Excitement, not Exhaustion
I recently facilitated the launch of a nine-month strategic planning process. At that first meeting, the group came up with something of a motto for the work ahead: excitement, not exhaustion.
Let’s be honest, most people recoil a little when they hear “strategic planning.” We wanted them to leave energized about the work, not already counting down the eight months left to get through.
The more I sat with the phrase, the more I realized it names a core part of how I think about planning and facilitating meetings. Energy is an outcome, every bit as much as decisions and deliverables are.
Before becoming a consultant, I spent years in coalition building and collaboration. When I led the Rural Voices for Conservation Coalition (RVCC), we held annual meetings for more than a hundred participants, and I learned quickly that those gatherings had two jobs, not one. Yes, we had to look back at what we’d accomplished and set a shared agenda for the year ahead. But we also had to reconnect people to one another and re-energize them for the work. Collaboration runs on energy, and when you’re asking people to keep showing up and working through hard issues together, that energy is the fuel that keeps the whole thing going.
When we plan meetings, we tend to start with what has to get done: the decisions to make, the questions to answer, the information to share. All of that matters. But it’s worth asking a second question:
How do you want people to feel when they leave?
Respecting people’s time is important, but it doesn’t mean cramming the most possible work into every available minute. In practice, designing for energy comes down to a few choices.
One is restraint with the agenda. You don’t have to solve everything in a single day. An overpacked agenda is the fastest way to send people home depleted, and it usually produces worse thinking anyway, because people are rushing or exhausted. Leaving some things for later can be part of the plan.
Another is using the space between meetings. When a process unfolds over months, the time away from the table is doing work, too. People reflect, explore ideas with colleagues, and come back with perspectives they didn't have before. You don’t necessarily have to resolve everything in one sitting, and often you shouldn’t, because that space to think can matter as much as the time together.
And then there are the small choices in the room itself. A surprising amount of energy comes simply from changing the format and grouping people in new ways. Ask people to turn to a neighbor and talk through a question before you open it to the full group. Run a gallery walk, where people get up, move around, review ideas posted on flip charts, and mark the ones they find most compelling. Moving people around wakes a room up, gives quieter participants more opportunity to contribute, and keeps a long day from flattening into one continuous large-group discussion.
What you're asking people to do matters, too. Exploring ideas in small groups can be energizing. Wordsmithing a document line by line in a room full of people? Usually not.
If you want a deep well of ideas for varying how people work together, Liberating Structures is one of my favorite resources.
A meeting can check every box on the agenda and still leave people flat. And when you need those same people engaged for the next nine months, how they feel walking out can make a real difference in how they show up next time.
That’s what I mean by designing for energy. Over a long process, it may be the outcome that matters most.
