Starbucks and Your Next Retreat

In Howard Schultz’s book, Onward, the Starbucks CEO candidly shares about his 2008 return to day-to-day operations of the coffee giant. His focus was stabilizing the company he founded and returning it to its core values.

An early turning point was a retreat with key leaders. His goal was to “organize an off-site retreat to flush us out of our familiar space and help us freely consider how we had lost our way, and then embark upon fresh thinking.” Schultz continues, “we needed to rediscover who we were and imagine who we could be.”

He reluctantly agreed to let a consulting firm run the retreat, but upon entering the retreat location, he was pleasantly surprised when he found:

• A casual, fun atmosphere that piqued curiosity
• The Beatles music playing loudly
• Bright Beatles album covers and posters covering the room
• Note cards with questions like What does it mean to reinvent an icon? and What did John, Paul, George, and Ringo teach us about the art of reinvention?

Schultz summarizes, “The retreat did more than just spark creative thinking. It also took us to a new level of decisiveness.” For Starbucks, this refocus on decisiveness quickly led to hard but necessary decisions like store closings and deep cost-cutting measures for the first time in company history. But decisiveness also led them quickly to new innovations, an impressive turnaround even amidst the global economic crisis, and back to more sustainable growth.

Your church doesn’t have the resources of Starbucks (although you might consider providing good coffee!), but even on a limited budget you can pull off a retreat that can breathe new life into a tired staff or help you discover a whole new way of doing ministry.

Why Go Out of the Box?

It’s time for an out-of-the-box retreat when …

• You’re stuck in a rut and need fresh thinking. As a marketing director at Christianity Today, I try to take our marketing staff away from the office at least a couple times a year to break from the ordinary. Recently that meant going to a creative design firm to study what keeps their minds fresh and good ideas flowing for their clients. In past years, it’s meant holding a creative scavenger hunt around town, going to museums, and interacting face-to-face with our audience.
• You’re wrestling with a complicated problem or issue. When your church has a challenge, say finances aren’t where they need to be, staffing needs restructured, or you’re planning for your next ministry season, a retreat affords you the time to go in-depth, maybe including things like historical analysis and feedback, research, creative brainstorming, prayer and meditation, laying out a comprehensive plan, action steps, and follow-up. You can’t do all that in a one-hour meeting!
• You want to build team camaraderie or morale. I’ve found that our retreats always leave us coming away with a renewed focus, energy, and appreciation for our important work. Days and weeks later our team members were still excitedly sharing what they took from our time together. And newer staff members felt plugged in faster because they were able to contribute and get to know their teammates away from the office.
• You need to complete a project, but can’t in your normal environment. I’ve been frustrated when we’ve needed progress on something like a new product launch or engagement with a new marketing tactic, but in each weekly meeting we barely move the barometer forward. With my staff, I’ve tried to “get away” and retreat together when I realize we’re not moving fast enough to get a job done by a deadline, or I feel an issue is worthy of extended, uninterrupted time.
• Substantial changes are happening and you need understanding and advocacy from your team. I’ve been part of important retreats to announce complicated structural or staff changes, to communicate new ministry goals, to unveil new products, and after heart-wrenching downsizing. These retreats have clarified our direction, reignited our passion, and helped heal wounds.

If you resonated with any of the reasons above, then you probably need a retreat separate from your normal, regularly-scheduled meetings. Here are six elements that will help make an out-of-box retreat successful.

1) Break from the Norm

In any given day, how many e-mails do you read, phone calls do you take, meetings do you attend, projects do you have to finish, and deadlines do you have to make? It can be overwhelming, can’t it?

Retreats let your team focus—away from daily stresses and work tasks that can cloud your minds. Personally, I try to get away from the office once a month so I can focus on a topic or a task that might stoke my own creativity and teach me something new. I encourage my staff to do this occasionally. And, we need to do it together. While I sometimes wrestle with “loss of efficiency” of the day-to-day work that’s being missed, I’ve come to acknowledge that we can’t afford not to.

If this is a big worry or a retreat doesn’t seem appropriate, most of these tips are flexible in the context of an out-of-the-box meeting—maybe it’s scaling your “retreat” to a morning or an afternoon or even thinking about how to be creative in your regular meetings.

2) Infuse Surprise and Excitement

What would encourage your team and keep momentum and energy through the day? Music or other media? Visuals? Humor? Games? A small thank-you gift (everyone appreciates gifts!)? Good food and drink?

I’ve often used retreats to give my staff a book that has helped my own professional development. We’ve given small awards to acknowledge good work or have fun with each other. (For example: I recently received the highly coveted “Most Orderly Office” award—that probably tells you something about my personality.) Among the surprises at the aforementioned Starbucks’ retreat was sending everyone throughout downtown Seattle to visit some of the city’s successful homegrown retailers and report back the experiences and values that help define each of the stores.

Be creative and find ways to communicate to your staff or volunteers that they are valued and important.

3) Involve Key Leaders and Volunteers

Sometimes in your regular church meetings you can’t have everyone involved that needs to be. Make sure at a retreat you strategically have the right people in the room to make the decisions that need to be made.

Does someone from your board, deacons, or elders need to attend if they’re ultimately going to be involved in what comes out of your retreat? Is there someone from your church that specifically can speak wisdom into your conversations—maybe in the area of communications, finances, project management, or event planning? Are you unintentionally leaving someone out that may feel slighted?

In preparation, think through how to involve and engage these leaders and volunteers in ways such as the following:

• Logistics. Getting the location, bringing resources like pens, paper, decorations, food.
• Moderating the day. Leading you through the agenda, participating in different components like a devotion or an activity.
• Taking notes. An oft-overlooked task that’s highly important!
• Action steps. Who has what responsibilities after the retreat?
• Follow-up. You want to make sure there is some accountability and progress made one week, one month, one year after your retreat.

4) Invite a Guest Speaker

A retreat is a great setting to bring in someone from the outside—someone who can provide feedback, a new perspective, or a challenge. Think about someone (another church leader, pastor, community member, speaker) who could enrich the day and inject some fresh thinking into your team.

I’ve brought in pastors to tell us what they like and don’t like about what we do. We’ve had a branding expert share with us what makes a strong brand. My favorite was bringing in Peyton Manning to teach us about leadership under adversity (okay, that one may have been a dream).

5) Set and Communicate Your Goals

Some goals may just seem too big to accomplish in one of your regular church meetings. Earlier I stated that I often take my team away from the office if we need focused time or need to accelerate our pace. Maybe for you it’s starting a new church ministry or envisioning a whole new approach to community outreach. It’s hard to get the focus you need unless you’re in a retreat setting, and you need to answer early on for your team:

• Why are you having a retreat in the first place? Here it’s important to answer for your team why you think it’s necessary to spend the time you’re spending at the retreat and away from their other duties. You’ll undoubtedly have people coming into the retreat skeptical or feeling that it’s not necessary. This is a chance to communicate your perspective and hopefully get your team on the same page.
• What do you hope to accomplish? Ahead of the retreat, you want to have clarity in your mind about its core purpose. Don’t have a retreat just for the sake of a retreat, but think ahead about the progression of your time together and how you will come away closer to your goal.
• What will change because of this retreat? One of the worst things that could happen as an outcome of your retreat is that nothing happens, nothing changes. You could potentially lose some leadership capital and trust from your team if they feel like their time was wasted and not respected. In my retreat experiences, I end each retreat laying out the vision going forward and hearing from everyone about what lessons they learned, how they feel differently, what might be different in the future, and often give action steps and a schedule or time frame. It’s a good habit to document each of these things and share it with the team after the retreat, as well as integrating some sort of follow-up. I also want to hear honest feedback about the retreat: What didn’t work and why?

6) Spark Creativity Through Fun!

Most of your meetings are probably in a sterile office or conference room. With a retreat, you want a space that exudes creativity and comfort (i.e. someone’s home, park, museum, coffee shop) and make space for people to think, meditate, and pray. You should break up the day with the non-ordinary: activities, field trips, or other outings.

We went into Chicago for one recent brainstorming retreat, which is 45 minutes away from our office. Our team felt it was appropriate because we didn’t want the distraction of the office. We needed our sharpest minds present, and we intentionally wanted to be “out of our element” for the possibility of the freshest ideas. We walked around the city during a break—taking in the beautiful summer sun and breeze off Lake Michigan. We broke out of our normal eating habits and had some amazing ethnic food. We were given a tour of a local neighborhood and heard about its history and redevelopment. And we watched some compelling videos—all to try to give us space for creativity.

So, What’s the Bigger Picture Here?

Going back to the Starbucks’ retreat, the goal was to rediscover who they were and imagine who they could be. While the company had years of unprecedented growth with new stores and exploding profits, growth became their sole focus. They were losing their core values and reason for being (like their intense care for the customer experience and pouring the perfect espresso). They had gotten distracted, and the retreat helped get them back on track.

As a church leader, your goals are different than Starbucks. You may want to encourage your volunteers and build on their God-given gifts. You may want to envision reaching more people with the love of Christ that you’ve experienced. Or, maybe your goal is to help your team trust and know each other more intimately so they can work more effectively together.

Planning and leading a retreat that’s “out of the box” isn’t recommended simply for the sake of being cute or creative. Instead, think and pray about how God might use your imagination to spur the Holy Spirit to move in your church in a way no one could have imagined on their own.

—Cory Whitehead is Director of Brand and Digital Marketing for Christianity Today; © 2012 Christianity Today.

Discuss

1. Thinking about the next year, what is the top reason you’d see a need for an out-of-the-box retreat?
2. Who would be the appropriate leaders and volunteers for this retreat?
3. What goals will you set for the retreat? How will you communicate and then follow up those goals?