Workshop design misconceptions
“Why do you need so much time to prepare this workshop?”, “What is taking you so long?”, “What is so difficult about designing a workshop?”. These are just some of the questions I heard from my clients (internal or external) and colleagues with regards to my work. And I will repeat again! Designing a workshop is not a piece of cake. Many underestimate or simply don’t understand that effort. I was one of those people at the beginning of my workshop design & facilitation journey. Designing a productive and effective workshop is a multidisciplinary project that draws from different disciplines.
In this text, I want to share with you two things. First of all, I want to talk about some of the misconceptions about workshop design which I identified in the last couple of years. In parallel to that, I will propose tips for how to address these myths in order to improve the final product of your design and the experience of working on it.
Misconceptions
During my professional career, I designed/co-designed and facilitated a 3-digit number of different types of workshops. And I mean workshop, not meetings. The number of misconceptions about the workshop design and facilitation that I encountered is huge. The ones I am describing below are only examples of the most common.
Designing a workshop is a task
I started my facilitation journey about 5 years ago. The beginning was not easy. I had to build my knowledge, extend my skill set, experience, but also credibility and brand as a skilled facilitator and workshop/meeting designer. One of the first lessons I learned was that designing a workshop is a project, not a task. Perhaps this is a no-brainer for many of you, however, it took me some time to realize it.
A task is a single thing that you can do in one session, a single unit of work. For example, a task might be throwing away the garbage or counting the number of chairs in the meeting room. A project is bigger and includes multiple tasks. It might be designing and implementing the garage segregation system, or designing the meeting room. The number of people involved for a task and for a project will also be different. Tasks are smaller pieces of work that can be assigned to one person. You might not need to involve others in getting the task done. On the other hand, projects are bigger initiatives often involving many team members, other stakeholders and can be complex in their delivery. I am sure I don’t need to translate what does it mean in practice for the workshop design. Therefore, tasks and projects require different approaches. We are increasing the risk of failure if we mismatch the approaches.
PMI (Project Management Institute) lists 10 areas from which project management is drawing — see the picture above. From my point of view, all those areas are applying to the workshop design field. Perhaps not in an orthodox way but still…
What does it mean in practice? If approach workshop design as a project a logical consequence will be a list of many tasks that have to be done in order to complete that project. Right? The above list can serve you as a check-list for defining your to do it. For instance, I would ask myself: What do I need to do in terms of stakeholder management? How will I manage the communication about the workshop? Do I need to buy anything for the workshop? etc.
By approaching workshop design as it was a task you are increasing the risk of developing a concept that won’t meet the stakeholders’ expectations. You are not taking a holistic perspective and therefore potentially overlooking important factors that are impacting your design.
Tips:
- Keep in mind the complexity of this endeavor.
- Engage all your skills, knowledge and experience.
- Break this project into smaller, more manageable chunks/pieces.
Shorter means easier
This myth is pretty much logical. A shorter workshop should be easier to design and facilitate than a multiple day workshop, right? Hell no! You cannot work on that assumption. There are some short workshop formats that indeed are quite straightforward (for instance some of the retrospectives). However, this is not a rule. Personally I find shorter formats more difficult to design. Time is very limited and expectations are (usually) very high. Juggling between those two elements isn’t easy at all. Time is a precious resource. In the context of workshop design, it’s also an obstacle that is almost impossible to overcome. Certain processes simply need time and you cannot expect something to just happen if you don’t give it a time to emerge. When designing a short format I am always struggling with adjusting the plan on the go. First of all, because the pace of such a workshop is so fast that we cannot effort gathering ongoing feedback. In addition to that, even if you get that feedback there is no time left to accommodate that change/adjustment. On top of that, in the majority of the cases, you learn about the problem/need for change only after the short workshop and this is obviously too late.
Tips
Do not underestimate the short formats. The following tips are applicable for short and long formats. However, they are particularly important for short ones:
- Manage the sponsor’s expectations — by sponsor I mean the person who is paying for your time and/or asked you to design and facilitate the workshop. Make it clear to her/him what is realistic to be achieved within the given time.
- Decide on the priorities for the expected outcomes — it is critical to know that in case you need to adjust/make changes at the spot.
- Explore different options and scenarios — or try to prepare for unexpected. If something goes wrong you have some potential “off the shelf” solutions available.
- Manage participants’ expectations — ideally, do it upfront through communication, communication, communication... In a short workshop, you won’t have time for it. I learned about that yesterday again :)
One size fits all
“Could you please share with me the agenda from this workshop? I would like to do it with my team.” Are you familiar with these words? Perhaps they came out of your mouth? For sure, I did ask this question at the beginning of my facilitation adventure. And now, I am hearing it a lot. Don’t get me wrong, I am always happy to share that. However, whenever I am sharing the workshop agenda with someone I am making sure that someone is not using it with a copy-paste approach.
A workshop is a very complex event that is impacted by the infinite (probably!) number of factors. It’s impossible to replicate 1:1 the same session. Don’t get into that trap. Again, there are concepts which will bring you very close to the idea of one size fits all but you need to very careful when you decide to employ them.
Tips
- Know your audience — try to learn as much as possible about the participants of the workshop: where they work, what is their role, what is their work context, cultural background, experience, etc.
- Use common sense — and don’t be afraid of making some changes to adapt the concept to your needs. Sometimes a little change can move the needle of future success.
- Be aware of hidden agendas — this refers to you as a workshop designer but also to the participants of the workshop. Way too often we are trying to kill to birds with one stone. Identify those moments will help you to manage the expectations.
To finish, let me reassure you that my goal in this text was NOT to discourage you from the workshop design and facilitation profession. I believe that workshop design and facilitation are very rewarding and fulfilling. Also, I will dare to call those skills universal. Nowadays it’s almost impossible to avoid collaboration and/or co-creation. A workshop is one of the formats that can enable a productive co-creation process and creative problem-solving. Knowing how to design a good workshop might be your business superpower!
I hope that misconceptions I shared above and some tips will help you master that skill.
