Retreat To Forward

Today, my organisation Goh Keng Swee Command & Staff College had our Executive Group Retreat V at the lush confines of Sembawang Country Club. This is an annual affair where our College’s Executive Group gets together to brainstorm, discuss and crystallise elements such as our VMV (Vision, Mission & Values), Strategic Action Plans and Workplan Objectives both past and future.

Overall, it was a great session and I personally enjoyed getting to know my colleagues better; being relatively new, just six months into the job here. It couldn’t have started better with an excellent lunch of chicken rice buffet. Now I’ve never experienced a chicken rice buffet before, but being a big lover of the dish, you could say I was more or less salivating at the prospect. The chicken rice turned out to be excellent and I think I must have had about 4 plates’ worth of it, plus the ginger, chilli and soup made it a truly gastronomic experience. I was kinda worried I would have problems staying awake after lunch but due to the excellent programme and flow of the retreat, I didn’t have any problems staying awake (didn’t even need coffee).

I would like to share my take-aways from the Retreat using the 3-2-1 concept, meaning 3 things I gained from the event, 2 things I thought were very important and 1 thing I will do after the Retreat ends.

3- Personally, I got to know my colleagues better in an open, informal sharing environment, which can of course be different from the atmospherics of the daily grind at work. Through the discussions and presentations, I also understood my organisation a bit better. Some of the processes were on suspicion mode in my mind, but the Retreat helped to affirm some of those. I also thought it was nice how the three breakout groups seemed to be synonymous in some of the key problems identified, and also the proposed solutioning involved. It showed that all of us are more or less on the same page in terms of how we view the organisation.

2 – I liked the open, mature sharing environment, where people spoke freely and constructive arguments were debated and built upon. This is of course an essential ingredient in any successful Retreat. I also noticed how the College staff put the organisation ahead of themselves, as in thinking of how to improve the organisation as a whole as compared to a “What’s in it for me” kind of attitude. I also thought that it was important that we reflected and recognised our impressive achievements of the previous workyear (Apr 12 – Mar 13), while discussing and crystallising the key objectives of the current workyear (Apr 13 – Mar 14).

1 – I personally hope to undertake the project of Pedagogical Review for the College. I think this is an important step in the continuing evolution of the College to meet the training & education needs of our students. This would also tie in neatly with the evergreen Curriculum Review and Learning Environment facets of the College.