The workshop is where you creatively and collaboratively solve problems using EVT and create the ideal circumstances for success.
It's based on more than just the Bauhaus, the inspiration also comes from Disney and Amazon.
Disney’s story-development process separated people into Dreamers, Realists, and Critics - never mixing the roles in one person, so ideas are fully explored before they are judged.
Amazon’s Working Backward method is a product development approach that starts with the team imagining the product is ready to ship. The product team’s first step is to create a press release announcing the product’s availability. The audience for this press release is the product’s customer.
Both have been proven at scale. I’ve drawn on both, alongside thirty years of running variations of this myself, to build this workshop format that sits on top of the neuroscience.
It contains the following elements:
The Problem Statement
Workshops are centred on an unambiguous problem statement, with a well-defined and understood ‘why’. The ‘why’ is the core of the problem you are trying to solve.
It can easily be mistaken for either a symptom or a solution. Every time you think you have found the ‘why’, ask why again. If you can provide an answer, you haven’t got to the ‘why’.
When you can no longer answer the why question, you have reached your goal. It’s like layers of an onion, so keep peeling till you get to the centre. The technique was used by the Ancient Greeks to gain knowledge. It is not used anywhere as often as it should be.
Most solutions fail to properly solve the problem as the ‘why’ wasn’t properly understood.
Word of warning: getting to the ‘why’ is not easy, so be patient and allow everyone to fully participate to aid the process.
The Facilitator
The workshop needs to be facilitated by someone who is neutral.
If they aren't neutral, they subconsciously risk directing the participants towards their favoured outcome. Find someone outside of your team who has no direct benefit from the solution that is chosen. Remove bias to enable diverse thinking.
The facilitator is in charge and controls the format. They put the workshop together and make sure everyone politely takes their turn and their ideas are debated.
The Participants
The participants need to have been taught the neuroscience that underpins why failure occurs and why we struggle to listen: Perception Error, Cognitive Miser Theory, and our different thinking styles. This is essential and non-negotiable.
They should have a range of experiences, from the very experienced to relatively inexperienced. They should be drawn from outside your own team, as well as within.
And you need potential customers, and not just the ones already convinced by your idea. You need the interested but sceptical and the ones that are just sceptical.
Find people from different disciplines that can give a wholly new perspective.
You need individuals who will be involved in the whole solution delivery process, from stakeholders to the people who will build the solution.
Diversity is essential.
Having individuals with different neurotypes and thinking styles helps to create a highly creative environment. Different neurotypes have different predominant thinking styles.
The workshop needs top-down, bottom-up, divergent, convergent, associative, and linear thinkers. You probably can't get all thinking styles but get as many as you can.
Preconceptions should be challenged, so a range of viewpoints from multiple perspectives enables everyone to see problems differently.
Time
A workshop represents a problem statement, not a time period.
The aim is to solve the problem; this could require one short workshop or one spanning several days. It could mean the workshop takes the guise of a proof of concept and takes days or weeks.
If needed, split the problem into its component parts and look at each problem on separate occasions.
Time the workshop for when the participants are the most energised and creative; try to avoid the late afternoon or the end of the week.
Diverse Thinking
Diverse thinking is key to solving problems creatively, and removing the risk of “just doing what we did last time”. The participants and the facilitator are key to this.
Everyone’s opinion is valid, as they force us to justify our own views and confront our biases. The facilitator makes sure the workshop is not dominated by the loudest voices.
Creativity & Innovation
Be bold, think about how things can be improved.
Being prevented from doing something before shouldn’t necessarily prevent you from doing it now. There are obviously exceptions, like regulatory or legal requirements.
Learn from past mistakes. When being creative, failure will happen; if you never fail, you can’t learn, and if you don’t learn, you can’t innovate.
Evaluate everyone’s ideas. Change can be challenging; listen to the arguments, be brave, trust, and support your colleagues. Equality of people and ideas is essential.
The Format
The facilitator ensures everyone understands the problem statement and workshop goal.
If there are multiple workshops, aim to achieve a specified goal at the end of each one.
Once everyone has had the problem explained to them, they need to think in silence and write their first ideas down so only they can see them. This helps prevent the hierarchy of the people in the workshop dominating the thought process.
The nominated scribe writes the ideas down in turn as a mind map or similar on a whiteboard (physical or digital). Mind maps help show how ideas are connected.
Repeat this process, as others’ ideas may trigger new ones. For repeat rounds, you can either openly do it or secretly do it as in the first round. The facilitator can make the decision based on their view of the dynamics within the group. If it is done openly, the ideas of the most senior participants should be written up last, to prevent people from ‘agreeing with the boss’.
After gathering all ideas, collectively decide whether to accept or reject each one. Make sure each idea is treated equally while debating them.
If people are coming to the same ideas overall, with little to no debate, then the workshop has most likely failed, and you need to learn what went wrong
