Organizing a seminar out of habit, without asking the right question, means risking time and money on an outcome that could have been achieved with a simple meeting. But the reverse is also true. Here’s how to decide which option is right.
How to Tell Whether Your Team Really Needs a Retreat (or Just a Good Meeting)
“We should organize a workshop on this.” We’ve all heard this phrase—and sometimes even said it ourselves—without always asking whether it was truly warranted. A workshop requires time, money, and a significant amount of organizational effort. So before setting aside an entire day and booking a venue, how can you tell whether it’s really what your team needs?
1) The first instinct: ask yourself whether a meeting is even necessary
Before discussing seminars, it is worth taking a step back. A 2022 YouGov x Comet Meetings study shows that employees spend an average of seven hours a week in meetings. Take a typical one-hour meeting with eight people around the table: that amounts to eight cumulative working hours, the equivalent of one employee’s entire workday. The same calculation applies to a seminar, only on a larger scale.
In other words, the first question is not “meeting or seminar,” but rather “does this topic really require us to get together in any form, instead of handling it asynchronously?” Once that question has been considered honestly, deciding on the format becomes much easier.
2) The unmistakable sign: the nature of the subject
A meeting is enough when the goal is to make a decision on a specific issue, share information, or coordinate short-term action. A seminar becomes necessary when the topic goes beyond a simple progress update—when it concerns strategy, vision, or something that requires perspective and time to develop collectively.
If your agenda fits into three lines and can be dealt with in an hour, you probably don't need a seminar. If, on the other hand, you're looking to rethink your direction, collectively process a difficult year, or bring something new to life, a meeting probably won't be enough.
3) The number of people affected, a misleading indicator
You might think that group size determines the format. That is partly true, but it is not the only factor. A small team of five may need a full-fledged seminar if it is going through a pivotal period, an organizational change, or a major recruitment drive. Conversely, an expanded meeting of forty people can still remain just that—a meeting—if its purpose is specific and clearly defined.
The right criterion, then, is never simply the number of participants, but the depth of what we are collectively seeking to produce.
4) What the frequency of unresolved tensions reveals
Here is an often-overlooked clue. If the same disagreements keep resurfacing meeting after meeting without ever truly being resolved, it is usually not an agenda problem. It is a problem of time and structure. A one-hour meeting, constrained by everyone's schedules, does not always allow enough time to fully explore a genuine disagreement.
A seminar offers precisely what a meeting cannot: time to let things be said, to move beyond “quick-fix” mode and engage in genuine dialogue. If your meetings have been going around in circles for several weeks, it may be a sign that it’s time to change the format.
5) The subtle barometer: team energy
A tired, somewhat disengaged team going from meeting to meeting with little enthusiasm often sends a signal that no dashboard can truly capture. It is not always a workload issue. Sometimes, it is simply a lack of shared moments—those moments that rebuild connections and rekindle a sense of collective motivation.
In this case, the content matters almost less than the simple act of stepping away from the daily routine together. A seminar, even without an impressive agenda, can be enough to revive a dynamic that was losing momentum.
6) The trap to avoid: the knee-jerk seminar, and its mirror image
Conversely, some teams fall into the opposite trap: organizing a retreat out of habit, simply because “it’s been a long time since we last had one,” without any real objective behind it. The result is often disappointing: an enjoyable day with no real impact, leaving people feeling that their time was wasted rather than creating a lasting memory.
The opposite problem also exists, and it is probably more common than we think: the recurring meeting that no longer serves a purpose. Shopify experienced this firsthand and took radical action in 2022, eliminating all recurring meetings involving more than three people in one fell swoop to free its teams from inefficiency. The number of meetings naturally fell again once the immediate crisis had been resolved. A good practice to keep in mind: the more you limit how often you meet, the more you maximize the value of each gathering, whether a meeting or a seminar.
7) The question to ask yourself before deciding
Ultimately, one question can help untangle most situations: are we trying to make progress on something specific, or step back and look at the bigger picture? In the first case, a meeting—even a long, in-depth one—will generally do the job, provided it has a clear objective and an appropriate working format: generating ideas, making decisions, and negotiating each call for a different approach. In the second, nothing can truly replace the change of pace that an off-site provides, with a new setting, a new rhythm, and the time to pause and reflect.
At Comet, we regularly see teams torn between the two formats, and that's perfectly normal. The line between them is never entirely clear-cut. But asking the question honestly before booking anything helps avoid a lot of disappointment.
So, meeting or seminar?
There is no wrong answer, only an honest one to be found. What matters is never the format itself, but what it actually enables a team to produce, solve, or recreate. Once that intention is clearly established, the choice often becomes obvious.
Convinced you need a seminar?
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