward, Take a Step Back
By Clark Roundy, Luxul Wireless VP of Marketing
Thomas Edison once said, “Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.” I can’t think of a more useful piece of advice for a business owner or manager. All too often, we get so buried in the details and daily grind of running a business that we don’t take that critical step back to get a good view of the big picture and look ahead.
At Luxul Wireless, we recently held an offsite executive planning and strategy meeting. It’s not always easy or convenient to get the entire management team together for a day. It’s even more of a challenge to keep everyone focused, minimize the distractions, and promote creative thought processes. However, in my experience, these events can be invaluable tools that help encourage better communication and teamwork, build morale, and generate creativity—all of which leads to a better company. Our Luxul event didn’t disappoint and generated a number of new and exciting ideas that we’re now evaluating.
When considering such an event, here are a few tips that can help make yours a success:
1) Consider the location. Get away from the office if at all possible. For the Luxul meeting, an investor and board member generously offered the use of his “cabin” near Park City. It was perfect. The relaxing setting and majestic views were exactly what we needed to encourage a productive and creative discussion.
2) Minimize distractions. This is the main reason for going offsite—the office is way too distracting. During the meetings, insist that all phones and laptops be turned off or otherwise put away.
3) Encourage participation. Our president, Jeff Curtis, did a great job of making sure all the participants were actively engaged. He opened with a short overview of Luxul’s current status and progress as well as an overview of what he hoped to accomplish throughout the day. Each participant then had a few minutes to present the status of departmental initiatives. This naturally led into an open discussion of Luxul strengths and weaknesses, current challenges and adjacent market or product opportunities.
4) Allow for creativity…to a point. Open forums can get off track really easily, so you need to moderate. Jeff did an excellent job of moderating the discussion and encouraging creative participation from each member of the team without letting us get too far out in the weeds.
5) Don’t try to solve every problem right then and there. Understand that this is a time for ideas and thoughts to be placed on the table and that the real fruits of the meeting will be realized in the following days and weeks. As your team digests the information and discussions, they will identify creative solutions, opportunities, and directions that will lead to real planning and execution.
Summarizing Mr. Edison’s advice to business owners and managers: Don’t let day to day operations drive out planning. Take the time to step back and evaluate how to best grow your business. Good planning makes for good decisions—which ultimately brings good fortune.
About Clark Roundy, Luxul Wireless VP of Marketing
Clark Roundy is VP of Marketing at Luxul Wireless. Throughout his 20 year career, he has worked extensively with early stage and emerging companies to identify core competencies and implement key growth strategies. Mr. Roundy has held key executive positions at Linux Networx, Penguin Computing, Parvus Corporation, Alta Technology, and the Eyring Research Institute. His roles have included sales and marketing leadership, strategic planning, international business development, product management, and professional services program development. In his role at Luxul Wireless, Mr. Roundy is responsible for marketing strategy and oversees all outbound marketing programs as well as product and brand management.
The opinions and viewpoints in this post reflect those of the blog author and not necessarily those of Utah Business.
Tags: Business Planning, business strategy, Corporate Development, Executive Retreats, Management, Product Planning, Strategic Planning, Team Building