Retreat while still forging ahead

Last week the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce closed its doors for one day for our bi-annual all staff retreat. This was our time to come togethor and decide to what heights we are going to take the organization to this coming year.

After eight hours of listening, learning, engaging, sharing, crying...ok maybe not crying but we put in some serious sweat equity into this years goals and objectives. And let me tell you our sights are high.

This year, the Chamber decided to use a sustainability model and split our objectives into three areas; Economic, Social and Enivornmental.

Like any great project, before embarking on constructing the Chamber's goals, we needed to read the instructions. This came in the form of a great presentation by Steelcase's John Malnor about Design Thinking. The presentation was so inspiring we changed up the plan and based all of our goals on the "what if's".

What if Chamber membership was free?

What if the Chamber had 0 Carbon emissions?

What if all Chamber events were free?

What if we ...

The list is endless

After a short lunch break and put-put tournament to get our juices flowing again we were back in the saddle.

The staff was split into four groups in which we came up with ideas/goals/suggestions for each category.

Each group was to come up with the top two ideas to post under the topic and viola! Our objectives for 2010-2011 had began to form.

As I type now the Chamber's Leadership team is locked away in the conference room fine tuning the ideas and turning them in to a living breathing map that will direct the course of the S.S. Chamber for the next six months. Once completed, stamped and approved you shall have full access to what we came up with...get ready!