Three strategies to lead a productive workshop

In the past two weeks, we’ve explored how to determine the best forum to reach your audience and what to do to prepare for a meeting or workshop.

Today, we will consider three strategies to ensure you lead a productive workshop for your team and stakeholders.

Brainstorming/Discussion

If the objective of your session is to facilitate a discussion with the participants, there are some things you want to consider to ensure everyone's voice is heard.

Example:

One way to facilitate a productive discussion that gives everyone a chance to share their thoughts in an open and honest way is by setting some ground rules.? In sessions I've led at IBM, we’ve used what we call “Free Talk Rules.”

It’s simple... you can only share your thoughts on a topic or a pre-read if you start your sentence with one of four phrases:

1.??????? I love…

2.??????? I am concerned about…

3.??????? I disagree with…

4.??????? I can help by…

Benefits:

This is an effective way to get to the core of people’s reactions to a certain topic or plan, while also giving them permission to bring up their concerns and disagreements in a productive and non-offensive manner.

What to watch for:

If there tend to be participants in your session that speak more than listen, it may be best to have each attendee write out their four phrases on individual sticky notes before placing them on respective whiteboards.?

You can then summarize and group the stickies into categories and review as a group.? This way, everyone gets their thoughts documented and heard for a more genuine and equal conversation.

Concept/Workstream Design

If the objective of your session is to create or design a new workstream or concept, you would greatly benefit from using Enterpise Design Thinking methodology.?

Example:

While there are many examples of design activities you can do, I suggest starting with defining your target users and value proposition. ?Here are some key steps to get started:

1. Create or refine your Challenge Statement:? “How might we improve the experience of [target users], allowing them to [expected outcome]?
2. Empathy mapping: Once you’ve identified your target user, you should take the time to lay out their Needs, Goals, Influences, and Painpoints.
3. Ideation/Concept Creation:? And now that you know your target user’s painpoints, you can write down as many ideas – big or small – on how you could possibly address those painpoints with the solution you will create.
4. Pick your solution:? Take each of those ideas and put them on a scale of high to low in terms of feasibility and impact.

5. Pull it all together to create the Value Proposition:? Once you’ve gone through steps 1-4, you will now have your Who, What and Wow to create your “Value Prop Statement.”

Benefits:

By leveraging Design Thinking exercises, you ensure concepts are being designed specifically with your target user’s needs in mind.? This makes it easier to show the value and make the business case to get necessary buy-in from key stakeholders to move forward.

What to watch for:

When designing a solution for a specific user, you should ensure you are getting input and feedback from those users throughout your design process.? The worst mistake some teams make is designing a concept they assume will address what the user needs without actually asking them.

Pre-Mortem/Wall of Excuses

If the objective of your session is to mitigate any risks to your project, conducting a pre-mortem exercise can help identify obstacles that need to be addressed.

Example:

There are several ways to run a pre-mortem, but my favorite is to add a different spin on it… instead of risks, call them excuses. You do this by asking the team to “imagine yourselves at the end of a failed project, what are the excuses you would make for why it failed?”

You can then have them list out the excuses along with what actions they can take now to ensure those excuses will not be possible.

Benefits:

By calling these risks “excuses,” it makes the team more optimistic that just because the issues exist, doesn't mean they will be fatal to the overall mission. It also is a motivator for the team to get creative in coming up with solutions to these problems before they slow down your project.

What to watch for:

These exercises are many times critical to the success of a project, and the most important step is that all the risks or excuses are well-documented with an associated mitigation action. You will want to make sure clear owners and target dates are defined with follow-on working sessions scheduled as needed.

Now that we've covered the Purpose, Pre-Read, and "The Meeting," you are ready to execute the plan that was created during your time together.