Creating Focus is a Multidimensional Problem

I talked about running multiple online workshops in parallel, and some people told me that I should limit my WIP. Ok, let's talk about limiting WIP of online courses.

I do face-2-face workshops in two consecutive days. I split online workshops into four half-days with at least one day of break in between, which means an online workshop spans over ~1.5 weeks. Because of the fragmented nature, the throughput of online workshops goes down - I'd need 3 weeks for two workshops which I could do in 1 week in the f2f world. Although I'm not so interested in this example's financial part, that would be the economic argument.

I am more interested in the focus part: WIP limits is one way of creating focus. However, by limiting the number of online workshops to 1, I achieve the exact opposite: NO FOCUS! I'd do a half-day session then I've 1.5 days off, and then I'd do the next half-day session. As there is a reasonably high demand for my workshops, I would need to spread this way of working over the entire year. This means I can't focus on any topic that would require a more extended focus than just a day. That doesn't make any sense! So 1 is certainly not the right WIP limit for online workshops.

It would be much better to run similar workshops multiple times in parallel. That would allow me to focus on delivering workshops for 2-3 weeks. After it, I have another 2-3 weeks of focus on non-workshop related topics.

Creating focus is a multidimensional problem, and most of the time it's not good advice if you hear "just limit your WIP". (1) There are multiple ways to create focus. (2) You need to create focus around the right entity. (3) Most importantly: You need to understand your situation and what you want to achieve.

That would be the #FlightLevels approach to this topic :)