The 3 Benefits You Didn’t Know About Workshops
We’ve all heard it before, “Let’s get the team in a room and work this out”. Or better yet “Oh I WISH we could all just find the time to get in front of a whiteboard and find some solutions together.” Then come the eye rolls… people are too busy and can come up with so many reasons as to why a workshop shouldn’t happen. It’s time to believe strategy and the power of workshops. If you get enough of the right people in a room, you can solve anything!
Workshops bring people together (duh…!), they are team building (also duh…!), and have many other advantages for clients that you may not see right away (ok, keep talking…).
1) Workshops show that you care.
Workshops are a time where you can publicly show that your client’s input is the most valuable to the success of the project. There are many workshops where we will choose to pinpoint one individual on the client side and ask “Tell us why you are so passionate about this project?”
Workshops also allow you to see who is the most passionate in the group, who cares and should be listened to more often. Many times, we will restructure project responsibilities based on how energized participants are during a workshop.
2) Workshops get your user’s point across.
The power of consensus is a force to be reckoned with. By listening to people, voting, and agreeing, great ideas move forward. If you want to show that the user is under-represented in a particular experience, then have your workshop focus around the user’s needs. Do an “in their shoes” role-playing game. Once you gather new ideas (on post notes), you can vote (using dot stickers on those notes) and see what bubbles up to the top.
3) Workshops speed up decision making.
Every workshop should end with a strong sense of progress. You have everyone together for a reason and it is fine to ask for direction and a clear consensus. There are times where you may feel that you don’t have consensus, but you get the ball rolling for clarification to happen later.
Although at first it may seem that planning a workshop takes a lot of effort, you will save time and come across some very insightful details that will affect your brand strategy. As a Boston based brand strategy agency, we’ve been there and have gone through many workshops.
Workshops bring a different level of energy that you don’t feel with all projects. Use this energy and these findings to make changes happen. Workshops can become strong experiences that create lasting bonds, ultimately strengthening the reasons why a project is worthwhile.
