Three things to consider before running a workshop
2020 is just around the corner, a new year, a new decade, in which I am at the very beginning of my career and want to learn and achieve a lot. I proudly hold in my hand my freshly printed business card with the title Junior Innovation Strategist. Don’t worry, my grandma still hasn’t got after several explanations, what I am exactly doing and we as a team also had to define and classify our role first.
We are the Strategic Innovation team of Spielfeld Digital Hub. Our aim is to explore and create new ideas, ranging from simply but effective to radically disrupting. During our workshops, we help companies to reframe the context, unlearn or pivot normalized thinking and provide participants with a fresh pair of eyes. The tools we are using, have been developed and tested by leading creatives and each final agenda is tailored to our customers specific needs and challenges. This way, we helped an international marketing team to explore how design thinking methods could be utilized to define a uniform marketing strategy with consistent communication across departments. To help a travel company get closer to its customers and to design appropriate services for them, we created so-called Voxpops: videos of individuals who, representing a target group, talk about what makes travel magic for them. A spanish insurance company learned the importance of empathy and understanding customer pains using lifestyle cards, a tool created especially for them.
Designing a workshop involves many tasks and requires empathy, abstract thinking and good design, which takes time. I have to get to know, invent and test many more new tools, lead change processes and strategically question the companies challenge, until I will become an expert. But what I have already learned in this short time: every part of the process has a meaning and a goal. And with every, I mean every. So here are three simple but very important things to consider before leading a workshop:
- Interaction before information: Start with a block of activities at the workshop to awake participants motivation from the beginning and have presentations of the company in the end or better: not at all. Have backup activities prepared in case participants are too tired or lack motivation.
- Clear wording and instructions: Communicate tasks clearly using simple language. You will be surprised how different people can interpret your words. Test your instructions with other team members first to see if you have to change your task.
- Timetable: Be involved in planning the timetable of the workshop. Test every method and tool yourself to see how long it takes but be ready for a different outcome in a live scenario. Even the timing of lunch can have a huge impact on participants motivation and participation.
I’m curious to see which new workshops, clients and learnings 2020 will bring me.
