Make Workshops Work

We fundamentally believe that effective gatherings of the right people at the right time are key for almost every business.  However, many organisations and many people experience workshop fatigue. Partly because they often drain you physically and mentally (which is why we incorporate invigorating wellness practices into ours), but partly also because they often feel like a waste of time.

Everybody comes together to work for a day or more, sometimes great solutions are arrived at, sometimes not. The problem is that even when they are, they are often then left to gather dust in the corner. Any momentum for the solution arrived at in the workshop is quickly lost. Why? Because we work so hard to put together a workshop that we forget to plan for what happens afterwards, and all our hard work ends up being for nothing. 

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To combat this, we follow a (fairly simple) set of principles to ensure the output of the workshop doesn’t become a distant memory, but instead has the maximum positive impact on your company.

  1. Align clearly to the objectives for the day. Having too many, or, on the flipside, only thinking about one thing in isolation, makes them less actionable.

  2. Have the right combination of do-ers and deciders in the room. The deciders need to sign off on what’s going to happen, but the do-ers equally need to know what’s expected of them.

  3. Produce an action plan and assign ownership. Once a solution has been reached (a shiny new purpose or a brilliant campaign for the year), we work with our key client or clients to put together a high level plan of action and assign each task to an individual.  Accountability is key to success. This can either happen straight after the workshop, or as a follow-up shortly afterwards.

  4. Gather a smaller version of the workshop group regularly until the output is firmly on its way from idea to reality. We are happy to facilitate these regroups or work with you to figure out the frequency.

  5. Don’t have too many workshops, and don’t make them too big! Too many workshops makes them seem less important and devalues purposeful gatherings within the organisation. 

If you think your team is suffering from a bit of workshop fatigue, get in touch. We’d love to help you fall in love with productive group work again.