Leadership Offsite, Kanatal

The leadership team of a Gurugram-based fintech wanted three days away from screens to set its strategy for the next financial year. The brief was specific: somewhere within a day's travel of Delhi, cool in mid-June, with a room that could hold a working session for 48 people and walls they could cover in sticky notes. And no rafting — the CEO had done that offsite already. We proposed Kanatal, a hill resort above the Chamba road, roughly three hours' drive from Dehradun.

The logistics were the real work. Most of the team flew into Jolly Grant, so we timed two coach departures around the morning flights and planned a breakfast halt to break the climb. The resort's conference room had weak Wi-Fi, so we installed a dedicated line with a backup. Pre-monsoon cloud builds over the ridge most June afternoons, which meant scheduling outdoor sessions for mornings and keeping a covered deck ready for the evenings.

Sessions ran through the mornings, with a guided walk through deodar and rhododendron forest on the second day and a Garhwali dhol-damau evening on the first. On the final night, cloud rolled in an hour before dinner; we held the ridge-top setup until 7:15, the sky cleared, and the team ate under lanterns with the Garhwal range visible to the north.