If your executive team spends four days a year rafting down rivers together, you’ll eventually get good at rafting down rivers. Spend four days a year having well-designed strategy conversations together, and within a few years you’ll get equally good at revealing, discussing, and resolving strategic issues, not just at your off-sites but every time team members meet.

RACI charts were drawn up to identify who, for each deliverable, was responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed. Rich Products uses action registers, which list every item requiring action, and fills them out at the end of the meeting, specifying who is accountable for what. In addition to agreeing on responsibilities before leaving the room, participants should also produce a clear and easily communicated written summary of what was discussed, what decisions were reached, and what next steps are required. The details of implementation will be forthcoming, but executives shouldn’t leave the off-site before they’ve captured the meeting’s outcomes in one page of prose.

Closure doesn’t always mean reaching a decision; it can simply mean completing an important discussion, agreeing to undertake further study before making a decision, or even agreeing to disagree.

The meeting designer is also responsible for embedding decision points into the structure of the meeting—being careful that not all of the decisions reached end up merely reflecting the CEO’s preordained conclusions.

When distributing the data and background information, make it clear to participants that they are expected to absorb it before the off-site. The meeting is not the place to plod through data; in fact, Allstate has a rule against walking participants through material at the meetings that should have been circulated beforehand.