Overview

Facilitated strategy session to review the previous year’s performance and set the strategic direction and associated objectives for the next year. The session included live graphic recording of the session by Anna Geyer of New Possibilities. Follow up to the session included a copy of the PowerPoint presentation, traditional written minutes from the day and the graphic recording itself (8ft long – also available as a digital image!).

Details

Renewable Energy Assurance Ltd carries out a range of certification and consumer protection activities all of which promote renewable energy and the circular economy. Renewable Energy Assurance Ltd's activities fall under three headings: consumer codes such as the Renewable Energy Consumer Code, certification schemes, such as Green Gas Certification Scheme and registration schemes.

I have been working with REAL since 2018 starting with the implementation of their quality management system to gain ISO 9001 and continuing to provide internal auditing services. In 2020, we decided to hold strategy session to reflect on the previous year’s performance and set the strategic direction for the following year. At the time, the Covid pandemic was affecting businesses in many ways and there was a lot of uncertainty over the challenges that REAL might face. In the VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) context of the time, we decided to try something a bit different and organised a remote strategy session supported with graphic recording by Anna Geyer from New Possibilities.

I structured the session to begin with a declutter your mind activity (inspired by one of the exercises in Do Breathe) followed by an introduction to creativity in a business context. Then we moved through the rest of the agenda, alternating between reflecting on a topic and an activity to get everyone involved.

The outputs from the strategy session included a completed SWOT analysis, identification of key areas of objective setting for the following year and a beautiful graphic record of the strategic journey so far, using the visual metaphor of road travelling through a landscape.

Despite the constraints of using Zoom and having the facilitators (myself and Anna) in completely different locations, the session was really interactive and very well received by the senior management team.