Have you ever wished you were better prepared for strategy meetings?  Ever found it hard to keep those meetings 'strategic' and move beyond issues that always seem to come up?  Have you ever used professional facilitation that is also expert in strategy development - so you get great interpersonal and group work PLUS really structured and productive strategy development?  Have you ever found yourself running out of time to do the preparation you would really like to complete - and share with people proir to your conference or meeting?

If so, we have shared your feelings - many times - and T|M|G can help.

Having facilitated many, many strategy conferences and strategy off-sites, we know you can only work with the information available. So

• Start with the Burning Platform. What's not right? What should be happening? What possible explanations are there for the difference?  What big opportunities should be evaluated and considered now?  What are the really big competitor pressures?  What's really changing in our business or industry?
  
  Getting this step done is essentially a few conversations, short teleconferences or, depending upon your size and culture, maybe includes something a bit more formal like a survey.  Very quickly, a broad base of input is creating a framework of possible considerations and at the same time, enroling the appropriate people in strategy development.
  
  
• Then run our Checklist. Armed with the information above, we'll help you use the T|M|G Strategy Preparation Checklist to see if there are any other questions or issues you think are important to get your head around.  At the same time, the checklist will help shape the issues and questions into a selection of strategy frameworks that best fit your situation.  The same frameworks guide any information needs and begin shaping the conference as truly strategic.
  (In some cases, where there is a study into a specific issue required, we may be able to assist with our experienced and qualified research team)
  
  
• Get Prepared Before going straight to the conference, let's make sure everyone is up the learning curve and has time to digest issues.  Having pulled together what is needed, it is time to socialize and pre-expose as much as possible to the conference or meeting participants.  Not just the Agenda, but the content; giving people time to think, challenge, digest, prepare. There is never enough time for this once you are into a 1-3 day formal meeting - in fact, it can really slow the meeting down and severely limit the quality of input and decision making.
  
  So, on some issues there might be short, formal presentations, with feedback. On others, there might be the need for a round table to verify or fully comprehend. There may well be a few teleconferences. Some things are simply some documents being shared.  From T|M|G's experience, this stage is at least if not more important than the meeting itself.  It is during this well organized process of preparation that the barriers to a good conference or meeting are lowered.
  
  
• Finalize the roles. T|M|G commonly facilitates the meeting but the CEO, MD or GM is still ultimately in charge. TMG provides a framework for how this is done. It means the CEO is free to be a participant in the content of the meeting, but at pre-agreed points, or on pre-agreed issues, or via pre-agreed exchanges in the meeting, the CEO and the facilitator will exchange the ‘baton’ of leadership of the meeting. In this way, the facilitator is working both to free the CEO but does not take on any 'organizational leadership' role.
  
  As facilitator, we are focussed on making sure everyone participates, is properly heard and considered.  We include work on management development and organizational change where that is part of your conference brief.  TMG is able to bring to your conference the range of interpersonal techniques as well as strategy frameworks to lift the calibre of input, thought and decision making to a strategic powerful level.
  
  
• Hold the Conference or management "off-site". With this preparation process, fuelled by our input on tools and techniques [ http://tmg-strategic-planning.com.au/the-tools-of-our-trade.html ] you'll probably have the best strategy conference you've ever had. Your meeting is set up to make huge progress. You'll have very high levels of engagement; increased ownership; easier decision making; greater trust... And you focus can be on strategic thinking, rather than trying to come to grips with new information, incomplete information and surprise information.

  As with the painting of a house or investing in shares, the

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