Hi Reader,

You spent £15,000 on a leadership team offsite.

Two days with a professional facilitator. Team-building activities and a session on "What Google can teach us about high-performing teams."

Everyone left inspired.

A month later, the same patterns returned. Your leadership team who are smart people, still can't make decisions.

They're performing like a newly formed boy band that can't agree on the first single.

Away days promise transformation that they seldom deliver on.

When you get back to the office, you're returning to a system that hasn't changed.

The decision-making architecture is the same. The power dynamics are the same. The unspoken agreements about who can challenge whom unchanged.

Conventional offsites fail because they treat symptoms, not systems.

Tools like Insights Discovery and MBTI can be interesting mirrors. But alone, they rarely shift the underlying dynamics causing the tension. You get self-awareness without systems change. People understand their "style" but still can't have the hard conversation.

What actually works is understanding WHY patterns keep repeating, not just what's being said in the room.

That requires:
→ Diagnosing what's beneath the surface
→ Monthly practice, not annual events
→ Real-time feedback
→ Building capacity to self-correct without a facilitator
→ Changing the actual system like decision rules, meeting architecture, accountability structures

The best use of an offsite is as a diagnostic.

Surface what needs deeper work. Then commit to doing that work over months.

I get asked to run one-off leadership away days. I decline for these reasons. Because I've watched too many teams commission them when they need to show they are doing ‘something’ - the board's asking questions, the CEO's frustrated, HR needs to show action.

But if your team had another offsite tomorrow, would the same issues surface?

If yes, you don't need another workshop. You need systems work.

​Book a strategic consultation.

We'll map what's actually broken and whether team transformation work can address it.

Catherine