Stop running meetings, start getting shit done

Workshops, as the name holds, are designed to get shit done. Meetings on the other hand, are merely a meeting of minds — which is essential, but they don’t get the work done, they talk about the work.

So, why would anyone choose to run a meeting over a workshop in the first place? It seems there are a couple reasons:

First off, it’s hard to run a great workshop. Remember the movie Inception, starring Leonardo Dicaprio? His character’s job is to embed ideas in people’s minds and make them believe it was their own mind that conceived the idea. Running a great workshop is very similar, minus the fancy dream machine that affixes to people’s heads and Leo’s dashing good looks to distract them.

Second, if you’re like me, meetings became ingrained in the culture of business school, as they are a method of delivering top down information. For example, if I decided exhibit A is how we are going build new product Z, I would call a meeting to spend its duration delivering this information and working out who’s going to make it happen. This was wildly effective at the height of the industrial revolution. Now that flat organizations spread like wildfire, that strategy is no longer effective.

These flat organizations rely on the basis of hiring great people (more on how you can do that). Once your team is made up of great people, it is now your job to lead by providing opportunities to create, solve problems, and make decisions. Workshops enable this, not meetings.

In a workshop, you determine how and what you are going to build as a team. Workshops establish collective intelligence, increase buy-in, save time, and reduce communication barriers.

Okay, so now you want to run a workshop. What’s next?

Head straight for your keynote presentation? No.

Prepare a nice speech? No.

Read the rest of this post? Bingo.

Preparing for the workshop

Establish a purpose
First and foremost, you need a valuable reason to request an hour of these great people’s minds. Establish a purpose for the workshop that is action-oriented and outcome-driven.

What problem are you trying to solve? What decision needs to be made as an outcome of the workshop?

Your purpose could be to design a new user experience, establish user empathy, design a business process, create a content strategy, build a product road map, determine a competitive advantage, or anything that steers your team toward the company’s vision.

Whatever the reason, every workshop requires a purpose. Without a purpose, there is no workshop. That mindset alone, will help keep your team out of the conference room.

Develop a plan
Great workshops make big strides for the team in a relatively short amount of time. To make your workshop great, you need a plan, and everyone involved needs to know it.

Start your plan with this one basic idea in mind:

Diverge -> Emerge -> Converge

I’ll explain. Introduce your workshop with your purpose and any expected outcomes. Write them on the whiteboard for everyone to see. Then, allow your team to diverge from your prompt by creating opportunities for creative freedom, exploration and collaboration. This will create a large number of potential ideas; some worth pursuing, some not.

Next is emergence. Create a scenario to explore the potential of ideas created during divergence. Watch for trends and patterns to emerge. When they do, follow them.

Finally, converge on the purpose and outcomes established at the beginning of the workshop. Use tools to gain group consensus and agree on the idea that proves most valuable.

With this framework in hand you are ready to fill your plan with activities, scenarios, games, and tools for ideating, brainstorming, innovation, collaboration, problem solving and consensus building.

The best resource I’ve found for workshopping tools is gamestorming.com. There are hundreds to choose from here; keep it simple by exploring just a few at first until you are familiar with them, then explore more options to keep your workshops fresh.

Prepare the supplies
Great workshops require supplies. With the following list of supplies, you’ll be able to run just about any workshop. IMPORTANT: overestimate the supplies you’ll need. The last thing you want is to constrain creativity just to save $5 on a pack of note cards.

Stock up on these:

• 5x8 notecards
• wide-tipped Sharpies
• whiteboard surfaces
• whiteboard markers
• 3x5 Post-it notes

… And a few bonus items to take it over the top.

• Play-doh
• aluminium foil
• popsicle sticks
• scissors
• duct tape (many different colors)
• string/yarn

Determine logistics
Your team’s time is valuable. Keep the logistics simple and straightforward: time, location and lunch.

Find a time that works for everyone involved. If it’s going to be more than an hour, provide a damn good reason why. Make sure your location is the right size, has the appropriate amount of seating, provides inspiration, and is full of whiteboards. For lunchtime workshops, providing food can go a long way. Let people know ahead of time so they can place orders and notify you of dietary restrictions.

Share the plan
Now that you’re prepared for the workshop, make sure the rest of your team is up to speed. Use the following template and remember to keep it short and simple. HINT: this fits in the notes section of a calendar invite.

Purpose
What problem are you trying to solve? What decision needs to be made as an outcome of the workshop?

ex: Establish empathy with Elena the Engineer and prioritize her pains and gains in searching for a job she loves.

Plan
What tool will you use? What experiences and activities will your team explore to accomplish the workshop’s purpose?

ex: empathy map -> pains & gains -> forced rank pains -> forced rank gains

Prepare
What does your team need to do before the workshop to make sure they are ready to create value? Research, review, read or create materials.

ex: review Elena the Engineer’s persona

Logistics
Where is the workshop? When is it? How long will it run? If it’s long, will you provide lunch?

ex: Thursday 14:30, ‘Sonic’ conference room, 45 minutes

During the workshop

Keeping time
First, it’s integral to start and finish on time. The worst workshops are those which are rushed to make up for a late start, or which don’t reach the intended outcome because you run out of time.

A great workshop is fast paced, timely, and draws top-of-mind information from your team’s brains. To accomplish this, use a tool called timeboxing. Timeboxing is exactly what it sounds like; using time to place a constraint around a specific activity.

Use the alarm on your smartphone and allot a foreseeable duration for each activity. When time is up, time is up — stop the activity. If you sense the group needs more time, ask. If they do, decide on a small addition of time and timebox it.

When timeboxing, it’s important to give your team updates of the allotted time remaining. Two minutes remaining, one minute remaining, thirty seconds remaining and ten seconds remaining are typically good markers.

Find your team’s flow
Flow is that magical state when you are so engaged in a specific activity that you no longer feel the passage of time. For each individual, their state of flow is found when they are challenged enough to keep it interesting and comfortable enough to excel in completing the activity.

In a workshop it is your responsibility to create an environment that allows every person on the team to reach flow; this is where the magic happens.

Fair warning: finding this state of flow for your whole team is difficult and will not happen every time. However, if you constantly strive for flow and continue to practice, it will begin to happen more often than not.

Show, don’t tell
Great workshops empower your team. Your job is to construct an environment that enables your team to solve problems, be creative and make decisions.

Ask questions before giving answers, even if you already know them. Use tools and activities that are inclusive to the whole team. What I mean, is that if you have people on your team that tend to speak up less, use activities that allot time specifically to everyone stating their view.

Avoid demonstrative statements that squander creativity and make decisions for the team. This can be difficult for authoritative leadership styles that tend to dictate how a team will do its work. Let go a bit and trust your team.

Remember this is about them, not you.

Have fun
It’s been proven over and over again, people are more engaged when they’re having fun. Keep this in mind throughout the workshop. Know your audience and purposefully create environments that are fun for them. At the same time, don’t go overboard, your team is there to get shit done (that may be all the fun they need).

Harnessing the workshop

Take action immediately
You want your workshop to propel your team’s productivity. This is your opportunity to provide the fuel for that fire. Oftentimes people will reference outside sources needed to get shit done. Someone will say, “oh, that’s great! Can you share [that thing] with me after, please?” Share the resource as soon as you finish the workshop.

Throughout your workshop, your team will create different artifacts or you may create a prioritized list of features to build in your product’s next iteration. Share these items, snap a photo, and/or add them to your product management software before moving onto anything else.

Never let a delay to provide take-aways become a blocker for your team.

Practice, practice, practice
Running a great workshop is hard. The only way to get better is to continue to do it. Start tomorrow and keep it going. You’ll develop your own style; find what works for you and what doesn’t. You’ll become comfortable running them with more and more people and see yourself grow quickly.

RIP meetings
No one likes endless hours of meetings in the conference room. Workshops will keep your team out of the conference room, engage the power of collective intelligence and get everyone on board for the company’s vision. You now know how to approach your workshops before, during and after. Lay those meetings to rest and watch your team’s productivity, creativity, and happiness soar!

Originally published on www.rhubarbstudios.co