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When executed well, annual gatherings of an organization's high-level leaders are worth the effort and expense. But for many companies, the leadership summit is a numbing series of presentations and sessions in which information flows only from the top--and not all that coherently. By applying the appropriate techniques before, during, and after the summit, C-level leaders can seize this rare opportunity to harness the collective knowledge of their frontline executives. Before the summit, it's crucial to clarify roles and responsibilities (a director, who oversees planning and owns the agenda; a design team; a content editor; and so on), define a clear set of objectives for the summit, design the event around those objectives, and prepare attendees for productive conversations by giving them reading material in advance. During the event, a variety of low- and high-tech approaches, from color-coded 3 x 5 index cards to instant polls, can capture the thinking of attendees and communicate it upward. And various exercises can help attendees connect in ways that lead to genuine collaboration after the event. After the summit, organizers should track commitments made during the event and equip attendees with talking points and pithy presentations that help them discuss with their employees what happened at the summit and how to turn the results into action.

In many companies, the top management team is officially responsible for helping the CEO make a company's big decisions. But another, unofficial group usually does that job de facto. That's the way it should be, argues Frisch, of the Strategic Offsites Group, provided that the CEO is deliberate in devising the role of this informal and unnamed "kitchen cabinet." Problems can nevertheless arise when senior executives learn about important decisions after the fact, mistakenly assume that they have real power to protect their departments, and find themselves in a system where the way decisions are actually made goes unacknowledged. The key, according to Frisch, is to make better use of senior executives' time and talents by giving them specific responsibilities that complement--but do not overlap--the advisory duties of the kitchen cabinet. A CEO who explicitly acknowledges the role of her cabinet and strikes the right balance between it and her official advisory group of executives can get the best from both.

Leadership teams that can't reach consensus wait for the CEO to make the final call - and often are disappointed by the outcome. Frisch calls this phenomenon the dictator-by-default syndrome. Many companies turn to team-building and communication exercises to try to fix the situation. But that won't work, the author argues, because the trouble is not with the people, it's with the decision-making process. Attempting to arrive at a collective preference on the basis of individual opinions is inherently problematic. Once leadership teams realize that voting-system mathematics are the culprit, they can stop wasting time on irrelevant psychological exercises and instead adopt practical measures designed to break the impasse. They must begin by acknowledging the problem and understanding what causes it. When more than two options are on the table, the scene is set for the CEO to become a dictator by default. Even yes-or-no choices present difficulties, because they always include a third, implied alternative: "Neither of the above." When the CEO and the team understand why they have trouble making decisions, they can adopt the following tactics to minimize dysfunction: Clearly articulate the desired outcome, generate a range of options for achieving it, test "fences" (which can be moved) and "walls" (which cannot), surface preferences early, state each option's pros and cons, and devise new options that preserve the best features of existing ones. Teams using such tactics need to adhere to two ground rules. First, they must deliberate confidentially, because a secure climate for conversation allows members to float trial balloons and cut deals. And second, members must be given enough time to study their options and assess the counterarguments. Only then can they achieve genuine alignment.

Of all the meetings top executives attend in a year, none is more important than the strategy off-site, where the most essential conversations for the future of the business occur. Yet, it is the rare management team that can say its strategy off-site truly changed the way the business is run. At best, participants do some vague direction setting and work on team-building skills; at worst, they write off the retreat as a waste of time and resources. It needn't be like that. From their two decades of experience designing and facilitating strategy off-sites in companies large and small around the world, the authors have distilled a set of best practices that businesses can use to make the most of this annual opportunity. Essentially, the problem with most strategy off-sites is that they're insufficiently structured. People think that if you schedule a meeting, invite top leaders (and, perhaps, an outside expert), and block off units of time to discuss big subjects, the rest will take care of itself. In reality, formlessness leads to aimlessness. Oddly enough, only rigorously designed meetings give rise to truly candid strategy discussions. That rigor starts before the meeting, when the scope of the matters discussed must be limited, the participant list drawn up accordingly, the relevant materials (and only those) sent out and absorbed, and a detailed agenda established. During the meeting, the pace and quality of the conversation can be managed through attention to politics and by using carefully tailored frameworks, decision points, and group exercises. After the meeting, an action plan ensures clear accountability and follow-through. If you and your executive team spend 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 you will transform your annual off-site from a meaningless junket into a genuine turning point for your business.