Is the workshop dead?
By Peter FullagarWe explore the arguments against creative workshops, their reputation and misuse and whether there’s any evidence of their actual effectiveness.
There are few topics in the design and innovation world more contentious than workshops. You just can’t avoid them. But if you ask people to describe their experience of workshops it causes is a visceral reaction, you can see it on their faces. It’s like Marmite - people either love’em or hate’em. Much of my career has centred around workshops, working in various guises - participant, visualiser, facilitator, planner and commissioner and I’ve developed my own love/hate relationship with them. On this journey, I’ve come across many detractors, that fuel their bad reputation and argue against this corporate form of creativity.
In this article, I explore the arguments against workshops. I explore their reputation and misuse and whether there’s any evidence of their actual effectiveness. I ask the difficult question, is it time to accept the workshop is in fact dead?
The Detractors
This article was in part inspired by Roger Mavity’s acerbic adman view on brainstorming workshops in his recent book How to Steal Fire. He describes the familiar off-site workshop scene: The country hotel meeting room with neatly set tables, replete with pads and pencils and the unnecessarily large supply of mineral water and stewed coffee. “The brainstorm is an odd title. There is no storm and little brain, and is corporate mans concession to creativity” The book criticises both the expectation of a brief event to produce creative breakthroughs and it’s structure, concluding that the “ Brainstorm is no more than a committee in nicer surroundings and we all know the committee is not the habitat of creativity”.
This view is typical of many traditional designers who struggle with the democratisation of creativity that workshops represent. In this one-off event, everyone becomes the creative versus this skill being the craft of the professional. I’m sure Mavity and his fellow detractors would be happy to see the workshop consigned to the graveyard. And I’d say it’s true that a one-off event is not a perfect recipe for great creativity. However, my experience when done well is that they can tap into the potential of group genius. To collect diverse ideas, views and options that all contribute far more than the monocular vision of a solo creative. The answer is both are important and we need to find the right balance of individual and the team.
The Problem of Reputation
A fundamental problem is that we all think of different things when we think of a workshop. Once upon a time, it was a room with tools for craftspeople, makers or engineers. Nowadays it’s about as ambiguous as the word innovation. They are also difficult to deliver effectively. Personally, I’m skewed by mostly good experiences, but many have had bad experiences. These can be a result of bad planning, coordination, the wrong team, misunderstanding the purpose… the list goes on. I believe there's an art and craft to them, best delivered by those with experience and capability to make truly effective and positive experiences. They take time and effort to plan and deliver well. A fact that can be easily overlooked and sadly one of the biggest culprits in causing the bad reputation. For me it’s simple - they are only as good as the hard work and preparation that goes into them.
Not all workshops are the same
Workshops can happen at any stage of a project. They can be at the beginning to start a project to help teams form and explore the dimensions of the problem. They can be used to share understanding and learning, and are most commonly known for generating ideas - the ubiquitous brainstorm. They also can be a great way to collaborate with users and customers. Nowadays, a workshop can mean many different things. The problem comes when workshops become a catch-all for all the group activity stages of a project, and some are no more than meetings with post-it notes - the ‘meeting in disguise’ workshop. I think it’s time for us to develop a new vocabulary around workshops. One that recognises the different types, purposes, interactions and outcomes. And makes it easier to spot when it is actually just a meeting and when there is a real need for a workshop. I believe the outcome is the critical feature that defines a workshop - this is the ‘work’ and value that it produces.
The Ineffective Truth
Group working in organisations has been a subject of academic and commercial interest for many years. The research, however, points to several uncomfortable truths about the ineffectiveness of group work. One of the most famous is the work by Irving Janis from 1972 on “Groupthink”, where he identified how groups can fall into a state of lazy, shared consensus. Much of his challenge relates to the interpersonal dynamics of the group - defaulting to the hierarchy, a reluctance in sharing opposing views, and the natural human inclination to group conformity all have a part.
Brainstorming, despite its continued popularity, has been proven in multiple studies dating as far back as 1958 to produce lower rates of productivity for group creative work, and contemporary studies continue to support this finding. It is only under specific condition that they can be more effective than setting the same task as solo working. These include factors like maximising the role of the individual, developing high trust levels, and selecting the right diversity of team for the challenge. The facilitator role, therefore, becomes the critical element here in addressing this ineffective truth.
So is the Workshop dead?
While workshops have a number of issues, I don’t think they are going away any time soon. But there is an opportunity to address these known reputation problems, avoid the bad experiences and promote best practice to make them genuinely effective. It’s time to recognise that there are different types of workshop, and think about when is the right and wrong time for them. If it’s a meeting, call it a meeting. We do still need to collaborate as groups, and there’s still lots of value in them when you can get to high performing teams to unlock group genius. Applying what has been proven as ‘effective’ brainstorm technique is a good start from aligning on goals to the development of trust between group members to encourage diverse views. These are all things we design for when it is an appropriate time to run a workshop one of our consulting projects, and all part of what we share in our DoLearn Training.
So next time you are asked to think about running a workshop, ask yourself why? Is it really a meeting in disguise? Is this the right time? And if you are going ahead, how will you make it as effective as possible?
So what do you think, is the workshop dead? We’d love to hear your views.