If you are leading a small charity then it probably lands on your desk to be the chief planner and facilitator for your organisational strategy session or away day. These sessions can often be like Marmite for those left to organise them and those attending. You either love it or hate it.

I am firmly in the love it camp, but I am well aware that planning such a session isn’t for everyone. So here are my top tips to help make your planning a little easier and get the most from the precious time you have together.

1. Start with why

Start your planning by getting clarity on why you are bringing people together. What is it you want to achieve as a result of the session?

• Do you want to celebrate success and to increase team morale?
• Do you want to engage the staff team by generating ideas for the future?
• Do you want to establish better ways of working together?

Whatever it is, be clear on why you are asking people to give up their time. Once you have clarity, write these down into a series of session objectives.

These objectives act as your guide for planning the agenda, help everyone know why they are there and help the facilitator stay on track and evaluate the success of the session.

2. think about who

Think carefully about who you need in the room to achieve the session objectives.

It is no good setting an objective to build team morale and leaving out key staff or volunteers. If you are developing your strategy, it might be that you need a series of sessions to ensure all stakeholders are engaged in ways and time that work for them.

3. consider the How

When constructing the agenda use your objectives as a guide and consider how you will engage people to achieve them.

Everyone is different and will come to these sessions with different experiences, levels of enthusiasm and ways in which they want to engage.

Think about this in the design of the session and include a variety of activities to maximise engagement. This could include:

• Individual reflection time to help those who find coming up with ideas on the spot hard.
• Activities in pairs to enable those who feel less confident in contributing in a large group the opportunity to participate.
• Not relying on writing alone. Not everyone loves to write and feels confident expressing their views in this way so offer choice. I love encouraging the use of playdough to sculpt or drawing to express ideas. In one away day we made TikTok videos, and an attendee did a rap!

4. Allow people time to prepare

It is tough to come up with your best ideas on the spot and many people find this a hard ask. I recommend creating clear joining instructions which:

• Outline the reason for the meeting and all the location details,
• Include a detailed agenda and activity outline so people know what to expect,
• Include a list of attendees so people know who will be in the session,
• Provide any pre-reading that might help (this could be a reminder of the organisational vision and mission, the current strategy document or details on the level of need),

A pre-meeting questionnaire which enables attendees to consider their thoughts and responses to the key questions of the day can also help.

I suggest sending all this information to attendees at least a week in advance.

5. agree next steps

There is nothing more frustrating than attending a meeting or strategy session, giving your ideas and opinion and then never hearing more. When planning your session think about how it fits in your overall planning cycle or organisational plans and how you will keep people informed of progress.

• Always end your session with next steps and actions – getting people signed up to complete tasks before you leave the room is easier than after.
• Agree your next meeting or progress check in before you leave the room.
• Setting up task and finish groups can work well too so people know how they will continue to be involved.

And finally, remember to have fun. These sessions do not need to be all serious to be productive. Create space for play and joy as it will really help everyone relax and engage.