Instead of a Christmas party, the best way I have found to unite a team at the end of the year is a strategic meeting focused on the plans for the year ahead. A party is pleasant and forgotten by January. A good planning session changes what the next twelve months look like. We recently had one of these meetings with Roger and his company, A&E Leisure, and it was a reminder of how much a single conversation can set up.
Why the Setting Did Not Matter
It was not a fancy meeting room with a glass table and a projector. We had a great chat in a tent. I mention that on purpose, because people overestimate how much the setting matters and underestimate how much the structure of the conversation matters. The value was not in where we sat. It was in the fact that everyone in the room shared ideas and suggestions openly.
That openness is the whole point. A planning meeting where only the senior people talk is just a presentation. A planning meeting where everyone contributes is where the useful, unexpected ideas come from, because the people closest to the work often see the opportunities the leadership misses. The tent did not get in the way of that. A nicer room would not have improved it.
Why Business, Development, and Marketing Belong in One Room
The reason this kind of meeting works is that it connects three things that usually sit in separate conversations: the business goals, the development needs, and the marketing plan. When those are discussed apart from each other, you get a marketing plan the website cannot support, or development work that does not serve a commercial goal. When they are in one room, the targeting strategy actually holds together.
We used the time to discuss different marketing channels, outline the next steps, and brainstorm ideas to transform certain areas of the website for the future. None of that is possible if the people who run the business, the people who build the site, and the people who market it never sit down together. This is the same coordination problem I wrote about in why one project board beats three separate agency meetings.
Why We Show Up in Person for This
We could have done this on a call. We chose to be there, in the tent, because the in-person version produces a different quality of conversation. People share more, commit more, and remember more. It is the same reason behind why we started visiting our customers in person. A planning session is exactly the moment where being in the room earns its cost.
A meeting like this is also a quiet expression of what the business is actually for. It is not chasing the biggest possible number next year. It is setting a sensible, shared direction that the whole team believes in, which is the same thinking behind why my agency’s goal is stability, not growth.
MageCloud Operating Note
Party vs. Planning Session
THE PARTY
Pleasant, and forgotten by January
Unites the team for an evening and changes nothing.
THE PLANNING SESSION
Business, development, and marketing in one room
Everyone contributes, and the year ahead actually gets set.
Paul Ryazanov · MageCloud · the tent was fine, the structure mattered
If your company is planning something similar and you would like an outside set of eyes on your marketing and development goals for the year, get in touch. We are happy to visit, sit in, and run a quick express audit while we are at it.