Crafting your Board Away Day Agenda
Think about your Audience
When you think about who is attending and who will be 'in the room', what skills and knowledge do they have?
Do they know the sector well? The organisation and its history? Membership as an income stream?
The biggest risk is to ask your attendees to brainstorm or complete tasks and activities where they do NOT have the required knowledge.
TIP: Stick to what they know OR create sub groups based around what they know OR do an educational item on the agenda where you bring everyone up to speed but don't require input.
Decide the output and outcomes first
When you think about the end of the away day, what outputs and outcomes do you want to have achieved?
How do you want attendees to have contributed? How are you measuring the success of the day? What's the best and worst case scenario?
TIP: Think about tangible things such as actions decided, tasks completed AS WELL AS how you want everyone in the room to FEEL once the day is over.
Manage your expectations
When you think about how much time you actually have available to you, what are expecting to cover?
A common mistake is to attempt to cover everything in one day. Do you want to do it properly or do you want to do it quickly? Asking attendees to be engaged and contributing for a full day is exhausting - how can you craft the agenda to mix up the styles of agenda items?
TIP: Keep high energy activities to the morning and low energy to the afternoon.