Workshop Tactics

Product Information

Product description: What is your product or product category? For example, a curated set of workshop exercises. ii. the expected outcome of the opportunity (i.e., if you are successful, what will the client/team take away from this?); If you don’t have the opportunity to facilitate in the workplace but want to improve your skills, consider volunteering as a facilitator for a nonprofit you care about. It is the best way to build confidence, learn how to adapt on the fly, and test your skillset in a low-stake environment, all the while contributing to a greater cause.

It’s not just your team’s hopes and fears about a project that might surprise you; everyone will have their own unique assumptions. Some of these will be spot on, while others will be proven to be baseless as you progress. Free content is the flywheel for spreading the word about Workshop Tactics. Once the value has been found with the free content - for the right person, it becomes a no brainer to own the physical version. In selecting the right set of participants, facilitators should first ask themselves three high-level questions: The cards themselves are simple—for example, “A day at the beach," “Goldfish," or “A wizard’s hat."—but they can be used as mental triggers or starting-off points for all kinds of activities.Starting out, heading your business in a new direction, or just looking to firm up your goals? A goal-setting workshop exercise brings clarity, direction and purpose. It’s a bonding exercise for your team, and gives them a clear picture of your group priorities. Facilitator’s Note: I find it best to simply include this in the body of the event invite that you send through Outlook! For [target customer] who [statement of the need], our [product/service name] is a [product description] that [statement of benefit].

You might discover that you need to tweak some of the language or the targets themselves. You may have missed something major or included something which another part of your organisation didn’t expect or is already doing. Why we love them: The cards follow the famous SCAMPER creativity method coined by Bob Eberle. This theory assumes that all innovative breakthroughs come from at least one of these principles:Liberating Structures are built on the idea that conventional structures are either too inhibiting (e.g., presentations and status reports) or too disorganized (e.g., brainstorms). Liberating Structures are intentionally simple activities that help you get more out of your group. This doesn’t mean you can rest on your laurels. Keep an eye out for distractions and diversions. Run an OKR workshop once a quarter to re-evaluate or adjust your OKRs, or to set new ones if you have achieved the ones you were working towards. One of the most well known and undeniably useful processes for this is an OKRs workshop. Within a couple of hours, this technique creates radical focus on an objective and allows you to start actively measuring the progress you make towards it. Avoid giving advice. As a facilitator, your goal is to be as objective as possible. Think of a facilitator as a referee in a sports match, ensuring the rules are abided by so everyone has an equal chance to contribute. This position puts you in a place of authority within the room. If you give advice with statements like “I would” or “if I were you,” then the workshop output and decision making will become yours, rather than the group’s. Keep any advice oriented around the process, not around the content, and use phrases like “at this point in the process I usually recommend…” or “it could be helpful to…” Sitting through a bad pitch is rough and often comes down to a disconnect between what the speaker is saying and what they are displaying for the presentation.

To get people’s attention and keep it, we need to be counterintuitive. We need to use surprise to grab people’s attention. For our idea to endure, we must generate both interest and curiosity. We can engage people’s curiosity by systemically “opening gaps” in their knowledge — and then filling those gaps with our expertise and positioning. ThinkPak was designed based on the idea that every new invention is just a modification of something that already exists. So coming up with your next great idea is about seeing your problem in a new light. Beyond the basic cards for each section, there are also session cards that contain many cards for longer sessions that can take 3-4 hours. Time cards: Double-sided time cards that you can hold up to show how much time is remaining for a topic or activity. A full-day workshop can be daunting for both you and your audience if it’s just you and your slides. The key to making the workshop enjoyable and compelling is by getting your audience involved through activity or conversation. Two easy ways to accomplish this is to ask a question or passing around tasks that get the audience working together. Anything that allows you to take a break from telling your stories is where the magic starts to happen.

Short Summary

Sprint Guide: The Guide takes as an input the Workshop Brief that you built to socialize client buy-in and align team expectations, and uses this to create a series of slides that will be presented out to the Workshop Team as the first activity of the workshop day. The presentation format forces the facilitator to keep it high-level enough for everyone to understand, but specific enough to guide the various activities that will make up the workshop day. Post-Workshop Ask: How do we ensure that this session is not a waste of time? Is there anything that we should look out for or be cognizant of (e.g., organizational politics, budgetary/fiscal constraints)? From three design partners at Google Ventures, a unique five-day process for going from problem to prototype. A practical guide to answering business questions, Sprint is a book for groups of any size, from small start-ups to Fortune 100s, from teachers and PTAs to nonprofits and public institutions. It’s for anyone with a big opportunity, problem, or idea who needs to get answers today.