Why Your Retreat Won’t Work (Unless You Do This After)
Q4 means one thing: retreat season.
Leadership teams step out of the day-to-day to reflect, set bold goals, and align for the year ahead. It’s a ritual I’ve seen across industries: carefully designed agendas, inspiring facilitators, glossy decks.
But here’s the trap. Too many teams assume the plan itself is the work.
The Problem: Wasted Investment
Organizations invest heavily in strategic planning and culture initiatives. McKinsey reports that companies spend over $60 billion annually on change programs. Yet 70% fail to achieve their intended goals.
I’ve watched firms drop $300K+ on consultants who deliver a thick PowerPoint deck and vanish. The leaders are left with “big ideas” on paper, but little clarity on what to do Monday morning.
The real cost isn’t just financial. It’s the loss of momentum. The frustration of leaders who see no shift in behavior. And the opportunity cost of teams stuck in the same patterns, despite new strategy banners on the walls.
The Insight: What Leaders Miss
A retreat is the spark, not the fire.
The real work lives in the in-between moments afterward:
When a partner gives feedback in real time instead of shelving it for review season.
When a manager chooses candor over silence in a tense meeting.
When cross-functional teams actually apply the strategy to a client pitch, not just nod at the slide deck.
Without reinforcement, even the best retreat fades. Gallup found only 23% of U.S. employees strongly agree they can apply their organization’s values to their daily work. Translation: the message doesn’t stick unless it’s lived.
Too often, I hear about great retreats that brought people together, aligning vision, opportunities, challenges, and motivators. And yet, those new ideas, thought patterns, and behaviors are somehow lost in the travel back to the office. Here in Denver, I hear a lot of clients say all the goodness seeped out on the drive down the hill from Vail (a beautiful place where many retreats are held!)
Illustrative Stories
One professional services firm called me six months after they had ‘an incredible two-day retreat’. They took pride in the leaders who organized and facilitated the discussions. They set bold priorities and left feeling energized after the two days together. But six months later, not a single behavior had shifted. No one held each other accountable, and the goals were gathering dust. That’s when they called me.
Contrast that with another leadership team. They didn’t stop at the retreat. They brought me in monthly to reinforce practices, surface blind spots, and keep the team aligned. The difference was night and day. Instead of retreat euphoria followed by silence, they built momentum. The strategy was evident in decisions, conversations, and client outcomes.
The lesson? Success isn’t measured by what’s said in the retreat room. It’s measured by what leaders do when they get back to the office.
The Solution: Make the Work Stick
Retreats and strategy sessions are vital catalysts for growth. But catalysts alone don’t create sustainable change.
Here’s what does:
Ongoing reinforcement beyond the event. New habits don’t wither.
A neutral partner who sees and hears what insiders can’t.
Embedded support that translates lofty plans into daily leadership behaviors.
This is why I built a Fractional Leadership & Culture Partner model. Instead of a Deck and Disappear strategy, I stay with leadership teams in the months that follow. This is where growth really happens. Retreats become launchpads, not one-and-done events.
The Close: Timeliness + Call to Action
Culture and strategy don’t live in the retreat. They live in what happens after.
As you head into Q4 planning, the most important question isn’t “Who will run our retreat?” It’s:
“Who will help make sure the work sticks?”
If your leadership team is ready to make this year’s retreat the start of something lasting, let’s talk about how to embed the work beyond the offsite.
