A planning offsite should leave with three things: a draft X-matrix whose dots can be defended, a stop-doing list, and a catchball plan with dates. Most leave with a long list of priorities and a promise to tidy it up later.
In this guide
- What the offsite is for
- Before day one
- Day one: from evidence to objectives
- Day two: the vital few
- Day three: the matrix and the plan for catchball
- A worked example: what three days produced
- Facilitation rules that help
- What the offsite needs from the software
- What three days cost, and what the tool costs
- Building the matrix live in Profit.co
- Questions this article answers
Key Takeaways
- →Three outputs, not a long list: a defensible draft X-matrix, a stop-doing list, and a catchball plan with dates.
- →Breakthrough debates and target negotiations stay out. Keeping them out is what makes three days enough.
- →Open with the reflection. A room that has just agreed a bet lost is more careful about the bets it places.
- →Day two is where offsites fail. Use capacity as the cut line so the question stops being whose idea is best.
- →One session on day three, the hypothesis gate, shapes every monthly review of the coming year.
- →Record decisions live in the tool that will hold the plan. Flipcharts typed up later lose the room’s reasoning.
What the offsite is for
The offsite sits in weeks 4 and 5 of a twelve-week planning calendar. By then the reflection is done and the breakthroughs are confirmed. The offsite’s job is narrower than people usually make it: turn confirmed breakthroughs into a draft annual plan that is ready for catchball.
It is not the place to debate whether the breakthroughs are right; that happened in week 3. Nor is it the place to negotiate targets with the levels below; that is catchball. Keeping those conversations out is what makes three days enough.
Before day one
- Reflection summary sent. Every participant has read it, with verdicts on last year’s correlations.
- Breakthroughs confirmed, each with where it must be by the end of next year.
- Candidate priorities collected, each on one page: what it is, which objective it serves, who would own it, rough effort.
- Capacity figures ready. Real effort consumed by this year’s priorities, from the reflection.
- Room checked. Every primary result owner is attending at least the sessions on their objectives.
The first and last items come from elsewhere in the cycle: the summary from Hansei, the attendance list from who belongs in the planning room. An offsite that starts without them spends day one producing them, and finishes a day short.
Day one: from evidence to objectives
| Session | Purpose | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Morning 1 | Reflection: walk the verdicts, held, lost, too early, and agree the lessons | Three to five lessons the plan must reflect |
| Morning 2 | Restate the breakthroughs and their end-of-year positions | Shared picture of what next year must achieve |
| Afternoon | Draft annual objectives, working back from each breakthrough’s trajectory | Draft annual objectives with proposed targets |
End the day with annual objectives on the wall, nothing else.
Opening with the reflection sets the tone for the next two days. A room that has just agreed one of last year’s bets lost is more careful about the bets it places next.
Day two: the vital few
| Session | Purpose | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Morning 1 | Review candidate priorities against the annual objectives | Each candidate linked to at least one objective, or dropped |
| Morning 2 | Rank and cut, using capacity as the cut line | A short list of priorities |
| Afternoon 1 | Stop-doing: what ends to make room | A stop-doing list with owners and dates |
| Afternoon 2 | Capacity check: people and time per priority against real figures | Priorities confirmed or cut further |
Day two is where offsites usually fail. Every candidate has a sponsor in the room, and cutting feels personal. Using capacity as the cut line, rather than opinion, helps: the question becomes how many priorities the organization can staff, not whose idea is best. See Choosing the vital few and Stop-doing lists.
Day three: the matrix and the plan for catchball
| Session | Purpose | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Morning 1 | Correlate priorities with KPIs; grade each link | Draft correlation grid |
| Morning 2 | Gate the primary correlations: mechanism, contribution, lag window, kill signal | Primaries that pass; others downgraded |
| Afternoon 1 | Balance check against scorecard perspectives, if used | Gaps in drivers identified |
| Afternoon 2 | Catchball plan: who negotiates what with whom, round dates, escalation | Catchball plan with dates |
If the offsite ends without round dates for catchball, the plan will lock in February.
Morning 2 is the session that pays for the offsite. What each correlation has to state before it is accepted, and how the grades work, are in The X-matrix is a set of hypotheses and Primary, secondary, partial. The afternoon balance check is the balanced scorecard view of the matrix.
A worked example: what three days produced
| Output | Result |
|---|---|
| Lessons agreed on day one | 4, taken from the reflection summary |
| Annual objectives | 4, each linked to a breakthrough |
| Candidate priorities | 19 submitted, 16 linked to an objective |
| Priorities chosen | 7, cut at the capacity line |
| Stop-doing list | 5 items with owners and dates |
| Correlations | 31 drawn; 12 passed the primary gate; 9 downgraded to secondary or partial; 10 removed |
| Balance check | Learning and growth objective added |
| Catchball plan | Round 1 closes 20 November, round 2 on 1 December; escalations decided 4 December |
Illustrative offsite outputs.
The number that matters most is the correlations. Without the gate, the matrix would have locked with 31 marks, most of them strong. With it, the monthly review will watch twelve primary bets, each with a stated mechanism and kill signal. That one session on day three shapes every review of the coming year.
Facilitation rules that help
- Record decisions live, in the tool or document that will hold the plan, not on flipcharts to be typed up later.
- Use a parking lot for breakthrough debates and target negotiations. Both have their own stage.
- Give result owners the first word on correlations involving their KPIs.
- End each day with the output on screen and a quick check that the room agrees it’s complete.
In Profit.co, the draft matrix can be built during the offsite itself: objectives, priorities and KPIs on the X-matrix, correlations graded as they’re agreed, and catchball sessions opened on each objective at the end of day three. See the planning software page.
What the offsite needs from the software
The first facilitation rule is the one with a product requirement hiding inside it. “Record decisions live, in the tool that will hold the plan” is only possible if the tool can be edited at the speed of a room. Where it can’t, every offsite defaults to flipcharts and slides, and someone reconstructs the plan the following week from photographs, without the people who made the decisions.
That reconstruction is where offsite outputs quietly degrade. A correlation graded primary in the room becomes a dot on a diagram. The reason it passed the gate was spoken, not typed, so it is gone by the time the monthly review wants to know what the bet actually was.
| Session | What the tool has to do in the room | How to test it in a demo |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1, morning | Show last year’s verdicts beside this year’s blank draft | Open a closed year and a new draft side by side |
| Day 1, afternoon | Keep the breakthrough trajectory on screen while the annual target is typed | Ask what is visible at the moment a target is entered |
| Day 2, morning | Link and unlink candidates to objectives as the room ranks them | Add a priority, link it, then drop it |
| Day 2, afternoon | Hold the stop-doing list inside the plan, with owners and dates | Ask where a retired priority goes and whether it stays visible |
| Day 3, morning | Record mechanism, contribution, lag window and kill signal on each primary | Click a dot and show me what opens |
| Day 3, afternoon | Open a dated catchball thread per objective before the room leaves | Start a negotiation and set a round date |
Six sessions, six things the tool does or doesn’t do while twenty people watch.
Row 5 is the one worth insisting on when evaluating hoshin kanri software. If a correlation is only a mark on a grid, the gate has nowhere to live, and day three’s most valuable session produces nothing durable. Row 6 is next: an offsite that ends without dated catchball threads is the offsite whose plan locks in February.
What three days cost, and what the tool costs
Price the room before pricing the software. Twelve to twenty senior people for three days, plus travel and the preparation behind each candidate priority, is a substantial annual expense, and it is spent whether or not the offsite produces its three outputs. An offsite that ends in flipcharts has cost the same as one that ends in a defensible matrix.
Against that, license models vary more in shape than in size. OnStrategy lists $200 per month for unlimited users. i-nexus publishes a free Starter tier for up to five users and $28 per user per month at its Standard tier. The shape matters here because of row 5 in the table above: giving result owners access for the sessions on their objectives is free under one model and a line item under the other, and the offsite is worse when they are not in the system.
Profit.co publishes two plans, Essentials and Enterprise, quoting against modules and scale rather than a public seat rate. Hoshin Kanri sits in Essentials with OKRs and Goals, Balanced Scorecard and Strategy Roadmap, which covers two sessions of day three in particular: the balance check against scorecard perspectives, and the handover of each priority into the quarterly OKRs the delivery leads will actually run. One subscription spans the offsite and the year that follows it. What drives the cost of hoshin kanri software lists what else to total before comparing quotes.
The 30-day free trial covers a full planning season’s worth of preparation, which is enough to run a dry pass of day three on last year’s matrix before the room is booked.
Building the matrix live in Profit.co
Taken session by session, building live means day one opens with last year’s matrix and its verdicts already on screen rather than summarized onto a slide. Day two links and unlinks candidate priorities against the annual objectives as the room ranks them, with the stop-doing list held inside the plan rather than on a separate document. Day three records each primary correlation as a graded record carrying its mechanism, expected contribution, lag window and kill signal.
Then the handover. Catchball sessions open on each objective before the room leaves, with round dates set in the last afternoon, so week 6 of the calendar starts on time instead of starting with a transcription job. The monthly review cadence reads the same twelve primary bets the room gated on day three, and a live X-matrix keeps that record available a year later, when the next offsite opens with its reflection.
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Questions this article answers
Day one: reflection and annual objectives. Day two: choosing priorities, the stop-doing list and a capacity check. Day three: correlations, the hypothesis gate, a balance check and the catchball plan.
The reflection summary, confirmed breakthroughs with end-of-year positions, one-page candidate priorities, real capacity figures, and confirmation that primary result owners will attend.
Whether the breakthroughs are right, which is settled beforehand, and final targets with the levels below, which are negotiated in catchball afterwards.
Every candidate priority has a sponsor in the room, so cutting feels personal. Using real capacity figures as the cut line changes the question from whose idea is best to how many priorities can actually be staffed.
Yes, and it should be. Correlations graded while both owners are in the room keep their reasoning; a matrix typed up the following week loses the gate that day three applied.
A dated catchball plan: who negotiates what with whom, round close dates and an escalation date. Threads opened on each objective before the room leaves keep week 6 of the calendar on schedule.
