Case Study
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Museum & Cultural Destination
Senior Staff Retreat
This major museum and cultural destination has experienced a surge in annual visitors thanks to new exhibits and a robust tourism industry. It has also built strong educational programs to serve school children, and some popular public programs to encourage local audiences to visit. New, experienced senior managers have been recruited over several years. Now the institution wants to solidify its gains and grow again, given its capacity to reach an even wider public.
Challenge
The client labored under a sprawling strategic plan, developed internally and revisited annually without tremendous year-to-year progress. Its goals were ambitious, but the practical efforts to reach those goals were elusive given the day-to-day demands of a complex and popular institution. Management also felt that its stated goals lacked measurability, which therefore made progress harder to track and celebrate. A multi-day senior staff retreat was calendared to address these issues, but without an agenda its prospects were uncertain.
Solution
Plan A designed an agenda and facilitated a three-day off-site retreat for this museum’s senior staff focused on honing its strategic plan to realize a set of short- and long-term objectives. A wide range of interactive exercises, many resulting in consensus-driven decisions, was employed to answer the myriad questions posed by senior staff in advance, and that would give them clear direction within the context of their colleagues’ work.
Process
• Designed the agenda and facilitated a three-day off-site retreat for senior staff.
• Built consensus around a vision for the institution’s future direction.
• Selected priority projects and assigned responsibility for their execution.
• Developed a concise matrix of quantifiable institution-wide measures of success to chart progress each year.