Board meeting

There is a particular kind of silence that settles over a management team in the fourth hour of an offsite. Everyone is present. Everyone is participating. The slides are good, the facilitator is competent, the coffee is hot. And nothing is being said.

Not because anyone is hiding something. Because the room does not allow it. A boardroom is built for decisions, and decisions require positions, and positions require certainty. The doubt about the direction, the conflict that two directors have been quietly routing around for a year, the reservation about the acquisition that nobody wants to be the first to voice – none of that has anywhere to go in a room like that. It follows everyone home and comes back on Monday.

Insight does not happen in the boardroom

It happens somewhere else entirely: at the point where people genuinely relax and genuinely trust each other. That is not a soft observation. It is the operating condition for everything a leadership team is supposed to do together.

This is the premise behind our Campfire Sessions. Four people, two days, and a fire on the Ligurian coast. No exercises. No ropes. No bootcamp. A fire, good company, and enough time for the things that do not fit in a meeting to finally be said out loud.

What participants take home is not a framework. It is an accurate picture of what is actually going on in their team – as opposed to what gets reported.

Why a military background matters here

The sessions are moderated by a former colonel of the Netherlands Marine Corps, a veteran of multiple deployments, who has spent a career on high-performance teams, mission command and leadership.

That background is not decoration, and it is not there to suggest anything strenuous. It is there because of one idea.

Mission command works on a single condition. You give your people the objective and your intent, and you do not give them the instructions. That is the whole doctrine, and it is the reason small units can operate at speed in conditions no plan survives.

But it only functions if you know, precisely, what your people can carry and where they come apart. Not their job titles. Not their appraisals. What they can actually do, and what they will not say they cannot do.

In an operational theatre, getting that judgement wrong costs lives. In an organisation, it costs years – in stalled initiatives, in talent that quietly leaves, in a strategy that everyone nods at and nobody owns.

Around a fire, that judgement becomes possible. People talk differently in the dark, with something to look at that is not a screen and not each other. Stories come out. And in the stories, the barriers become visible.

Four people

Four is the right number: typically the full executive team – CEO, COO, CFO, CCO. Not a delegation, not a department, not a conference.

Four is also a limit rather than a preference. Add more chairs and the conversation changes character. It becomes an audience, then a panel, then a meeting with better scenery. At four, everyone speaks, and nobody gets to sit it out.

Where, and who arranges it

Alassio, on the Italian Riviera. An inspiring setting, thick with history and with plenty to do in the present. Well connected: the regional airport at Villanova d’Albenga is twenty minutes away and equipped for private aviation, with scheduled flights via Genoa (sixty minutes by road) or Nice (seventy).

We have been organising inspiring gatherings since 1984. Our company is led by a former Marine Corps officer and veteran as well – which is less of a coincidence than it sounds. It means there is never a gap between what the session requires and what the organisation delivers. Two marines, one language.

Everything from arrival to departure is arranged, and arranged to measure. That is not a service detail; it is a precondition. Relaxation only sets in once nothing is asking for your attention any more.

Practical

Minimum two days, excluding travel. Four participants. Dates by arrangement.

Indicative: € 8,750 for the two-day programme. Travel, accommodation and activities are quoted separately and tailored to your group. Larger groups require an adapted programme and a new quotation.

Come and be surprised at the fire.