Workshop Planning

= Overview = This is a guide for planning long-format (one day or longer) workshops that promote maximum group participation and result in clear outcomes.

= Workshop Design = This section on workshop design borrows heavily from methodologies presented by Sam Kaner et al in “The Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making” [0]. The goal of this design step is to develop a realistic and effective agenda allowing for maximum participation in order to drive towards strong decisions and sustainable agreements. Meeting design is one of the most important, difficult, and crucial steps of the workshop planning process. [1]

The methodology used to design an agenda for a long-format workshop is broken into two sections- clarifying desired outcomes and process design:

Clarify Desired Outcomes: Obtain a list of the most important topics for the meeting, and associated overall goals and meeting goals.

 * Identify the "person-in-charge" and schedule time to discuss meeting/workshop topics [2]
 * Facilitate the identification of topics for the meeting
 * Choose a topic, and facilitate the identification of an overall goal for the topic ("What final result do we want to achieve to be completely done with this topic?")
 * Identify meeting goals that drive towards achieving the overall goal for the topic ("What narrowly-defined, specific objective do we want to achieve for this topic at an upcoming meeting?"). Note the different types of meeting goals, above, described by Kaner et al
 * Repeat steps above for each topic
 * Ask person in charge to prioritize topics ([3, 4])

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Facilitators-Participatory-Decision-Making-Jossey-Bass-Management/dp/1118404955

[1] Planning for planning rule of thumb: budget as many hours to plan as you have budgeted for the workshop or meeting

[2] Note that a whole team could be be involved in agenda design, or different people could contribute to different topics in the agenda design

[3] This could be done closer to the beginning of the process (after initial topic identification); however, going through the exercise of developing meeting goals can be useful for rethinking priorities

[4] Example of a topic, meeting goal, and overall goal: Topic: Figure out the team processes that the team wants to use to work together; Overall Goal: Team understands the processes they want to use, understands how the process works, why it works, and what their role is in it, and we have a measure success of how well the process is working; Meeting Goal: Develop a shared understanding of how the team wants to work.

Process Design: Using the prioritized list of topics, overall goals and meeting goals, design an activity sequence to drive towards achieving meeting goals.
[5]  It’s useful to have a pretty solid and detailed plan for Day One/earlier activities; later days/activities can be rougher as they are (and probably will be) subject to change.
 * Lay out a generic agenda outline for the scheduled meeting time [see Agenda subsection below for an example]
 * Determine appropriate activities and participation formats for each meeting goal for highest priority topics (see Activities subsection below for examples)
 * Map activities to agenda outline in a logical order; evaluate how many topics can realistically be covered, and communicate with person in charge [5]
 * As you refine the agenda and timing, you may note that the priority order of topics as defined by the person in charge does not flow well when broken down into specific activities; revise as necessary and communicate with person in charge
 * One rubric for setting goals, and prioritizing them, is the Success Spectrum. This categorizes outcomes of the workshop into desired and/or likely results. The 4 suggested categories are:
 * What does Failure look like?
 * E.g. "We leave without a shared understanding of anything"
 * What is the Minimum success?
 * E.g. "We have shared understanding of existing challenges"
 * What is the Target success?
 * E.g. "We not only have a shared understanding of existing challenges, but a plan for dealing with them."
 * What is the Epic success?
 * E.g. "We have a shared understanding of our challenges, a plan for dealing with them, and have started already."

= Workshop Implementation: =

Philosophy
The facilitator is there to support the team and individuals to do their best thinking by employing facilitation skills that
 * encourage full participation
 * promote mutual understanding
 * foster inclusive solutions
 * cultivate shared responsibility

Additionally, it may be useful to document and share any values that you, as a facilitator, bring to the workshop and will employ in your facilitation. For example:
 * Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
 * Responding to change over following a plan
 * Involvement in workshop design
 * Inspecting and adapting

Guidelines
Recommended best practices for creating an environment of participation and clear expectations:
 * Display a clear agenda that is visible to participants throughout the duration of meeting
 * Begin by framing the agenda and an opening activity (check-in) and end with a closing activity (eg meeting evaluation, closing remarks, or next steps)
 * Schedule regular breaks for longer meetings
 * Use chart writing whenever possible (clear, large format charts, notes, diagrams, and other visualizations that are visible to all participants)
 * Mix up activities and participation formats to keep the energy fresh
 * Offer a clear description of activities at the outset of each activity, including duration
 * Clarify the roles of facilitator and participants
 * Communicate overall goals of meeting or workshop
 * Communicate any ground rules for the workshop
 * Describe any values or principles that are in play for how the workshop is conducted
 * Enlist a co-facilitator for chart-writing, thought partnership, and facilitation support

Agenda
Sample agenda format:

9 AM-12 PM: Team Workshop
 * Check-in

12 PM-1 PM: Lunch
 * Today’s business
 * Main Activity 1
 * Break
 * Main Activity 2

1 PM-5 PM: Team Workshop
 * Main Activity 1
 * Afternoon Break
 * Main Activity 2
 * Meeting Evaluation

Activities
This is a list of some of the activities, tools, and participation formats that have been used by WMF facilitators in long-format workshops:

Generating ideas
Pair Brainstorming: Breaking into pairs to generate ideas

Purpose: Idea generation; a useful format when group brainstorming or discussion is getting bogged down or the energy is low.

Small Group Brainstorming: breaking into groups of 3 or more to generate ideas

Purpose:  Idea generation; a useful format when group brainstorming or discussion is getting bogged down or the energy is low.

Workflow mapping: teams map the ways that work moves through their system

Purpose: Developing understanding of the way groups or teams work by visualizing how work gets introduced and processed; raise awareness of what’s missing in the workflow or pain points in the workflow; helps different subgroups within a group understand more about the work of others.

Small Group proposal development: small groups break out from larger group to come up with a plan or proposal

Purpose: Useful when there are different stakeholder groups within a group, or the group wants to generate a number of proposals about a topic, idea, or decision. Another “breakout” activity that can help shift the group energy if it is getting low or stale.

Large group proposal development: group works together to come up with a proposal; may or may not include structured facilitation or guidelines

Purpose: The group collectively develops a proposal together. Works best after a decision is made or agreement is reached.

Open discussion: facilitated group discussion

Purpose: A forum for balanced participation in a supportive environment. The facilitator can set a non-judgemental, supportive, and balanced tone by using stacking, mirroring, paraphrasing, summarizing, and drawing out. Sets a tone of participation, engagement, and presence. The techniques of mirroring and paraphrasing can help clarify thinking and understanding by allowing participants to hear ideas a second time, creating a pace that allows participants to digest information, and allows the speaker to clarify the intent of their statement.

Organizing ideas
Large Group Categorization: group categorizes items together (categories can be pre-determined or generated by group)

Purpose: Helps the group organize ideas and see patterns or trends; can make large amounts of information more easily digestible.

Prioritization by dot voting: group prioritizes a list by using sticky dots; groups can use a set number of dots per participant, one dot per item for as many items as participants want to vote on (to indicate which items have unanimous support), or other group determined methods.

Purpose: Helps the group narrow down the most important things to focus on.

Getting agreement
Voting by dot voting: group votes on a list item, proposal, etc by using sticky dots. Participants should choose whether they want "approval" voting, in which anything of interest gets a vote (and no more than one per voter), or "budget" voting, in which voters get a set amount of votes to distribute (and can vote on something more than once).

Purpose: Visualize where the group is in agreement.

Gradients of agreement: a decision-making tool that can be used to denote individual support of a proposed decision, and visualize where the group distribution is on a scale of agreement

Purpose: Helps the group understand that there are many shades of nuance between ‘agree’ and ‘disagree’; can be quite valuable for sparking conversation about the exact nature of disagreement, which in turn can help the group refine a decision or proposal and ultimately have a stronger agreement.

Sharing information
Trade show: small groups present a proposal or idea to the rest of the group

Purpose: A less boring format than one person standing in front of the group talking!

Open discussion: facilitated group discussion

Purpose: A forum for balanced participation in a supportive environment. The facilitator can set a non-judgemental, supportive, and balanced tone by using stacking, mirroring, paraphrasing, summarizing, and drawing out. Sets a tone of participation, engagement, and presence. The techniques of mirroring and paraphrasing can help clarify thinking and understanding by allowing participants to hear ideas a second time, creating a pace that allows participants to digest information, and allows the speaker to clarify the intent of their statement.

How others see us/how we see ourselves: involves a fair amount of pre-workshop preparation. Consisted of structured half-hour interviews with each team member as well as several individual stakeholders. Key quotes from the interviews were pulled out and visually displayed in the workshop space for the duration of the workshop. Teams did a “gallery tour” activity on day one to read and absorb the quotes.

Purpose: Provides a “360” perspective that can help the group expand their understanding of themselves and their self-awareness. Underscores that the groups perception may not be in line with how others see them, or provide validation that an issue that the group perceived is also perceived by those outside the group. Can help the group see strengths and pain points. Can help the group understand that where there is diversity in the group and where there is convergence.

Strengths and improvables: end of day meeting evaluation to celebrate what worked well and identify potential improvements

Purpose: Group has a feedback channel for their experience and an opportunity to identify areas to improve, rather than being meeting captives. Facilitator can act on “improvables” that are a.) within their power to improve on, b.) make sense for the participants, agenda, and time-frame, and c.) are morally sound.