What Two Leaders Did When "Just Another Offsite" Wasn't an Option
Updated: 5 days ago
How to run an offsite that actually changes how your team performs
"Big deals can happen on their own. What changed is that we now trust this will happen again. The preparation, the offsite, and what we've put in place since working with MBG gave us a foundation to consistently overperform." - Guro Bergan, VP of EMEA Sales, Honeycomb
For Honeycomb’s EMEA Field team leaders Guro Bergan “G”, VP of EMEA Sales, and Colin Burke, Global Head of Customer Success & Services, the stakes were high. Over the past two years, the EMEA Field team had experienced leadership changes, trust had been strained, and employees were looking for a clear vision and a reason to believe things could improve. Some were skeptical that another team offsite would make a difference.
G and Colin knew they needed to bring the team together around a shared direction. But they also knew a compelling strategy wouldn’t be enough if the same challenges around trust, collaboration, and commitment to new ways of working lingered below the surface, unaddressed.
What followed was more than a successful offsite. Thebteam emerged with greater clarity, stronger ownership, and momentum that is now showing up in real business results.
The cost of getting these moments wrong is significant. McKinsey estimates that ineffective decision-making can cost a typical Fortune 500 company $250 million annually in wasted management time. The problem isn’t necessarily that leaders don’t spend enough time together. It’s that too little changes as a result.
Honeycomb’s experience with MBG’s process, and the leadership G and Colin demonstrated, offers three lessons for turning an offsite into stronger business results that last.
1. Don’t outsource or delegate ownership. Partner in the process.
A great facilitator can help a team have higher-quality conversations and reach the right outcomes in the room. But lasting impact comes from working with a partner who brings real operational experience and enables the leaders responsible for what happens next.
That was part of what drew G and Colin to MBG. They were looking for more than facilitation in the room; they wanted a partner who could bring an operator’s perspective to the work before, during, and after the offsite.
“Most facilitators come in and just run the workshop. MBG was invested from the preparation through the post-offsite follow-up. They cared about the outcome as much as we did.” - Colin
G and Colin approached the partnership with MBG with clarity, openness and self-awareness. They had a strong vision for where the business needed to go and conviction about the decisions that were non-negotiable. At the same time, they understood where they needed the team’s perspective and were willing to test their own assumptions through discovery and validation.
They also recognized the opportunity in front of them. They believed in the capability and commitment of the team, while acknowledging that leadership transitions, unclear norms, and friction in how the team worked together were preventing it from operating at its full potential. They knew they, and the team, could do better and were energized around making that transition happen.
They brought clarity and conviction about the direction the business needed to take while remaining curious, coachable, and open to challenging their own assumptions.
That combination made a difference. They weren’t simply asking MBG to drop in for a day-long “team-building” event and drop out. They needed a partner with operational experience and team-performance expertise who could help them navigate a pivotal moment and translate it into better results — quickly.
As G put it: “MBG took the time to understand us as a team, Honeycomb as a company, and the results we needed to achieve. It never felt like someone flying in, running a session, and flying back out.”
The takeaway: Lead with conviction, but build in ways to test your assumptions. Be clear about what is non-negotiable, stay open to what discovery reveals, and choose a partner who can help you translate that insight into what happens before, during, and after the offsite.
2. Don’t start with the agenda. Start with draft business objectives; then validate them.
A polished agenda can create the appearance of progress without diagnosing what’s really holding a team back.
Before designing the Honeycomb offsite, MBG interviewed team members across roles and tenure to deeply understand their experiences, validate objectives, and identify what root-cause challenges needed to change and what strengths needed to be unlocked. This approach gave G and Colin an opportunity to pressure-test their assumptions and surface areas of misalignment or misunderstanding before the agenda was designed and everyone entered the room.
The team needed clear direction from leadership, but they also needed a genuine voice in shaping the way forward. They had firsthand insights from clients and daily operations, questions that needed to be heard, and ideas for solving the challenges they were experiencing.
G and Colin brought a powerful combination of conviction, self-awareness and genuine openness to the process. They were candid about what wasn’t working, willing to question their own assumptions, and authentic in making space for the team’s perspective, while remaining clear about the strategic and team decisions that were non-negotiable.
The result was a strategy and set of operating norms that were materially stronger because they incorporated the perspectives of people closest to clients, product teams, and the day-to-day work. Just as importantly, team members could see that their experience had meaningfully shaped what came next.
“MBG pushed us to get the objectives exactly right. Is this what we really want? Does it reflect who we are? I have never been clearer on what we wanted and needed to accomplish and why. MBG’s process made the difference for us.” - G
The takeaway: Great leaders know they have blind spots, and they create ways to expose them. Use lightweight discovery to validate your assumptions, surface misalignment early, and bring in the perspectives of the people closest to the work before you finalize the plan.
3. Design for what happens after the offsite.
The real test of an offsite begins when everyone returns to work. It’s easy to leave a session energized by a shared vision and a false sense of change, only to fall back into familiar operating habits when everyday demands take over.
Honeycomb’s engagement was designed to prevent that from happening.
Before attendees even left the room, G and Colin were clear about what would happen next: which topics still needed resolution, when the team would hear more, and how decisions and commitments would move forward. They followed through on those expectations, reinforcing the trust the process was designed to rebuild, and helping the team understand, internalize, and own their role in the broader transformation required.
Within 30 to 60 days, the team was expressing appreciation, people were publicly advocating for the company, and ownership of the work was extending beyond G and Colin.
That mattered because strong leadership doesn’t require having every answer immediately. It requires transparency about the process, clarity about expectations, and consistency in following through.
The takeaway: Design the first 30 to 60 days after the offsite before you finalize the agenda. Be clear about what needs to change, who owns what, what the team should expect next, and how progress and feedback will be handled. If you aren’t designing for what happens afterward from the beginning, too much is being left to chance.
Make the investment count.
G and Colin recognized that meaningful change required more than a strong strategy or a well-run event. It required leadership commitment, ongoing mechanisms for understanding the team’s challenges, and a partnership with the team designed to make change stick and produce real business results.
“A big deal can easily create jealousy on a sales team. When we celebrated this one, the other AEs were inspired and genuinely happy for their colleague. That’s exactly what we set out to build at the offsite, and now we’re seeing it.” - G
As you prepare for your next team or leadership session, invest as much thought in what happens before and after the event as you do in the agenda itself. The return on an offsite isn’t measured by what your team agrees to in the room. It’s measured by what your team does differently when everyone goes home.
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