Why the Best Time to Level Set Is Before What's Next

There are moments in the life of an organization when the leadership team needs to stop. This doesn't mean that the company is failing, but instead that something important is changing. Growth, a new president, a shift in ownership, a major opportunity, a changing market, a new strategy, a move, an acquisition, a new generation stepping into leadership — these are all moments that ask more of the people at the top.

This is when an executive offsite can become one of the most valuable investments a leadership team makes. And I'm not talking about moving the regular executive meeting to a hotel and calling it a retreat. I'm talking about creating real space for leaders to get out of the business long enough to ask a more important question: Who do we need to be together for what's next?

This is what leadership team development actually means. Not a one-off training event, but a deliberate process of building the operating system the people at the top run on together.

AB&I Foundry taught me a great deal about this. The company had been in business for more than 125 years. An organization doesn't survive that long without resilience, adaptability, and a great deal of institutional knowledge. But longevity doesn't make a company immune to the need for change. When Michael Lowe stepped into leadership, the organization had reached a moment when the senior team needed to operate differently. Seven leaders came together for what became a DeepAlignment™ Executive Offsite, and the work began with the leadership system itself.

We weren't there to write a strategic plan for them. We were looking at how the leaders worked together, what they were collectively responsible for, what they expected from one another, where energy was getting lost, and what the organization now required of them. Those questions may sound relational, but they are deeply operational. Every strategy eventually has to travel through human beings. If the people leading the organization are not aligned in how they communicate, make decisions, create accountability, and work across functions, the strategy gets diluted before it ever reaches the rest of the company.

This is one of the ideas at the center of Ignite Culture. Culture begins with what leaders model, reward, tolerate, reinforce, and repeat. Employees watch what happens when someone disagrees with a senior leader. They notice whether executives protect their functions or optimize for the enterprise. They notice whether commitments mean anything. They notice who can make decisions, what gets tolerated, and whether the values on the wall survive when business gets difficult.

At AB&I, that work did not remain with seven executives. Over the following 18 months, approximately 250 employees participated in DeepAlignment™ experiences. What began as a leadership alignment workshop for seven people started to move through the organization.

Then another question emerged: Why does this business really exist? On the surface, AB&I manufactured pipe. That was accurate, but incomplete. When 25 cross-functional leaders came together to think more deeply, the larger contribution became clear: their work helped create clean and safe communities where families could thrive. That is a very different relationship to work. One statement describes what the company produces. The other describes why the work matters.

That is what I call Ultimate Intent. Ultimate Intent is bigger than mission. It is the larger reason the enterprise exists — the outcome, contribution, or possibility the organization is ultimately here to create. Once leaders understand that, decisions, priorities, culture, and strategy can begin pointing toward the same horizon.

Of course, inspiration alone is never enough. This is where the work in Align Culture continues the conversation started in Ignite Culture. Leaders can have breakthroughs during an Executive Offsite. They can make powerful commitments and see one another differently. But if they return to structures that reinforce the old way of working, the old way usually wins. Culture has to live in the organizational architecture: decision rights, accountability, communication, hiring, onboarding, meetings, goals, measures, and the way work actually gets done.

The results at AB&I were significant. Within three years, the company reported an 11% increase in EBITDA, seven consecutive best financial years in its 125-year history, a 40% improvement in Employee Net Promoter Score, a 6% reduction in safety incidents, less downtime, and stronger cross-functional collaboration. Those numbers matter. But the retreat itself did not create those results. People did. The offsite helped create the conditions for people to operate differently, and the organization continued reinforcing those changes afterward.

The lesson I take from this story today is not that leaders should wait until conditions become difficult. It is almost the opposite. Healthy organizations should level set before challenge becomes dysfunction. Growth creates complexity. Leadership transitions create uncertainty. Acquisitions introduce new ways of working. Opportunity creates competing priorities. None of that means an organization is broken. It means the system is being asked to evolve.

Some of the best moments for an Executive Offsite are exactly these moments: a new CEO or president, a succession, rapid growth, a major launch, a move, a change in ownership, a new generation of a family business, or a significant market opportunity. Sometimes the trigger is even simpler: a good leadership team realizes it is capable of more together.

A powerful Executive Offsite should leave leaders understanding one another differently. They should know what they can count on from each other. They should have clearer language for navigating differences, stronger ownership of the enterprise as a whole, and greater clarity about what the organization needs from them now.

The most useful question is not, "Did we have a good retreat?"

It is, "Are we better prepared to lead what comes next?"

That is the point of level-setting. The future will put pressure on your leadership system. Growth will. Opportunity will. Change will. Success will.

The smartest time to prepare for that pressure is while the possibilities are still wide open.

KeenAlignment designs immersive Executive Offsites for capable leadership teams preparing for what's next. If you're interested in a Level Set for your leadership team, check out our DeepAlignment™ Retreat! And if you're thinking bigger than one offsite, our leadership team development work builds on this same foundation across the whole organization.

To your growth!

Margaret Graziano