Strategy Days

'Hello and welcome to this two-day planning session. I'd like to start by suggesting a couple of things be done which your unit has already tried several times in the past but which I wasn't employed at the time to observe, so think haven't been tried and are exciting and new ideas.'

'Sounds fantastic. I'd like to bring up an opinion that was shot down three years ago, but which I didn't really understand the reasons for it not being incorporated so have held back as a long-standing grudge.'

'That's great. Thanks for participating. In fact I'd like to encourage everybody to participate, so that I can misinterpret it and use it against you in future conversations.'

'Buzzword. Buzzword.'

'That sounds a really sensible idea. I don't understand why you do this thing you're paid to do that tracks the things that you've previously been told to track. Why does that happen?'

'Oh, now that I think about it I'll disown all responsibility for that, and thank you for the great perception and insight you've brought to the table.'

'Is it okay now to bring up the thing that didn't work when I tried it halfheartedly with my team that one time which doesn't really prove my point one way or another, or should I save that for later?'

'I think that should wait until we transpose the digits on the whiteboard and confuse everyone because what they're looking at on the printout in front of them is completely different.'

'Oh good. Did I ever tell you about the time that the thing happened to me that isn't relevant to this conversation?'

LUNCH!

'Now while you were all out of the room for ten minutes we've rewritten a whole lot of stuff on the board to reflect our minority opinion.'

'But we won't lock that in until...'

'It's locked in.'

'Buzzword. Buzzword.'

'That's great. Keep that sort of thought coming.'

' '

'Really great contributions from everyone here today. Does anyone has a dissenting view that we can look confused about before we move on as though it wasn't spoken aloud?'

'Hey, I think this thing that looks like it'll take about three years could be a quick win for us. No I didn't say that. You misunderstood.'

'We've certainly got some strong and positive vibes coming through, I think we're almost finished and have everything tied up apart from this list of things we didn't even touch upon and this other list of things we haven't reached agreement on.'

'It's definitely been a productive couple of days so we'll just clean up here and schedule another day or two to address the few remaining ends we have to pretend we're considering before we just go ahead and do what we did last year.'