Design for relevance

When we bring people together to collaborate, co-design and solve problems, we must consider how to help them do their best work.

We’re so bad at meetings - and boring ones - that our bad meeting culture gets transferred and stretched into longer sessions like workshops. 

We don’t just have boring meetings for an hour; we end up having boring workshops for 3-hours! 

So many of the leaders I train in better facilitation skills want to know about fun games for their workshops. They soon realize the best activities are those that actually help us do the work we are there to do. 

Careful you don’t waste time, energy and participant engagement on games that might be high on fun, but end up being low on relevance and results. 

It is possible to design agendas and activities for workshops that are interesting, engaging, creative ... and help get the work done too!

Don’t be distracted by the pursuit of cute; you could completely miss out on designing for relevance and results. 

Deciding what to do

When a to do list is full of to do, it can be challenging to work out what to do!

And even when we start doing one to do we can be distracted with the thought of all of those other to dos.

How will they get done?
When might we get started on them?
Should we switch to one of the other to dos?

It’s one thing to list out what to do ... and another of when to do it.

Rechecking our to do list and seeing whether it’s still accurate - that is, do we still need all of those to dos - is such smart use of our time.

It’s like the ‘sharpen the saw’ activity of the two tree loppers - one who kept going with a dulling blade; the other pausing to sharpen their saw and therefore make better progress.

As good as the sharpen the saw advice is, we may not want to stop our busy day to revisit what’s on our to do list. We can fear we’re wasting time or losing our flow.

But we could already be wasting time and effort working without priority.

Check or refocus on what needs to be done as a priority. The other to dos can wait awhile.

Obsessed with a detail

Missile lock.
Focused on a target, excluding everything else.
Determined.
Sticking with it.

This is singleminded focus.
And we need it in many situations.

Yet our crazy changing world requires us to also lift ourselves up out of that detail and to see the wider view.

It doesn’t mean we don’t see that task or project as important.
It doesn’t mean we won’t return to working on it.

We can get lost, blinded and ignorant to what is important and what the priority is. Just because we’re ‘in too deep’ or ‘too far gone’ doesn’t mean it’s the right path or that we can’t pause or reverse out.

The ‘sunk cost fallacy’ can drive us to continue with something because we’ve already put so much effort in.

But hey, isn’t that also a good reason to pause, and reassess if it really is still so very important?

Somewhere between persistence and stubbornness is a space ... a flexible space where we can put our attention and effort so it’s valuable, impactful ...and efficient.

If we don’t raise our eyes, lift our head and come up out of the detail, we may never see what the bigger picture is all about.

Pause for a little while.
Look up ... and around.
Reset.

How you’re missing out on the gold

It’s another online meeting ... the meeting leader or facilitator announces they’re about to put us into breakout rooms to chat.

We get to connect with others, to have a smaller, more intimate conversation and to dive in to a topic or share ideas.

But too often the insights from breakout rooms and group activities aren’t noted or are lost, and not reincorporated into the meeting.

At other times, we can summarise or distill contributions too far.

Recently, 20 mins in breakout rooms was distilled down to one word. That’s taking a summary too far! The meaning gets lost, the effort wasted and the benefits and learnings are ... gone.

If you’re inviting people to have a conversation, be sure to think about how you’ll handle and leverage those ideas and contributions.

Sure ... you don’t have to hear from everyone.

But don’t hear back from no one!

How will you utilize the gold that’s been generated?

Because that’s what it is.

Absolute GOLD! ⭐️

We don’t have all the answers. The group often does.

Listen to them.

That workshop will need some design

Many of us are leading more workshops and meetings than ever before.

We’re bringing people together, helping them with learning, planning, collaborating, discussing and decision making.

So how do you ensure the workshops you lead are interesting, engaging ... AND effective?

By design.

Successful workshops and meetings come via better design.

And whether we’re leading online or face-to-face sessions, they all require some design ... before the day.

Careful though, because we can also go overboard and over-engineer! There’s a sweet spot where we have designed the most valuable elements and then we can let the rest roll.

Focus on these 4 things in design :

1. Engagement
2. Activities
3. Participation
4. Outcomes.