CFYE: Strategic Alignment Offsite
Overview
The Challenge Fund for Youth Employment (CFYE) is a multi-year initiative funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, working to shape a brighter future for 230,000 young women and men in emerging markets.
CFYE supports demand-driven job programmes across 11 countries. They approached us to facilitate a strategic session that would strengthen their collaborative networks and build team cohesion across very different cultural contexts.
Challenge
The annual CFYE team retreat brings together 60 members from across 11 countries. The team wanted the event to be more than fun and engaging. They wanted to align strategic priorities and improve how they work together.
Specifically, they were eager to clarify their collective goals for the next 18 months and understand each other's roles better, since they constantly navigate competing priorities across different parts of the Fund.
Approach
We designed a session focused on integrated delivery, strategic prioritisation, and role clarity, structured in three parts to maximise reflection, alignment, and action.
Reflect on delivery
Participants shared country-level successes and challenges, opening honest dialogue about what works and what to improve.
Prioritise together
Through facilitated prompts, each team built a Priority Matrix that mapped their most critical priorities and aligned them to the Fund's goals.
Align on roles
In workstream teams, participants used Start, Stop, Continue to clarify roles, responsibilities, and cross-functional collaboration, and to generate concrete actions.
Outcome
- A clear path forward. The team left the retreat aligned on priorities for the next 18 months and readier to tackle what was ahead as one cohesive unit.
- Shared role clarity across workstreams, so people understood who owns what across a distributed, multi-country team.
- Visual results to keep. The session was captured in materials the team could carry back and use, not just a good day in the room.