We love doing workshops, but …
… we come a long way full of mistakes and learning.
In this post we want to share our 3 major insights regarding the design of workshops we gained by facilitating round about 40 workshops in this first crazy year of our existence.
Prototype everything. Everything.
Any prototype is better than none. Just doing a sketch can clarify complex models in seconds and erases hours of discussion in circles where it´s less about context and content and more about individuals who “want to be right”. Prototypes can break through these circles leading nowhere.
A prototype
- visualizes what´s going on
- erases language and (miss)understanding issues
- enables a more in depth discussing by stepping through the details of the prototype
And, maybe most important: if people criticize certain parts of the prototype it feels more like they find fault with the prototype and less with the person who had the idea. Over time this also enables the participation of more introverted participants whose voice and valuable insight might get lost in a heated debate.
With a little more of material like cardboard, markers, tape and plasticine also haptical, senseful play can fuel the debate what makes even the tryest of all topics fun to think about. See some examples below:
And because we found it quite hard in the beginning to get an idea what prototyping materials we should provide participants with we´ll share our material list with you. This set of materials was put together for a small team of 4 people and can be downloaded right here.
Besides this analog prototyping participants of course could also use technical tools and software. For example you could also do quick sketches in powerpoint/ keynote, scribblerToo or an editor of your choice, what makes sense especially in coding. Disadvantage: in most cases this is less collaborative. So for local teams we strongly recommend analog prototyping ´cause it´s way more interactive and very often simply more fun too.
Plan for improvisation.
In the conceptual phase before a workshop it can be quite a tough job to decide how much fixed structure you want to “force” the participants into. We design and facilitate workshop so it´s obviously part of our job to offer a structure for orientation in our workshops. This propably does not sound like a big thing but if you´ve ever experienced a bunch of arty designers blocking any progress by discussing even the smallest little aspect of how to go on or if you ever stood in front of an IT department of an insurance company experiencing first hand what it can take to provoke 100 analytic brains into “creative mode” you´ll probably understand the importance of adapting the concept to the target group.
In 9 out of 10 cases the only problem is: we don´t know our target group and believe me: “IT department” isn´t a helpfully defined target group.
Because we almost never know the people we´ll be working with in the workshop upfront, we developed a “plan for improvisation”: a way to tailor a workshop for a more or less unknown audience. Roughly this means to always have a backup plan: we prepare helpful questions, methods, and a tight, detailed running plan, but: We don´t tell anybody. We only give the participants a rough (~5-7 bullets) structure for the day but don´t go into detail too much. By not telling exactly what we plan to do we don´t have to stick completely to the plan and keep the freedom to change things while we go if necessary. So it´s not us “manipulating” the workshop participants but them “manipulating” us and we react spontaneously to the situation, setting, people, emotions, needs.
In my opinion this is only possible with an experienced team that works well together. A peek must be enough to give each other hints within the situation, too much interaction or even talking could interrupt the flow of the workshop and would leave participants with the feeling of artificiality.
This way we achieve a very subtile, but effective guidance alined with the participants needs; it´s the balance between us leading, facilitating the workshop on the one hand and listening closely and sensitively to the participants´ needs on the other hand that fuel powerful workshops.
Be yourself. Be authentic.
This might sound like a little contradiction to the above but I think without being authentic, being yourself, no social situation can be fruitful and good workshops are very social situations. So let me explain:
In my opinion it is one thing that we, the professionals, try to frame the flow of the workshop without interrupting individual and team flows of the participants like described above. But it is a very different story to fake a “we know it all” attitude following a very strange idea of professionalism, that we found quite widespread in agencies and consultancies. We think it is absolutely indispensable to be “real”, to be honest and to be open. Open about fears, needs, expectations regarding the workshop, its goals and the time spend together. This is what we expect from our costumers and this is what they can expect from us too.
I´m really keen on your insights or personal experiences in working with teams and workshops in general so please feel free to comment.
