Dear Bob ... Every few years, we do a 1-day staff retreat for everyone in the IT division (~50 people). The last one was when we started with a new IT director a couple of years ago. Now we're planning one again this spring. This retreat finds us with a staff that is significantly more stressed and demoralized. Some of the negativity comes from overwork; some of it comes from IT focusing on showy Dear Bob …Every few years, we do a 1-day staff retreat for everyone in the IT division (~50 people). The last one was when we started with a new IT director a couple of years ago. Now we’re planning one again this spring.This retreat finds us with a staff that is significantly more stressed and demoralized. Some of the negativity comes from overwork; some of it comes from IT focusing on showy new projects that don’t actually improve most users’ experiences; some of the negativity comes from recent decisions by the director to spend huge amounts of money on products he picked without talking to anyone in IT; some of the negativity comes from one manager’s idea that every tiny technical decision has to be run by a committee first to achieve consensus. As you can guess, communications and teamwork are suffering throughout the department. The management team has asked for ideas on what to do with the retreat time. So, what should (or what can) we be doing in this all-day retreat? Can you suggest any resources or exercises or topics or activities that might actually help this situation? (“Teamwork-in-a-box”? “Team-decision-making-for-dummies”? “Micromanagement-for-everyone”?) Or can you suggest anything we ought to avoid, so as not to excerbate the problems?Any ideas you have would be greatly appreciated, especially any pointers to helpful resources.– Retreating Dear Retreating …Under the circumstances, my best advice is to issue everyone a combat helmet and paint guns, and let them have at it. Or maybe set up a dunking booth where the IT managers take turns sitting. You haven’t described anything that’s positive about the organization, nor have you suggested that the IT leadership is involved in its planning, which raises serious concerns about how useful the retreat is likely to be. In fact, I’m guessing this won’t just be a retreat – it will be a surrender.If the paint guns and dunking booth are out, here’s my best advice: Keep your head down. If the IT director and his direct reports haven’t defined specific organizational goals for the meeting, proposing activities is like playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey: You’re blindfolded, with no idea of where the target is, which means all you’re likely to do is stick a pin into someone’s posterior by accident. Form follows function, after all, so until they’ve defined the function there’s no way to plan the form. In the absence of any meeting goals, you might, I suppose, suggest conducting a staff survey in advance of the retreat and spending some time during the retreat having the leadership team discuss the results and what they plan to do to address key issues raised by the survey.What should the survey cover? Definitely not a list of the concerns you mentioned. All that would do is put the spotlight on you as a troublemaker. It has to be neutral, giving plenty of opportunity for positive assessments as well as negative. One possibility, which at the risk of sounding self-serving I’ll offer, is that you build it on the IT Effectiveness Framework we use at IT Catalysts. It categorizes the factors driving IT effectiveness into four major categories – business alignment, process maturity, technical architecture, and human performance – and then drills down another level within each of these. Ask every member of the IT organization to assess each of these factors, leave room for comments, and tabulate the results.If you’re feeling particularly adventurous, survey end-users, business managers and executives as well, and compare the assessments. This doesn’t reveal who’s right. It reveals misalignments of perception among the various constituencies in the company, which can be revealing. This will, of course, only work if (a) your leadership team is interested in an honest count; and (b) they’re willing to take the risks associated with committing to something that could gore the ox of anyone or everyone in the room.On the other hand, it just might wake everyone up to the need to do things very differently.Or, just contact a speakers bureau and bring in someone to give a rousing pep talk on a safe subject of the IT director’s choosing. – Bob ——– Technology Industry