On December 3rd and 4th, the Management 3.0 Facilitator Retreat took place. It was the first time since the pandemic that facilitators from all over the world could meet in person again. It was long anticipated and I did not need to think twice. When it was announced I reserved a spot for Kashima-san and me. Luckily it was directly after the Management 3.0 Forward Conference in Berlin.
But what is a facilitator retreat anyway?
But what is a facilitator retreat anyway?The facilitator retreat is a gathering for all Management 3.0 facilitators. It is the chance to get to know the person behind the name in Slack, network, discuss topics related to Management 3.0 and learn from each other. It usually happens twice a year. Every time in a different city in one of the countries where some facilitators volunteer as an organizer.
My first retreat in 2017
For me, this was the second time that I joined a retreat. The first time I participated on April 2017 in Wiesbaden/Germany. At that time I was a fresh facilitator and did not really know what to expect and was also a bit nervous. But the nervosity was quickly gone and got replaced by excitement as the experience was awesome. The energy, high level of autonomy and friendliness of the event blew me away. At that time, I even had the opportunity to meet Jurgen Appelo for the first time. So, I was really excited to participate again. And I also wanted my colleague Kashima-san to experience the retreat spirit first-hand.
Eating our own dog food
As with everything in Management 3.0, the retreat is highly self-organized. When we arrived on Saturday morning we created the agenda in a Lean Coffee Style together. The two organizers, Jens and Jürgen facilitated this first part excellently. Everybody wrote on stickies the topics they want to talk about and we then voted on them. The topics with the highest votes were then got discussed first. We put a time box on each item for 5 minutes and when finished, we did roman voting to add more time or move on to the next topic. The person who came up with the topic facilitated the discussion.
The topics were sometimes informative, sometimes a discussion with different opinions. We exchanged ideas for marketing, talked about the state of Management 3.0 in the world and discussed our collaboration vs. our competition. But even when the opinions differed sometimes, it was always respectful.
And of course, we eat our own dog food and used the Kudo Wall and Happiness Door.
And in the evening we had a great dinner and networked with each other to strengthen our bond.
For me the greatest takeaway was, to use a more emotionally appealing customer approach. I have to admit that I am a very logical person and my messaging is sometimes a bit cold and not to the heart of the people. That is one thing I wanna change in 2023.
I am so glad we joined. The Management 3.0 facilitator retreat is really great fun and I can totally recommend experiencing it. The community is just fantastic. Thank you all! I am looking forward to the next opportunity and hope it will be conducted sometime in the future in Japan.
