ExecAway Team day plan Team Day · USD 39
One day, 22 people, and a decision that has to be made in it
The agenda, the room requirements and the two hours that will decide whether this day was worth the cost.
You said the objective is alignment on next year's roadmap. That is not an objective, it is a hope. This plan turns it into one decision that has to leave the room decided, builds the day around the two hours where that happens, and puts everything else in service of it.
A single day with 22 people supports one real decision and a lot of connection. Your draft agenda has four discussion topics and no decision point, which is the most reliable way to spend USD 6,000 and end the day with a document nobody opens.
Objective
What this day has to produce
Alignment on the roadmap, restated as something you can tell on the day whether you achieved: by 16:00 the team knows which two of the five proposed initiatives are being resourced in Q1, and who owns each.
| Your draft agenda item | What it is | Keep? |
|---|---|---|
| Company update, 90 min | A presentation. Could be a document | Cut to 25 min |
| Roadmap discussion, 60 min | The actual reason for the day, underweighted | Expand to 120 min |
| Team breakouts, 90 min | Valuable, but not before the decision | Move after |
| Guest speaker, 45 min | A nice thing that costs an hour of the one day a year you are together | Cut |
| Social, evening | The highest value hour for a remote team | Keep, protect |
| Retrospective, 45 min | Better done async two weeks before | Move async |
Cutting the speaker and shortening the update buys 110 minutes. That is what pays for a roadmap session long enough to actually decide something, which is the only irreversible thing this day can do.
The day
Agenda
- 09:30
Arrival, coffee, nothing scheduled
Fifteen travelling in. Do not open at 09:00 with a presentation to a room that is still arriving.
- 10:00
Company update, 25 minutes, no slides after slide 6
Numbers, what changed, what is hard. The long version goes out as a written document three days before so the room has already read it.
- 10:30
The five initiatives, 10 minutes each
Owner presents, two minutes of questions, no debate. This is information, not the decision. Hard stop at 11:30.
- 11:30
Break, 20 minutes, deliberately long
This is where the real conversations about the five happen. Do not shorten it.
- 11:50
The decision session, 120 minutes
Section 03. This is the day.
- 14:00
Lunch, 60 minutes, seated and mixed
Assigned tables, mixing teams that never speak. A buffet where people stand with their own team wastes the hour.
- 15:00
Breakouts on the two chosen initiatives
Now that there are two rather than five, the breakouts are about how rather than whether. Ninety minutes, two groups.
- 16:30
Close, 20 minutes
Read back the decision and the owners out loud, to the room. If it cannot be said in three sentences it was not decided.
- 17:30
Social, and no agenda
For a mostly remote team this is not the reward for the day. It is half the reason for it.
The two hours
How the decision session runs
Twenty two people cannot decide anything as one conversation. This structure is the only part of the plan that is non-obvious, and it is the part that determines whether you go home with a decision.
- 0 to 15 min
Silent scoring
Everyone scores all five initiatives on impact and on effort, alone, on paper. No discussion. This surfaces disagreement before the loudest person frames it.
- 15 to 30 min
Show the spread
Put the scores up. The interesting initiatives are the ones with the widest spread, not the highest average, because those are where the team does not agree and does not know it.
- 30 to 80 min
Discuss the three most contested only
Not all five. The two everyone agrees on need no debate, and saying so out loud saves forty minutes.
- 80 to 105 min
You decide, in the room
Not a vote. Someone decides and says why. A team can accept a decision it disagrees with; it cannot accept a decision that never happened.
- 105 to 120 min
Name the owners
Two initiatives, two named people, out loud, with the first milestone date. Written on the wall before anyone leaves the room.
Logistics
Venue requirements and budget
| Requirement | Why | Non-negotiable? |
|---|---|---|
| One room for 22, cabaret not theatre | Theatre seating makes it a presentation | Yes |
| Two breakout spaces from 15:00 | Section 02 | Yes |
| Wall space for paper | The scoring and the owners go on a wall | Yes |
| Natural light | Nine hours in a basement undoes the agenda | Yes |
| Seated lunch, assigned tables | Standing buffets re-form existing teams | Strong preference |
| Within 25 min of the station | Fifteen people travelling in | Yes |
| Evening space, same building | Moving 22 people at 17:30 loses six of them | Strong preference |
| Line | Estimate |
|---|---|
| Venue, day delegate rate, 22 | USD 1,870 |
| Travel, 15 people | USD 2,250 |
| Evening food and drinks | USD 1,100 |
| Materials and printing | USD 80 |
| Contingency | USD 600 |
| Total | USD 5,900 |
About USD 268 a head. Worth knowing as a single number, because it is the figure to hold against the question of whether a decision could have been made on a call.