How to move forward by retreating: corporate adventures in the beehive state.

• Author: Thomson, Kimball

What will your next corporate retreat find you doing? Gliding down the slopes at Deer Valley? Playing shuffleboard on a Caribbean cruise liner? Riding the waves on a dory skiff in the Grand Canyon or Dinosaur National Monument? Or perhaps scribbling notes in a small classroom not far from your office building? [paragraph] The answer to this question depends in large part on your company's philosophy about the purpose of corporate retreats. "Some companies make it clear their retreat is all business by spending almost all of their time in conference rooms," says Pamela Hilton, who doubles as marketing director of the St George Area Convention & Visitors Bureau and the Dixie Center convention center in St. George. "Others signal that their retreats are recreation-oriented by not even renting out conference rooms."

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A corporate retreat may take the form of a one-day session planned, facilitated and directed entirely by company management; a multi-day event with curriculum created by experienced consultants and professional retreat planners; or a hybrid experience directed by management but with varying degrees of facilitation provided by professional conference organizers and planners.

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Regardless of the form the retreat takes, however, many experienced retreat professionals believe the best results are obtained by interspersing recreational activities with company strategy, training or planning sessions.

Combining Recreation with Instruction

"A lot of people can take executives out for fun outdoor experiences; the key is to tie those experiences back to the organization's core business objectives," says Judd Efinger, founder and CEO of Wasatch Adventure Consultants, a Park City-based provider of corporate "adventure expeditions." Wasatch Adventure Consultants uses unique recreational experiences--such as teepee-building, novel team races, mountain survival and rescue courses, and events in the 2002 Winter Olympic venues--in concert with customized workshops to create a program designed to foster creative thinking and problem-solving in clients.

"We started out as a team-building organization, but developed our curriculum in response to demand for teaching experiences," he says. "The expeditions are designed to help executives, who know their business better than anyone else, to use outdoor recreation to approach things in new ways, accessing creative parts of their brains. Then it is essential to immediately...