Corporate retreats, where your family is the “corporation” in question

In honor of my recently-celebrated* 18th wedding anniversary, I thought I’d share my and my husband’s tradition of what we fondly—as non-corporate-style people—refer to as the “The McGee Corporate Retreat.” Normally, the corporate retreat involves senior management (that’s us) leaving the junior member (that’s the kid) at home and sequestering at an inspiring location (usually a building with the words “hotel” and “spa” in the title), during which time a year-in-review is conducted and strategic planning for the coming year is mapped out.

*pandemic style, which is to say, not really celebrated other than in name…

The corporate mapping began with just us senior managers reflecting on what we want to accomplish in the coming year as individuals. Over time, the strategic planning process expanded to include junior members as well as the entities of the corporation and the senior management team.

Strategic planning started in earnest in 2013, so we, as a corporation, have got 8 years of data on record. We use the previous year’s goals as benchmarks for our year-in-review, which we carry out before we launch into planning. Historically, year-in-review has been “hey did we accomplish the goals we set for ourselves? and/or “if not, is this goal still relevant enough to go on my list for next year?” This year, in light of the [non-fun] rollercoaster our corporation and corporations everywhere continue to ride, this senior management member (thatsameyah!) thought it would be fruitful to engage in a more general, strengths-focused review of the year, to bolster morale. The parent-coaching program I attended required us to learn a process in which the strengths of a family system and context are specifically called out BEFORE problems are addressed and goals are set. The reason for this is that when you know how strong you are, you ostensibly can dream a bigger dream for yourself because more feels possible. Thusly, this year we reflected on what has gone well—what positive habits have emerged, what ways has team-building grown, what we are proud of, etc. As expected, it felt good to recognize how much we have leveled-up our patterns of living; from there, we moved into our individual and collective goal setting for the coming year.

Our strategic planning process isn’t complex—our corporation prefers an analog method, which involves sheets of regular-sized paper and a writing utensil. Each entity gets a dedicated square—senior members as individuals (2), junior member (1), senior management team (1), and the corporation (1). The individual entities have authority over their own sections, which is to say senior management does not dictate goals for the junior member—any “voluntelling” impulses (e.g., “sort out kid’s sleep”) get placed under corporate (i.e., whole family) goals. This year, in light of the addition of the aforementioned strengths review, WE USED BOTH SIDES OF THE PAPER—backside for strengths, front side for goals.

We don’t really do anything else after that—we don’t post them or necessarily even return to them later. But somehow the act of thinking them through and writing them down seems to have helped us move in those directions. In my parent coaching program, the phrase “What you focus on, grows” was trotted out a lot—and interestingly, we have found that a little bit of regular focus-setting goes a long way in the growth department.

What about you, do you and/or your family set goals? How does it work for you?

Redacted for prihvacy.