Stop Wasting Two Days of Everyone’s Life

Most offsites are a joke.

You call it strategy, but it’s theatre. Same resort, same agenda, same glossy decks. People fly in, play along, nod politely, and then go back to the office and do exactly what they were doing before. Nothing changes.

If the best people can say afterwards is “it was nice to finally spend time together,” then call it what it is. Book a long lunch, open a few bottles of wine, and let people talk freely. That would cost a fraction of what you just blew on a “leadership experience” and it would be more honest about the purpose.

Why most offsites fail

Because they are built on lies.

• A lie that more slides equal more strategy.

• A lie that polite discussions equal alignment.

• A lie that sitting in a circle with Post-its equals transformation.

Let’s be clear. You did not create alignment. You staged a performance.

What an offsite is really for

An offsite isn’t about bonding. It isn’t about “recharging.” It isn’t about pretending that three hours of design thinking makes your culture innovative.

The only purpose of an offsite is to do what you can’t do in the office. Break the script. Expose the silent disagreements. Force the conversations everyone avoids when they hide behind screens and titles.

That is when alignment happens. Not through fake consensus, but through conflict that gets resolved in the room, not buried under the rug.

Why it takes two days

One day is warm-up. People arrive tense, guarded, stuck in their professional identities. Day one is about shaking that off, tearing down the polite walls, and letting the discomfort in.

Day two is where it flips. When the bullshit is stripped away, leaders stop performing and start deciding. Priorities get cut. Commitments get made. That is when clarity shows up.

Anything shorter, and you never get past the act. You leave with pages of notes and zero decisions.

How to run an offsite that doesn’t suck

• Ban the PowerPoints. If it can be emailed, it doesn’t belong.

• Kill the comfort. Phones down, laptops closed, no hiding places.

• Demand honesty. If nobody is sweating, you’re wasting the trip.

• Make people move. Walking, mapping, sketching. Strategy doesn’t live in chairs.

• Enforce decisions. No endless debate, no circling back. Decide in the room.

If your offsite feels comfortable, you failed.

The payoff

Two days like this can reset a year. Faster decisions. Clearer priorities. A team that finally pulls in one direction instead of ten.

But that requires courage. Most offsites are still designed for comfort, not change. Which is why they deliver nothing.

Final shot

So ask yourself: are you serious about strategy, or do you just want to look like you are?

If you are serious, stop booking “nice” offsites. Stop wasting two days of everyone’s life. Design brutal ones.

Two days that hurt. Two days that cut through the noise. Two days that actually change something.

Everything else is theatre. Expensive, pointless theatre.