By Dino Di Palma, Managing Partner

The True North Advisory team was away in Phoenix for our quarterly offsite this past week. As Jim mentioned in his last blog, even the best Unified Communications functionality in the world cannot make up for an in person meeting. There was time for some fun, a few good glasses of wine, and a seemingly impossible hike where Jim made it to the summit at Camelback Mountain. 

On our first day, we all flew in on Monday and after our first session we were intent on watching Monday night football and enjoyed the 46 running plays spearheaded by the G.O.A.T Bill Belichick. Unfortunately, we did miss Mike Tessler as he was held back and joined remotely.

As we were working on the True North strategy and diving into 2022 planning, it struck me that management teams need to be able to openly discuss contentious topics while retaining the capacity for efficient decision making. Too often executive teams have long, drawn-out discussions and decisions stay in limbo. 

This week, the TrueNorth team discussed business challenges and put together an effective plan that we believe will have a positive impact for our clients. When tackling complex issues, teams must come prepared with data and do the research so that healthy debate produces an action plan. Course corrections are a given if your plan needs fine tuning. 

The other observation is that regardless of what service you are providing, the goal is always to add value. This may sound obvious, but you need to ask the questions “Why are our customers working with us? What value are we providing?” 

And lastly, it’s always easier and more fun (!) to have these discussions in person. Stay safe! Share with us any in-person events or offsites you’ve had recently.