Pride of Britains future

Every year about this time the board of the marketing consortium Pride of Britain hotels of which we are a member meet for a two day strategy meeting. In reality this has turned into an in depth board meeting concentrating on one topic as the main discussion point. This year however our chairman Paul Milsom decided to return the meeting to a strategy meeting on day one and then a board meeting on day two. In  truth we were all a bit skeptical especially when he announced that he had engaged a facilitator to run the first days discussion.

He enthusiastically set about preparing for the day and we all duly arrived and took our places. The facilitator was introduced and the parameters of the day were set. Already the jargon was beginning to flow and some of the board members began to shuffle papers nervously imagining the pain of a whole day of jargon and junk. However nothing could be further from the truth.

The Chairmen opened with a broad generalization that we all understood and agreed with the companies "mission statement".  There was a silence and then one member stated he did not understand it and another said he disagreed with it, the Chairmans chin hit the table but after he had recovered, a frank and open discussion ensued. Indeed all preconception were left at the door and we had, mainly because the facilitator continually returned the discussion to the topic under the microscope, an extremely productive days work. In reality also by the next day we had developed as a group the ability to remain focused on the topic under discussion and even without the guiding hand of the facilitator. Over the course of two days we managed to become focused on the future, looking at potential opportunities and developing our strengths. The much maligned facilitator had become an essential cog in the development of this thinking and we all believed we had achieved a great deal by the end of the day.

In reality all business occasionally but regularly should take a good look at itself and pick its methods apart and then rebuild it. this does not stop us from rebuilding a model extremely similar to what was in place before but it may help re justify methods and systems that are in place. It is definitely something we should start doing here at Eriska so Chay beware..