Open the Planning Session With a Shared Frame. Leave With Decisions, Not a Binder.
Chris Sund is a strategic planning retreat speaker and facilitator who opens or anchors your planning session with a keynote, or a half-day or full-day in-person workshop. He is a sitting President and COO, so he plans with an executive team himself and knows where planning sessions go wrong: plenty of good ideas, nothing that gets smaller and no owner for anything. Your team builds the plan. Chris gets the room ready to make real decisions about it.
Where Chris Fits in a Planning Retreat
Chris does not take over your planning process. He opens it or anchors it, so the people who own the plan spend the retreat deciding instead of warming up.
Opening Keynote
A 45 to 60 minute keynote at the start of day one that gives the room a shared language for the planning work that follows.
Half-Day Workshop
The keynote plus a facilitated working session where leaders apply the frame to the priorities on your agenda and name owners.
Full-Day Workshop
Chris leads the working sessions across the day so your executives can take part in the planning instead of running the room.
Breakout
For a larger planning meeting with concurrent sessions: a focused breakout on ownership and turning priorities into action.
Why Planning Retreats Produce Binders Instead of Change
Most planning retreats are good at the thinking. The group argues about the market, agrees on a direction and writes it down. The part that fails comes afterward, when nothing actually moves.
In his article Your Strategy Is Whatever You Are Actually Funding, Chris puts it plainly: a strategy has become real when you can point to something that used to receive attention and no longer does. If you cannot name what got smaller, nothing has changed yet. His planning sessions are built around that idea.
- Describe the strategy your budget, headcount and calendars already imply
- Make every new priority name what it comes out of
- Attach a real cost early: a deadline, money committed or a public commitment
- Review where resources go separately from how each area performed
- Decisions that leave the room with one owner and a date
- A shared language for ownership the whole leadership team keeps using
A Plan Is a Commitment, Not an Intention
Chris tells this one from his own life. For years he said he was going to write a book, and every reason to push it down the list was legitimate. What changed was not motivation. He set a deadline, put money into working with a publisher and told the people around him. The book got written late at night, some nights one paragraph at a time, because the resources had already moved.
That is the mechanism he brings into a planning room: commitments made early that take the decision out of your hands on the days nobody feels like it. When the plan depends on people, he adds a second question from how he promotes. The interview was last year, so who on your team is already doing the work this plan needs?
Opening Keynote
The shared frame for the day: ownership, honest resource choices and what a real decision looks like.
Where We Really Are
Leaders look at where time, money and people actually went last year before debating where to go next.
Choose and Trade Off
Each priority names its source. Something gets smaller so the thing that matters can get bigger.
Owners and Dates
Every decision leaves with one owner and a date, and the follow-up is on the calendar before anyone leaves.
For full one-day and two-day schedules with timings, see the leadership retreat agenda template.
Proof: Leadership Rooms Chris Has Led
Chris runs his interactive Leadership Exchange for leadership groups, including the Greater Omaha Chamber and the WSHMMA Annual Conference, and he led the Leadership Experience session at the California Staffing Professionals conference.
Chris’s presentation for the Leadership Exchange didn’t feel like another polished leadership talk — he made it a conversation that was engaging, honest, and backed by personal experience. What stuck out was how he tied big leadership ideas to the things we actually deal with day to day. That vulnerability is rare, and it made the whole session stick.
Chris brought exactly the kind of energy and engagement we wanted for our WSHMMA Annual Conference. Speaking to more than 200 healthcare supply chain professionals with a wide range of experience levels, he connected with the entire room. He didn’t simply stand on stage and talk about leadership — he created an experience. His Leadership Exchange had attendees talking, laughing, reflecting, and learning from one another. He knows how to read a room and turn a traditional conference session into something people actually participate in and remember.
Chris did an awesome job facilitating the Leadership Exchange. He created a really open, comfortable environment where great conversations just naturally happened. Walked away with fresh perspectives and ideas I’m actually going to use. Highly recommend any opportunity to learn from him!
Programs for Planning Retreats
Each one is customized on a planning call with whoever owns the retreat agenda.
You Are Capable of More: Leadership
The core program for a leadership team deciding what it will own next year and the habits that get it there.
Your Team Is Capable of More
For executive teams working on trust, accountability and how they operate together once the plan is set.
The Leadership Exchange
The interactive, discussion-driven workshop that gets leaders talking honestly with each other instead of waiting for the slides.
Growing Revenue
For planning sessions centered on growth: what it took to grow Uniti Med 10x in revenue in two years, and why growth fails without leadership, ownership and culture.
Who Books a Strategic Planning Retreat Speaker
Related pages: Executive Retreat Speaker · Leadership Retreat Agenda · Nonprofit and Board Retreat Speaker · Healthcare Leadership Retreat Speaker · Leadership Workshop Facilitator · Revenue Growth Speaker · Team Offsite Speaker · Leadership Summit Speaker
What Planning Retreat Organizers Ask
Does Chris facilitate our whole strategic planning process?
No. Chris is a speaker and workshop facilitator, not a strategy consultant. He opens or anchors your planning retreat with a keynote, or a half-day or full-day in-person workshop. Your leadership team, or whoever owns your planning process, builds the plan. His job is to get the room ready to make honest decisions about it.
When should the keynote happen at a planning retreat?
First. A keynote works best as the opening session on day one, while energy is high, so its frame carries into every working session after it. See the leadership retreat agenda template for timings.
What is the difference between a keynote and a workshop for a planning retreat?
A keynote gives the whole group a shared language in 45 to 60 minutes. A half-day or full-day workshop adds facilitated working time where leaders apply that language to the priorities on your agenda and leave with owners and dates. All workshops are delivered in person.
How is this different from the executive retreat page?
The executive retreat speaker page covers leadership and executive retreats of every kind. This page is for retreats where the main agenda item is the plan itself: priorities, trade-offs and who owns what.
Can the session be built around our planning agenda?
Yes. Chris holds a planning call with whoever owns the retreat agenda, asks which decisions the group has to make and where it usually gets stuck, and builds the session around that.
You Are Capable of More
The bestselling book behind the program, an Amazon bestseller and the 2026 Paris Book Festival winner in the How-To category. Its first principle, own it every day, is the starting point for any plan: owning the outcome, not just the task.
A leadership team can read it before the retreat so everyone arrives with the same starting point, and the free book discussion guide works as pre-work. Signed copies are available for every attendee.
A Sitting COO Who Has to Execute the Plan
Chris is President & COO of Uniti Med and GQR Healthcare and COO of Nebula. He helped grow Uniti Med 10x in revenue in two years, earning #3 on the Inc. Regionals list of the fastest-growing companies in the Midwest, and the organization earned Fortune Best Workplaces recognition and Best Places to Work recognition across multiple programs. He has had to turn plans into budgets, hires and hard conversations, which is the part most retreats skip.
He is the bestselling, award-winning author of You Are Capable of More, an Amazon bestseller and the 2026 Paris Book Festival How-To winner, and he writes for Forbes and Inc. Audiences have also seen him on WOWT, 10/11, WFLA’s Bloom, KXAN’s Studio 512, KCTV5, WOI and Dakota News Now.
Stages I Have Spoken On
Leadership Sessions Chris Has Run
Leadership exchanges, workshops and leadership-focused sessions for executives and emerging leaders.
Greater Omaha ChamberLeadership ExchangeCalifornia Staffing ProfessionalsLeadership ExperienceAuthentica Connect & InspireConferenceNAHCR 2026 Annual ConferenceMilwaukee, WIDisruptHR Omaha 6.0Stop Building FencesMICA Fall Business Meetings2026Also: Executive Retreats · Leadership Workshops · All Corporate Events · See all speaking engagements →
Bring Chris to Your Strategic Planning Retreat
Tell Chris who will be in the room, how long you have and what the plan has to decide. You’ll get a fast, straight answer on fit and availability.
Check AvailabilityResponse within one business day · Speaker kit, bio & headshots