Janet works for a large insurance company as a group manager. She was having a conversation with Larry, the human resources consultant for the company. "We don't work together as a team!", she complained. "Nobody cares about anybody else's problems much less try to help each other or share information. Everyone just seems to do their own thing! What we need is a team building offsite!" Janet and Larry discussed the problems further to come up with a solution. They came up with the idea of having a two-day offsite for the team and to make the idea more attractive, holding it at resort only a couple hours away from work. Janet wanted to have the offsite as soon as possible to quickly address these problems with the other employees, and so it was scheduled it for later in the month. Larry worked at double the pace to put together a full agenda with icebreakers, trust-building exercises, and brainstorming sessions on how everybody could work together better as a team.

Only half of Janet's team attended the first day of the offsite, and those members were too tired to actively participate. The other half of the team was frantically working on a project due later that week. Janet's main purpose for the offsite was team building, which left no official business reason for it to occur. While the brainstorming went reasonably well, the members present did not indicate that any action was to occur later. To summarize, the offsite was a waste of time for everyone involved.

This may sound like a huge exaggeration to some, but to others it reminds them of an offsite they planned themselves or attended. Offsites are very successful in providing the means for helping the team to focus on business problem solving, fine-tuning strategies and coming up with totally new approaches for doing things. An important side result of offsites is that the real team-building that happens while trying to solve different business problems. When an offsite is done well, it will help to create better teams that work better together, thus accomplishing more when addressing business issues. When an offsite is done poorly, the team members will view it as a waste of time which reflects poorly on your leadership abilities.

How can you ensure your offsites are successful at building teams and getting things done at the same time? Consider the following simple tips:

If you are having an offsite meeting for 'Team Building', do yourself a favor and declare how your meeting actually improves business. It's important to have real business goals for the meeting. Actual business development such as sales goals for the next year, new customer service ideas or trying to fix a nagging problem are some ideas to concentrate on. If you tell you employees the meeting is for "Team Building" they may feel that the meeting is unimportant and won't really help the business. In reality, you are building your team and solving business problems at the same time.

Make sure there's enough time to network. There should be plenty of time throughout the experience for everyone to get to know each other and enjoy refreshments. Everyone needs to know each other better in order to have a more cohesive and better working team. Do not plan getting to know each other activities - let the team do this naturally.

A critical mistake to avoid is hosting the offsite while deadlines are coming due and everyone's burning the midnight oil to meet them. If you make this mistake, team members will be distracted by checking email, or making and taking important phone calls. Instead, schedule this important event during a lull in the business rush. In the business world, there may never be a best time to organize offsite activities, but try to avoid the worst time, when organizational members are already working frantically.

Make it an overnight event - Some of the best offsites I've held were those where the team ate dinner together, enjoyed a couple of drinks, and stayed up late discussing major business problems or brainstorming on a radically new strategy. These late night sessions were valuable in that team members put their heads together to address some problem or opportunity. More importantly, team members built relationships which provided an outstanding foundation for strong teams.

In my experience with offsites, one of the things that frustrates me the most is that the great ideas which came from the offsite are never implemented, since there was never any follow-up. We'll need to take action with a follow-up plan to keep the excitement going. This includes dates, tasks and owners to ensure that the ideas we brainstorm will actually get implemented. We have to create and use a follow-up plan so that the team doesn't perceive the whole offsite as a waste of their time.

Daiv Russell is a management and marketing consultant with     of your organization's teamwork issues.