Retreat to Progress

Space for the work that can’t be done alone.

Five to eight sustainability and climate leaders from different organizations, three days away together, around a problem no single organization can solve. You leave with next moves for your own situation, commitments that stick, and a handful of people to call when it gets hard.

Book a conversation or write to me

Cohort: 5–8 senior leaders
Format: 3 days, residential
Location: Set with each cohort
Places: By invitation

The part that depends on everyone else

You’ve set the targets, and the reporting runs. What’s left is mostly the part that depends on someone else moving too: a supplier, a competitor, your whole industry.

Those problems rarely get discussed honestly anywhere. Not on a conference panel with pre-approved questions, and not inside your own organization, where the incentives pull the other way.

Retreat to Progress puts you at a table with the few people who face the same problem from inside a different company. It runs under rules that make it safe to say what’s going on.

This is where Symbiotic Leadership, the thinking behind all my work, starts: individual thriving, economic performance and planetary health are one system. Your company’s part of that system rarely moves on its own.

Built for the months after

Most retreats feel good in the moment and change little afterwards. Retreat to Progress is designed around what happens once you’re back at your desk.

Next moves

Specific steps for your situation, tested by people who’ve faced the same problem from a different seat.

Commitments

One decision, one experiment, one relationship move. Witnessed by your peers, with a timeline.

Follow-through

A 1:1 check-in within two weeks, and peers you can call when it gets hard, long after the three days.

A shared tool shed

What each cohort works out goes into a shared tool shed, so the next person facing the same problem doesn’t start from zero. Gatherings across cohorts are part of the design.

Outside the structures that make honesty hard

Each cohort forms around a shared problem space: five to eight senior leaders with the mandate to act, willing to say the thing they can’t say inside their own organization. The group is curated so the conversation stays pre-competitive. The Chatham House rule applies throughout, everyone signs a participation agreement before arriving, and corporate badges stay at the door.

I call this a liminal space: in-between ground, outside any one organization’s reporting lines, where the full complexity of a problem can be named.

The days have two rhythms. Structured sessions are shaped by what participants bring. Unstructured time covers shared meals, walks, and the conversation that carries on after a session ends. In my experience the second rhythm is where the most useful exchange happens, so it gets real time in the schedule.

I host, usually together with a co-convener from the cohort’s own field. My job is to hold the structure and keep the conversation honest. What to do about your problem stays yours to decide, with help from people who know it from the inside.

Why I built this

At one of the UN COPs I was early for an evening reception, wandering the rooms of an inappropriately luxurious villa. Another guest was equally lost, and with time to kill we started talking. Knowing nothing about each other’s organizations, we went straight to what each of us believed was truly at the heart of the environmental crisis. We’ve worked together for over two years since, in a non-profit built around the structural deficits we named that evening.

It happened again at a climate summit, at a packed restaurant where a stranger let us join his table. He ran the local office of a major financial institution and had nothing to do with the summit. What he told me from inside that industry changed my mind about why things stay stuck, and how they get unstuck. Years later, we’re still honest sounding boards for each other.

Neither conversation was on any agenda.

Room after room, across sectors, organizations, and standards bodies, the pattern held. Committed leaders, with real mandates and a real desire to make a difference, stuck in surface-level conversation. The exchange that mattered happened outside. Accidentally. If you got lucky.

What if we designed for these lucky accidents?

I want a different kind of space to exist. Retreat to Progress is my attempt at building one.

— Alexander

Dr. Alexander Schmidt, founder of Symbiosis Leadership AB

Practicalities

Dates: Cohorts form through the year. Dates are set with participants once the group is confirmed, around the sustainability calendar.
Location: Chosen with each cohort, somewhere quiet and within easy reach for the people in it. The home of Retreat to Progress is the Bohuslän coast in western Sweden, where I live.
Investment: The fee depends on the cohort’s format and venue. Sponsor-supported places may be available.

If this is the conversation you’ve been missing, let’s talk.

Places are by invitation, and a conversation is how an invitation starts. Book 25 minutes and tell me in a sentence or two what’s in the way right now. That’s what most of our first conversation will be about, and it’s how I put a cohort together around a shared problem space.

Book a conversation or write to alexander@symbiosisleadership.com

Bookings go through cal.com, which processes your name and email to schedule the call. Emails come to me directly. I use what you write only to follow up with you about the retreat, and I don’t share it. The privacy notice has the detail.