Are you interested in facilitating a design thinking session at your workplace or for another organization? Have you learned about design thinking and want to get started or deepen your skills? If you are a newbie to design thinking facilitation, this is the guide for you. We’ve highlighted the basics you need to know to lead a design thinking or innovation workshop. Facilitation skills are essential to navigating complex business problems, and a skilled facilitator can supercharge the team’s performance. We encourage you to attend our Facilitation Lab, a weekly virtual meetup to support effective implementation.

Read this design thinking facilitator guide, and you’ll have solid tools to be successful from start to finish.

What is Design Thinking?

To start, let’s define some key terms. First, design thinking. Design thinking is a process used for creative problem-solving; a methodology that puts the end-user or customer at the center of decision-making. Design thinking is also characterized by an emphasis on prototyping and testing ideas and working in a highly collaborative manner with a cross-disciplinary team. Design thinking isn’t a passing business trend. It’s a powerful and widely-implemented approach to strategic work adopted by both startups and major corporations to tackle business challenges. Here are a few of our favorite design thinking books we recommend adding to your library for an in depth background.

What is a Design Thinking Facilitator?

A design thinking facilitator leads collaborative working sessions that utilize design thinking practices to reinvigorate creative growth. The gatherings include brainstorms, innovation workshops, executive summits, design springs, multi-day workshops, and long-term projects.

A design thinking facilitator is a coach to innovative, productive group think and work.

Design thinking facilitators help teams focus on the customer throughout the process and uncover new insights and ideas typically aren’t revealed during business as usual (ex. the boss has an epiphany in the shower and tells the team to execute). In a nutshell, a design thinking facilitator is a conduit to innovative productive group discovery and creation. Facilitation skills are key to maximizing these outcomes.

Want to learn the basics of how to facilitate a design thinking workshop? Read our 7-step guide below, then consider our Workshop Design Course to help you get started.

Step 1: Get Focused

Your first task as a design thinking facilitator is to clarify and define what you need to accomplish through your workshop or meeting. You want to determine the focus based on team needs or challenges. Record the primary goal and high-level questions to answer, and make sure participants are aligned on defined objectives.

Pro-tip: Before planning the workshop, consider 30-60-minute conversations with each stakeholder before the design thinking session to make sure objectives are clear.

Step 2: Make the Guest List

Now that you’ve defined objectives, you and the key stakeholder(s) need to determine fitting participants. Who’s taking part in the workshop? Your client will likely have a strong hand in building the guest list. As the design thinking facilitator, it’s crucial that you advise here.

Too many people leads to chaos. Too few people means too few ideas.

Diversity in skillset, expertise, attitude, tenure, etc. is essential to an informed perspective. The more points-of-view that are represented, the more applicable your solutions. In terms of number of participants, somewhere between 7 to 15 is ideal. Too many people leads to chaos. Too few people means too few ideas.

Step 3: Make Your Agenda

With the objective and participants determined, the next step of facilitating a design thinking workshop is the agenda. A wise way to plan your agenda is to start at the end: With what tools do you need to leave the design thinking session? Are you prioritizing alignment? A system or process in place? A collection of novel ideas? Are you looking for a prioritized roadmap or a paper prototype of a new experience? When you clearly define your goals, you can plan the design thinking activities to build toward the conclusion.

The individual activities you will implement varies greatly based on the challenge. Need inspiration to kick off your Design Thinking activities? There are many free resources to help guide you and your team on your journey. . We’ve also outlined exercises for virtual workshops here.) No matter your timeline, prioritize time for introductions, icebreakers, and short breaks to check inboxes.

Pro tip: Be generous when time-boxing your design thinking activities. Everything will take longer than you think. A good rule of thumb is to double the time you imagine an individual activity will take.

Step 4: Get Your Space

Next up: Where are you going to host your design thinking workshop? While it might sound like a minor detail, the space affects the day’s success.

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We recommend getting participants out of their workspace(s) to inspire fresh thinking and distance from day-to-day work. Whether you need to offer a hybrid option, have the budget for an offsite space, or need to use the office, consider the following to enhance the experience:

• Look for good natural light and character. (A windowless hotel conference room is not ideal.)
• Provide comfortable seating for all. (Simple, but we’ve seen it happen.)
• Guarantee wall space or boards for pinning materials and capturing ideas.
• Don’t forget AV needs: a projector for presenting, a screen if someone needs to collaborate remotely, etc.

Want more information on choosing a space? Check out 7 Things to Consider When Choosing a Workshop Venue here.

Step 5: Gather Supplies

With space, participants, and a solid agenda, you now need supplies to execute your workshop. Your exact supplies will be driven by your activities, agenda, and chosen space. Here are some basics to get you started:

• Plain 8.5×11 paper
• Large easel-style Post-its
• Small Post-its notes
• Pens
• Black Sharpies
• A Time Timer
• An HDMI cable

If you want to dive deeper into the specific supplies that are recommended for a design sprint (which are helpful for any workshop), read here.

Pro-Tip: If possible, bring a filling breakfast and lunch so you don’t have to leave to eat. Also, healthy snacks, water, and coffee will keep people engaged as the day goes on.

Step 6: Be the Leader

It’s the big day! It’s time for you to lead the group through the agenda and activities you worked so hard on. The more you facilitate, the more skilled you become. 

Make sure to be yourself and keep the following things in mind as you lead the team in design thinking:

• You’re the boss: People are looking for you to guide them. You’re prepared and are the expert. Establish your authority early and feel confident making decisions and telling the group when it’s time to move forward in the agenda.
• Establish rules: Let the group know the rules of the day. Encourage people to stay off their phones and to fully participate in the session. Let them know that there are designated breaks.

Give everyone a voice: As the facilitator, you are responsible for making sure everyone is heard. If you notice someone being quiet, pull them into the conversation. You designed the guest list with their contribution in mind.

Step 7: Wrap It Up & Play It Back

After the workshop has come to a close, recognize your role as a design thinking facilitator to equip the group with tools for long-term success. Consider these in the days afterward::

• Photograph and document: Make sure you photograph important output from the meeting: Post-its, diagrams, or worksheets that may have been created.
• Synthesize the learnings: Take time to reflect on the session and the ideas that came of it. Create a MURAL board or a short presentation to share with participants and their teammates.

Get the group back together: Schedule time to share back your learnings with the participants and make plans together for how to implement thinking and learnings into daily work.

Looking to become a Design Thinking Facilitator?

What’s the importance of bringing in a professional to lead the session? A design thinking facilitator positively disrupts the team dynamic. Read up on why professional facilitation can make a difference.

We hope you’re excited to become a Design Thinking facilitator. Voltage Control has expert design-thinking facilitators who run innovation workshops and design sprints. Our innovation training for teams and design thinking facilitator training will maximize your facilitation skills. Our Facilitation Certification programs will guide you through key facilitation skills and provide you with ample opportunities to practice. We also invite you to explore our workshop design course to learn the foundational learning science and experience design principles you can apply to maximize engagement and effectiveness as a facilitator.

FAQ Section

How does design thinking facilitate creative solutions?
Design thinking promotes creative solutions by encouraging design thinkers to explore a wide range of possibilities. Through structured activities like brainstorming sessions, the design team generates potential solutions that are human-centered and focused on improving the user experience. This methodology is ideal for fostering innovation and addressing complex challenges in the business model and product development.

What are the key attributes of a successful design thinking project?
A successful design thinking project is characterized by human-centered design, active collaboration, and iterative testing. Key attributes include clear objectives, a focus on the end-user, and the ability to adapt and refine ideas based on feedback. In this project, design thinking skills like creative thinking, empathy, and prototyping are essential to generating effective solutions that lead to actual products.

What are the phases of the design thinking process?
The key phases of design thinking include empathizing with users, defining the problem, ideating potential solutions, prototyping, and testing. Each phase builds on the last to create effective solutions tailored to the user’s needs. This cyclical process encourages continuous improvement and innovation throughout the innovation process.

What skills are needed to be a successful design thinker?
Successful design thinkers need a range of skills, including creative thinking, empathy, collaboration, and problem-solving. They must also have strong design thinking skills to guide teams through the design process and facilitate workshops. These skills enable the team to generate innovative solutions and ensure that the final product aligns with user needs.

How does design thinking contribute to business success?
Design thinking contributes to business success by fostering a culture of innovation and user experience focus. By emphasizing human-centered approaches and iterative testing, businesses can develop products and services that better meet the needs of their customers. The methodology also helps businesses explore new ideas, refine their business model, and stay competitive in the market.

How can design thinking improve the user experience?
Design thinking enhances the user experience by prioritizing the needs, preferences, and pain points of users throughout the design process. By involving users in testing and iterating on prototypes, design teams can create actual products that offer better usability, functionality, and satisfaction. This approach ensures that solutions are not only innovative but also practical and user-friendly.

What are the applications of design thinking across industries?
Applications of design thinking are vast, spanning industries like healthcare, education, technology, and retail. In each sector, design thinking helps organizations develop innovative solutions by focusing on the user’s experience and testing ideas through rapid prototyping. Whether designing new products or improving services, the design thinking process is key to driving innovation and improving outcomes.

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While most companies were struggling to figure out Zoom meetings in 2020, one large CPG company brought cross-functional, international teams together to remotely prototype packaging and products for the U.S. and abroad. 

These Design Sprints were a response to the CEO encouraging management to embrace a more agile approach to problem solving. Inspired by the nimbleness of startups, he directed his teams to find ways to accelerate product development and how they worked in general.

This inspiration empowered our client — the organization’s Design Thinking Champion — to explore opportunities for rapid iteration. In the year or so prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, she’d begun to assemble stakeholders from various departments and divisions at locations around the world for in-person collaboration. Still, the virus (and subsequent lockdown) upended this practice.

In response, the Champion engaged Voltage Control to help her continue her design thinking sessions remotely. She had been impressed by the wealth of free online resources Voltage Control had created as well as founder Douglas Ferguson’s books. She also liked that we had a relationship with Google Ventures’ Jake Knapp — author of the popular book Sprint — and conducted the five-day Design Sprints he popularized at GV (formerly Google Ventures).

Voltage Control worked closely with the Champion to plan and execute nine Design Sprints in total. One of which was a five-day workshop to explore innovative, sustainable packaging designs for three hot wax hair removal products. The challenge at hand was to use consumer-centric techniques to address the deeper needs of the brand’s customers. To accomplish this, Voltage Control defined the objectives for each day: 

• Monday – Map
• Tuesday – Sketch
• Wednesday – Decide
• Thursday – Prototype
• Friday – Test

Day 1: Map

A big part of the first day was setting goals, asking questions and exploring how the team might arrive at a solution. Because of Covid-19 protocols, each team member joined the workshop via Zoom and collectively recorded thoughts in the online collaboration tool Mural. 

To kick things off, Voltage Control socialized observations from the pre-work everyone did before joining the session. This ensured participants had the chance to connect 1:1, and everyone was heard. We then asked everyone to share what was interesting about the challenge and what questions they had going into the session.

Some of these included:

• Do we understand consumers’ key drivers for purchase?
• Can we find a solution that doesn’t impact other usage aspects like safety?
• Can we combine functionality with aesthetics?
• Will consumers be able to recycle/reuse/compost independently of their country of origin?

These questions were then followed with a review of the problem space. Voltage Control believes no one knows everything, so a group discussion helped unlock individually held knowledge and provided a chance for the larger team to get aligned. 

Day 1 then concluded with the design thinking activity “How Might We” (HMW), which encouraged participants to think big without getting mired down by the painful details of bringing a complete solution to market. Each team member selected their top four HMW notes, and the entire team reviewed these essential questions to keep in mind during testing. Affinity grouping and dot voting were used to select the most significant questions without debate.

Day 2: Sketch

Picasso once said, “great artists steal,” and that’s what guided Voltage Control as the second day of collaborative work began. The team located and shared analogous inspirations via Mural. These included competitor products, adjacent services, intuitive interfaces, strong branding, and compelling content.

This complemented the previous day’s work, where the group discussed the problems and the potential solutions. When they considered what they’d “stolen” along with the goals and solutions they’d volunteered on Monday, it put them in the right frame of mind for a bit of fun Voltage Control calls Crazy 8s. 

During the Crazy 8s exercise, we gave everyone on the team eight minutes to explore eight new ideas quickly. We instructed them to fold a paper in half three times, so they had eight squares to sketch in. We then allocated 1 minute per square for participants to unlock latent ideas and try different versions of an idea.

Once the eight minutes were up, we let participants spend the rest of the day sketching one or two solutions they felt had the most promise. Although each person was together in the same Zoom room, they worked alone. It’s a somewhat controversial opinion, but the Voltage Control team doesn’t believe group brainstorms work, and we’re not the only one. Instead of forcing consensus, we gave each person time to develop solutions on their own.

Day 3: Decide

Our third day commenced with a group review of Tuesday’s independent sketching. The team used small dots to identify parts of sketches they liked. Then, the team was led through each of the sketches, and key ideas were called out. A second “heat mapping” exercise was conducted, where smaller dots were placed on the ideas with  high potential. After these rounds of speed critiquing and straw poll voting, an R&D Manager — who’d been selected as the group’s decider — used three “super vote” dots to determine  the winning solutions. 

Each participant then imagined their ideal user flow in six steps. The group compared the flows and voted on them. Once again, the R&D Manager was the final decision maker, deciding which of the flows matched the chosen solutions. Next, the team collaborated on the storyboard using the solutions and user flows as a framework. To wrap the day, Voltage Control assigned everyone the roles they’d perform during prototyping on Thursday.

Day 4: Prototyping

Our virtual prototyping session heavily leveraged a combination of digital design tools, including Sketch, Craft, and InVision. By collaborating in Google Docs, the distributed team could track jobs on a Kanban board and easily share assets between one another.

Day 5: Test

On the final day of this Design Sprint, the cross-functional team gathered once more on Zoom to observe the remote, real-time interviews of five actual consumers. Using a Voltage Control-created scorecard, the stakeholders quickly assessed the consumers’ responses. 

These consumer insights gave the team potential next steps they could explore in the weeks and months that followed the Design Sprint. When asked about this and three other Design Sprints he attended, one Product Scientist commented they “were incredibly effective at stress testing ideas for safety, sustainability, and other factors. They were also a useful way to explore opportunities to see if what competitors were doing was right for us.”

The Champion had a similar take and said, “We sometimes learned we needed to pivot and not invest a ton of time. Some groups arrived at a seemingly right idea that just needed more vetting, while others had uncovered multiple pathways they could take at the end of the week. Across the board, we exited and applied larger qualitative research with a larger consumer group.”

The Outcome

Voltage Control conducted eight other design sprints in collaboration with the Champion, which concluded with similar positive results. While two of the Design Sprints helped the company offer better customer experiences, many Voltage Control facilitated sessions allowed the company to improve their sustainability efforts.

While not everything will be commercialized, Voltage Control helped the company be more nimble through design thinking exercises. The Champion liked how Voltage Control was able to assist her in answering her CEO’s call to be more agile. By building upon the groundwork she’d already laid pre-Covid, the company was able to get to consumer benefits faster and work smarter, not harder. 

“Conducting remote Design Sprints seemed daunting at first, but it really wasn’t,” said the Champion. “The virtual whiteboard served us really well, and all the info captured through Mural worked better than our pre-Covid methods.”

“I also appreciated the structured roles team members had,” she continued. “Previously, we had worked rather very linearly. It was great to bring decision-makers into the week, having prototypers on hand and achieving progressive movement towards daily goals.” The Champion further thought the remote Design Sprints were well-thought-out.

Taking insights and having an actionable output doesn’t often happen  in the CPG space, so the Champion felt doing nine Design Sprints in 2020 created a bit of “muscle memory” for applying repeatable frameworks, then iterating on these processes. She hopes design thinking — and Design Sprints — will become ingrained at the company, allowing organization to shift from a fixed, linear mindset to readily applied tools & methodology. 

The Champion wants teams across the company to have more opportunities to talk to consumers while working with a broader range of peers. Her ultimate goal: to synergistically work together to achieve something great in a short matter of time. She may just see this come to fruition. The Product Scientist, who admits he was a skeptic at first, became an advocate of the Design Sprints. He believes many of his peers are now in favor of them as well.

“I was worried about them being a mess and team members not participating,” said the Scientist. “The learning curve was so steep that first day — having to get comfortable with new tools like Zoom and Mural. We were up and running by that first afternoon though.” 

“By the time we got to Wednesday, we really liked the structure and flow,” he added. “The team was pumped when we did the storyboard and then again when we got consumer feedback. Everyone I collaborated with during my first Design Sprint was enthusiastic at the end and was already chatting about doing another in Europe.”

The Scientist told Voltage Control that since participating, he’s been conducting internal “roadshows” to evangelize the idea of Design Sprints. Due to the travel time and cost, the Scientist said he and his international colleagues don’t get to do much brainstorming in a physical environment. He feels the experiences facilitated by Voltage Control have opened up the possibility to do more of this kind of work, even after the Covid-19 pandemic has subsided. “These [virtual] Design Sprints make brainstorming with a large, global team more accessible,” he concluded.

Being able to transform a skeptic into an evangelist over four Sprints shows the impact Voltage Control’s efforts can have. As a whole, we taught a wide swath of employees how to meet in meaningful ways, despite distance and the pandemic. These fresh approaches to work (and working together) re-invigorated every participant, from marketers to scientists. Regardless of what they’ll face in the years ahead, they’ve now been trained to let no business disturbance interrupt their innovation. 

Do you have an innovation you want to implement, a company problem you need to solve, or a meeting structure that needs improvement?

Voltage Control facilitates events of all kinds, including design thinking workshops, innovation sessions, and Design Sprints. Please reach out to us at hello@voltagecontrol.com if you want to talk or for a consultation.

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Design thinking workshops are becoming increasingly popular in corporate environments because they force businesses to humanize their approach to solving design-related problems. By leading a design thinking workshop, brands are better able to empathize with user experience and can focus on making innovation part of a human-centered design process. 

What Are Design Thinking Workshops?

Design-centric thinking is leading the way for ground-breaking brands, while those that do not embrace design thinking struggle to find innovative solutions. Too often, brands take an analytic approach to solving their internal or external issues. With a design-centric focus, brands encourage their team members to collaborate with each other to find innovative ideas and unique solutions. 

Despite its moniker, design thinking workshops are for far more than just design teams, as the design thinking process can be employed to overcome business challenges and develop design-based solutions in all departments. Most commonly, though, design thinking principles will be used in workshops for designers as they seek out potential solutions for design projects.

By putting design first in their approach to problem-solving, brands are able to center empathy and put the needs of real users first. If your business isn’t already on board with design thinking, leading a design thinking workshop can serve as a first step, giving your team the opportunity to learn to foster a user-centric mindset and think with design in mind. 

Goals of Your Design Thinking Workshop

The main goal of a design thinking workshop is for teams to create user-focused solutions for design-related problems. As you consider leading your own design thinking workshop, identify a series of goals and keep those central to your planning process.

Consider workshop goals such as:

• Producing groundbreaking ideas
• Cultivating a community in your workplace through collaboration
• Strengthening problem-solving skills
• Generating innovative ideas
• Empowering creative thinking
• Engaging your team

How to Become a Design Thinking Expert

Leading a design thinking workshop takes an expert in design thinking methodology. By taking the time to study and understand design thinking methodology, you can guide your team to creative solutions and make them into design thinkers in their own right. 

Want to make sure your design thinking workshop is led by an experienced facilitator? Work with the experts at Voltage Control. Our team of professional design thinking facilitators will give your team the tools you need to hold design thinking workshops of your own, or they’ll run them for you.

When learning how to facilitate a design thinking workshop, facilitators should understand these six steps to design thinking:

1. Observing and engaging in behavior: Begin by studying your users’ behavior to understand their needs 
2. Ideation: Next, brainstorm on how to meet user needs via divergent thinking
3. Prototype: Rapid prototyping focuses on testing ideas with real people in real-time to get instantaneous feedback
4. Feedback: With your prototype in the hands of the end-user, assess how and why the product meets or fails to meet their needs.
5. Integration: Implement the feedback to improve the design
6. Application: With your newly improved design, it’s time to move forward with the improved product

4 Secrets to Leading a Successful Design Thinking Workshop

If you’re heading up a design thinking workshop for the first time, it can be overwhelming to navigate all the available resources and design thinking tools while keeping the principles of design thinking top of mind. As a facilitator, your job starts with curating and collecting a series of activities to help stimulate the creativity and problem-solving superpowers of your workshop participants.

Pro Tip: We specifically created the Workshop Design Canvas Control Room App to help anyone planning any kind of workshop ease into the art of preparing to facilitate design thinking meetings. This canvas includes learning science, cognition, and facilitation best practice guardrails to help you ensure your design with objectives and participant needs in mind. 

With the right resources to practice leading a design thinking workshop and ample prep time, you can properly prepare your facilitator toolkit.

As you get ready to lead a design thinking workshop, be sure to prepare by:

1. Identifying workshop objectives 

Your objectives are the clear goals you hope to achieve in your design thinking workshop. Whether you’re trying to troubleshoot your existing design or come up with something entirely new, outlining your aims in the objective is the first step. Center your understanding of your target users and their user experience.

2. Choosing a location 

Your design thinking workshop can take place anywhere, whether it’s held virtually or in a physical location like a conference room. If you’re meeting in person, be sure there is enough physical space for the whole team as well as any equipment you may need.

Since this is a workshop for designers, also consider their needs and preferences when it comes to designing together.

3. Creating a workshop agenda

Your agenda should include all the workshop activities that you plan to use. Be sure to leave adequate time in between each activity for your team to engage with each other without burnout from an activity-heavy schedule, as well as clear opportunities for discussion and questions. The design team should be given plenty of time to work through each stage of the design project, as well as break time to regroup and rebuild energy levels.

4. Gathering workshop materials

If you plan to meet physically, gather all the necessary materials for your design thinking workshop, like whiteboards, paper, pens, and anything else you’ll need to complete the activities. 

Design Thinking Facilitator Frameworks

Leading a design thinking workshop begins with using the right facilitator framework. The correct framework will make it easier for you to visually present your ideas to your team as you keep them engaged with easy-to-follow presentations, visually stimulating graphics, and well-executed design that will encourage your team to produce their best work. 

Templates can be utilized to save time and outline design processes like journey mapping and user testing. For example, using MURAL templates for your facilitation framework will help your team remain productive and engaged throughout the collaborative process.

How to Facilitate a Design Thinking Workshop in 4 Steps

As the facilitator, you will be leading the charge into the design thinking workshop. With all your prep in place, it’s time to lead a masterful session that will set the tone of the workshop, encourage creative problem-solving, and ultimately reach your goals for the product. 

Begin your workshop with the right questions to spark thoughtful dialogue. The art of facilitation lies in having the right facilitator questions in your arsenal that will keep your team focused, energized, and ready to brainstorm. The right questions can get your team excited to be active participants who are more likely to contribute creative ideas.

Pro Tip: Asking questions like, “How are we feeling?” and “Why are we here today?” sets a conversational tone and helps to loosen your team up before the work begins. With the creative juices flowing, your team will be ready to collaborate.

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Step One: Diving Into Design Thinking

While your design team is likely already familiar with the concept of design thinking, some may need a refresher course on the subject, especially if you’re working with a cross-functional team. At the start of the workshop, give a brief discussion about what design thinking is, its various phases, and its benefits. With a crash course in the concept of design thinking, everyone on your team will be on the right page. 

Step Two: Empathize With the Audience

As you lead your team headfirst into design thinking, prioritize the empathize stage of the process. This is the best way to humanize the design process and helps your team focus on what the user needs and how to best achieve that. This step is where design thinking tools and activities come into play. 

If you haven’t already developed user personas, this may be a great opportunity to do so. Rich user personas represent the traits and behavioral patterns of the users of your product.

With popular activities like empathy maps and roleplaying, you can help your team identify with the language, feelings, wants, and needs of the audience. Following each activity, be sure to allow your team to ask questions, connect their work with previous stages, and share their findings. 

Step Three: Zeroing In on the Problem and Identifying Solutions

In this step, it’s time to tighten the focus on the problems in user experience. Participants can create problem statements to help guide them through the rest of the workshop. As your team brainstorms possible solutions, lead them through design thinking activities to help them stoke the fire of creativity and arrive at the most innovative solutions. 

Throughout the discussion, push your team towards collaborating for a single refined solution. Ultimately, they should be able to talk about the journey each user will take to solve the same problem on their own. 

Step Four: Closing the Design Thinking Workshop

After a successful workshop following the design thinking methodology, be sure to thoughtfully close the session by describing the next steps and asking follow-up questions. See how the design team feels about the workshop as well as what they learned, and clearly outline any necessary next steps.

Design thinking workshops are powerful and transformative when facilitated well. With a facilitator well-versed in design thinking, the correct facilitation frameworks, engaging activities, and a team filled with passionate collaborators, you’ll be well on your way to leading a successful design thinking workshop at your company. 

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The Voltage Control team has always been remote (aside from our in-person workshops and events, which were put on a pause due to the pandemic), resulting in our team constantly learning about and improving upon the best and most efficient ways to collaborate virtually. Effective remote work collaboration for teams relies on having the right tools in place. As experts in remote work, our team put together a Virtual Work Guide documenting our learnings for you to more easily navigate work with a distributed team. The past 18 months have also provided additional opportunities to refine remote meetings and develop virtual workshop tools. To succeed in today’s virtual and distributed workforce, all remote teams will need to implement the right tools, processes, and methods to optimize how they work together.

Virtual workshops require careful planning and preparation, as there are various factors to take into account that you don’t need to consider for in-person ones (including Zoom fatigue, scheduling across multiple time zones, and maintaining human connection in a virtual landscape). By nature, digital tools are necessary for virtual workshops to run smoothly and effectively. Improve your next virtual workshop with 10 of our top curated tools: 5 tools we’ve created here at Voltage Control through our own experiences with virtual work, and 5 additional tools we recommend you test out for your next virtual workshop.

The following tools were developed by the Voltage Control team to help individuals, teams, and companies build the skills they need to design and run exceptional virtual workshops.

5 Voltage Control Virtual Workshop Tools 

1. Design Sprint Guide

This guide provides an overview of everything you need to run your own remote Design Sprint, and outlines everything we’ve done at Voltage Control to successfully adapt our tried-and-true Design Sprint model for remote work.

2. Workshop Methods & Activities Templates

A collection of tools to inspire methods and activities for your next workshop, spanning facilitation frameworks, design thinking, improv, active learning, idea generation, prototyping, and more.

3. Workshop Design Template for MURAL

Use this MURAL canvas to design your workshop, meeting, training, or course for lasting growth and transformation. The best workshops are impactful learning experiences. We created the LXD Canvas to introduce learning experience design principles to facilitators who haven’t considered them and to help everyone apply them more effectively in your facilitation to maximize participant potential.

Unfamiliar with MURAL? Use our MURAL Cheat Sheet to learn how to use it.

4. Workshop Design Workshop

Our Workshop Design Workshop is a 2-day virtual experience where you learn techniques on improving engagement, retention, and participant commitment during and after your workshop. You can expect to learn and practice the principles and tools to drive lasting change.

5. Control Room App

This tool helps you run virtual workshops and is for anyone wanting to run magical meetings. We custom-made this tool based on our own facilitation experiences to help you facilitate exceptionally good meetings and events. It includes20 free activities and premium features that allow you to maximize meaningful connection and productive work amongst your attendees. This simple tool is filled with meeting activities that keep your team engaged and captures feedback so you can constantly improve. Check out our videos to learn more.

We utilize the following tools side-by-side with our own to run effective virtual workshops and meetings. Try these out in your next virtual workshop or event if you haven’t already.

5 Virtual Workshop Tools We Recommend

1. Zoom

This video conferencing tool is a must for almost any virtual meeting, but especially important for virtual workshops due to its breakout room capabilities. They even have an Events solution to better host virtual experiences, with features including branded event hubs, customizable registration and built-in ticket options, and analytics to help you understand your event performance and improve your virtual events.

2. MURAL

MURAL is a digital whiteboard with collaborative templates for visual collaboration including planning, brainstorming, and designing. We personally like MURAL because it’s a customizable virtual whiteboard that supports interactive and collaborative work with a remote or virtual team. Everyone can work together in one visual space, and you can create your own templates to support your specific needs. Check out our MURAL cheat sheet for a quick reference on how to use MURAL.

3. Figma

Collaborative design platform to design, prototype, and gather feedback in real-time in one place. Companies like Spotify, Netflix, Nike, and digital innovators have been using Figma to design their next mobile app, marketing website, or proof of concept. We use Figma in almost every Design Sprint process.

4. World Time Buddy

One benefit of virtual workshops is that people can join regardless of location. However, this also means multiple time zones need to be taken into account. This tool is a world clock, time zone converter, and online meeting scheduler to coordinate and plan across different time zones.

5. SessionLab

Dynamically design, organize and share workshops and training content. This tool helps you easily plan and create virtual workshops. It includes 150+ expert-reviewed remote-friendly facilitation methods (and a library of 800+ total methods) and helps ensure your virtual team is engaged and aligned while making changes in real-time.

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Make virtual workshops run seamlessly and get the most out of your attendees by incorporating the right tools and practices. If you are interested in learning about additional tools and best practices for managing remote teams, see here.

Run Your Own Virtual Workshop Successfully

Do you want to run a successful remote workshop but don’t know where to start? Voltage Control facilitates events of all kinds, including live online workshops, boot camps, summits, and meetings. Please contact us at hello@voltagecontrol.com if you have questions or would like to schedule a consultation.

FAQ Section

What collaboration tools does Voltage Control recommend for virtual workshops?
At Voltage Control, we utilize a wide range of collaboration tools, including Google Docs, Google Forms, and Google Drive, alongside other online design tools like Figma and MURAL. These tools enable efficient digital collaboration, allowing teams to work together in real time during virtual workshops and training sessions.

How can I improve team collaboration in virtual sessions?
Using advanced features of virtual workshop platforms and online whiteboards ensures effective online collaboration. These platforms support virtual offices and offer interactive sessions that enhance team collaboration, brainstorming sessions, and the overall creative process.

What are the key features to look for in virtual platforms?
When selecting a virtual platform for your workshop, key features include breakout sessions, video chat, audio calls, and online communication tools like Zoom or Google Meet. These platforms should also support virtual whiteboards and other tools that facilitate digital collaboration and the engagement of your entire team.

What are the benefits of using Google Workspace tools in a virtual workshop?
Google Workspace tools like Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Google Drive allow for efficient collaboration and communication within virtual workshops. These tools facilitate document sharing, scheduling, and real-time editing, making them ideal for organizing collaboration sessions and workshop activities.

Can virtual workshops offer the same level of engagement as in-person workshops?
Yes, virtual workshops can be just as engaging as in-person workshops with the right digital facilitation tools. A lot of platforms combined with the use of online whiteboards and engagement tools, allow for interactive and collaborative workshop activities. The virtual space offers flexibility while maintaining high levels of team engagement.

How do I ensure the success of virtual brainstorming sessions?
To succeed in virtual brainstorming sessions, use online collaboration tools like MURAL or Figma as we already mentioned, since they are perfect tools for visual and design collaboration. Google Forms can serve as a survey tool to gather feedback, while breakout sessions in Zoom or Google Meet help maintain team focus and productivity during brainstorming activities.

The post Virtual Workshop Tools appeared first on Voltage Control.

If you are thinking about running a hybrid workshop, there’s a lot to consider. The hybrid landscape is a new frontier for event facilitators and attendees alike; therefore, putting on a hybrid workshop will require a different approach and mindset than an in-person or virtual one. It will also require alternative tools and methods to create an equal and engaging experience for all attendees–no matter if they’re in the physical workshop room or Zoom room. 

The priority of any workshop should be to engage participants and help them get the most out of their experience to make a lasting impact. Focusing on connection in a hybrid workshop is even more important as you must create an environment that bridges the two worlds and equally supports in-person and remote attendees. People come first. Everything else trickles down from there. With that being said, the right tools and processes are also essential for a hybrid workshop to exist. 

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Hybrid Workshop Tools & Processes 

The proper tools and processes are a critical component of hybrid workshops–both practically to run an event smoothly and strategically to bring all participants together. A hybrid environment is more complex than an in-person or virtual one; therefore, a hybrid workshop will also be. That’s because you have two different types of attendees to consider: those in the physical room and those dialing in virtually, and you want an equal experience for everyone. Prep will require much more time to adequately organize all attendees and set them up with everything they need to thrive. First, you’ll need to decide on the event platform that will support all of your workshop’s needs:

• Live streaming support
• Integrations that offer the highest production quality
• Networking capabilities that allow easy attendee engagement
• Management capacity to run the event smoothly behind the scenes

Then consider the scene from which you’ll run the event:

• Will you be on a stage with cameras to capture the experience?
• Will you be in an office and operate more like a typical video conferencing call?
• Decide the best scenario that supports the event–from the background to the props that will appear in the frame–then gather the materials you need to bring it to life. 

While tech and hardware are the lifelines that make a hybrid event possible, the biggest challenge with remote or hybrid work of any kind is genuine connection. It’s the essential missing element of in-person connection that cannot be replaced by technology–no matter how innovative. There is no substitute for human interaction. To provide the same fidelity of experience for both in-person and remote attendees, you’ll need a tool that supports collaboration, like the virtual tool MURAL. We personally like MURAL at Voltage Control because it’s a customizable virtual whiteboard that supports interactive and collaborative work with a distributed team. Everyone can work together in one visual space, and you can create your own templates to support your specific needs. It helps to bridge the gap between being apart and working together, no matter where you are. For this reason, it’s a great tool for hybrid workshops.

Pro-tip: Check out our MURAL Cheat Sheet for a quick reference of how to use MURAL.

One method to foster connection with distributed participants is to have everyone join the meeting the same way or work together in the same place. Have everyone join the meeting on their own devices via a video conferencing tool like Zoom. This creates a more even playing field for remote participants; when everyone joins the workshop in the same way, there is a smaller feeling of division. Having everyone use MURAL via their own devices to work together is also an effective way to create connection and community. All participants can see each other’s work in real-time no matter where they are physically. 

Once you have your decided tools and location, you must set up attendees before the workshop begins. Preparing attendees may include:

• In-person walkthroughs to set the scene and ready cameras
• Lighting and other production gear
• Virtual walkthroughs on the virtual event platform to teach remote attendees how to navigate the space

If the workshop requires attendees to have certain materials to participate, please send them out in advance. This will ensure all attendees are on the same page before the workshop begins.

Hybrid Distribution

Hand-in-hand with tools and processes is the distribution of attendees and how they’re configured. There are endless configuration possibilities for a hybrid workshop. Here are a few examples: 

• 2 in-person workshop spaces with 10 attendees in each, 1 facilitator in each; 5 remote attendees
• Facilitators are in person and all attendees are remote
• 1 in-person workshop space with 1 facilitator & 10 attendees; 10 remote attendees

Note that it’s just as important to consider the configuration of facilitators as it is for attendees. You must decide where you’ll need facilitators and how many. For example, as in the second configuration above, you could have three facilitators in the same physical room, all with specific jobs, to backchannel together while the participants are remote. This could be a cool experience to lead and navigate the workshop with co-facilitators in person. All facilitators would be on the same page, and the focus of connection would then be on creating an excellent experience for all remote attendees. 

You can also use the distribution of attendees to your advantage. For example, are people who need to be together already in the same room? In this case, a lot of the leg work is already done to foster connection amongst attendees. The people who need to be connected have the advantage of being physically together. You could even have a facilitator in each room to help the groups navigate the conversation/work. Then it’s about effectively communicating each distributed group’s work to the other groups.

While there are copious permutations, keep in mind that each one is unique and will require different considerations and approaches. We’ll never have an exhaustive list of every possible configuration. The important thing is that you consider:

• How are people distributed?
• How is the environment shaped?
• What issues might arise and how might that benefit you?

Hybrid Workshop Resources

In sum, when planning a hybrid workshop, map out:

1. How your attendees are distributed
2. Where facilitators will be and how many are required
3. How collaboration will flow
4. What tech is required to make it happen
5. How the environment is shaped
6. Your point(s) of engagement

Then, when it’s time to start thinking about the experience. Check out our Workshop Design Templates to help guide you through the process. You can also find more information about running effective hybrid workshops, meetings, and events (including more configurations) in our free Hybrid Work Guide. Interested in talking to us about how you can effectively run a hybrid meeting or event? Let’s chat.

The post Hybrid Workshops appeared first on Voltage Control.

Open Assembly hosts conversations and connections between organizations and people that want to adapt to the changing virtual landscape and thrive using evolving digital tools. The company focuses on community and knowledge sharing that helps culture and business transition to the future of work. 

The team at Open Assembly wanted to refine their vision of open talent standards and certification entity in collaboration with the open talent community. 

“During COVID we were meeting as a group and there was a lot of good energy around what to do to reduce friction and accelerate adoption in the open talent industry. We were doing a lot of talking, and someone proposed that we should run a design sprint so we could put our community into action.” —Catherine McGowin, Managing Director, Open Assembly 

Voltage Control facilitators Douglas Ferguson and John Fitch custom-designed and facilitated a series of workshops, including a three-day Design Sprint to help Open Assembly and 20 leaders from its community engage with one another and build consensus around actionable next steps. 

“Open Assembly had a dream that they might be the right organization to provide solutions to these needs, but they wanted to hear from the community how they thought such a group should be structured and if they would be a good fit to lead it. They also wanted to make sure they fully understood the needs of the community. Not only did they agree that Open Assembly should lead this instead of bothering with organization structure, but the community insisted on focusing on a manifesto and identifying workstreams for getting started.” —Douglas Ferguson, Facilitator, Voltage Control

The Discovery

For the first workshop in the series, facilitator John Fitch led an ideation session during Open Assembly’s weekly community meeting to collect ideas and concerns from the broader group. The generated information was integrated into the following Design Sprint. 

The Design Sprint

Day 1: Alignment 

The Design Sprint started with mapping the problem space. We started by imagining our end result and risks along the way. Then, we worked backward to figure out the steps we needed to get there. At the end of the first day, we had an identified goal as well as a list of questions the group needed to answer during the sprint. 

Identified goal: We are uncovering better ways to engage global talent by helping others do it. We seek to reduce the friction that interferes with the adoption of new work paradigms. While we realize talent supply is equally or even more important than demand, we recognize a need to stimulate more demand first to initiate the flywheel of opportunity. 

Questions:

• How do we address too many different delivery models to align on a single set of standards?
• How do we overcome large organization inertia and bureaucracy?
• What does the group see as the key barriers to adoption that we can collectively address? 

The group then engaged in “Expert Interviews,” where they asked the experts within the core team a series of questions to better understand the problem and potential solutions. Next, the team participated in an activity called “How Might We…” The purpose of this exercise was to encourage the group to get curious and interview a few experts in order to explore possible solutions to their challenge by thinking big rather than getting mired by the painful details of taking a full solution to market. They considered and answered the following prompt:

As allies who believe in the virtues and support the adoption of open talent and innovation models, we believe that we can make more meaningful progress together than apart. How might we come together and organize the open talent marketplace, overcome our most critical challenges, and reduce friction that interferes with the adoption of this new paradigm for work? 

Day 2: Solution Sketches

On the second day, the group did lightning demos of their ideas. The team located and shared analogous inspiration. These demos included competitors, adjacent services, intuitive interfaces, inspiring branding, and compelling content. 

Key takeaways from the demos:

• Ubiquity and ease of use
• Establishing credibility and trust
• Models for standards and maturity 

Each person then participated in a four-step sketch. Anyone can sketch. Most solution sketches are just rectangles and words. This process enabled everyone on the team to become a designer.

The team started by writing down the goal and questions on their paper. Then, they copied their favorite How Might We’s and lightning demos onto their notes. This moment of collection and reflection grounded the team and focused energy while allowing each participant time to process all we had done so far.

Next, the team transitioned from observing and collecting to reacting and generating. They rapidly documented all ideas they had as they reviewed their notes.

Everyone silently responded to prompts to unlock thinking in new ways in an activity called 10×10 Writing. This helped the group to loosen up before committing ideas to paper. 

The team spent the rest of the day sketching one or two solutions that they felt held the most promise. Although they were together in the same room, they worked alone. Instead of a group brainstorm, we gave each person time to develop solutions on their own.

Day 3: Decide

The third and final day of the Design Sprint was centered around deciding on the best-generated idea to move forward with. The team used small dots to identify parts of the sketches they liked. Then, we led the team through each of the sketches posted on the wall and called out key ideas.

Using a technique called Heat Mapping, members of the team worked their way around the room placing smaller dots to create a heat map of things that stood out as ideas with high potential.

The group went through a speed critique and straw poll voting to further narrow down the top ideas. John Winsor, Founder and CEO of Open Assembly, also the project “decider,” used three super vote dots to select the winning solutions. We then combined each of these sketches into a single solution for prototyping. 

Finally we ended with participants discussing needs, prioritizing, and then committing to next steps. 

The Outcome

The Open Assembly team walked away with a working manifesto. They also gained several insights from the Design Sprint:

1. There is already lots of alignment. While there was nuance, everyone was in agreement.
2. Consistent desire to focus on demand and removing barriers, but not to the detriment of the supplier experience.
3. Strong desire to get to specific key barriers that need to be addressed and how the group can address them collectively.
4. Everyone appreciates the work that Open Assembly is doing and has no issue committing to come to the table and support what we are building.

Top priorities the team identified to move forward with:

1. Release draft manifesto into the wild (beta release)
2. Organize work groups
3. Summarize outcome of the three days; secure feedback from the crowd/collective on the manifesto
4. Operating model—roles, processes/governance, success measures, tools
5. Create a dream list of all (individuals or businesses) who should be involved

John Winsor, Founder and CEO of Open Assembly, said their next steps after the Design Sprint were to “begin work on building a trade association focused on setting standards for the industry. The group wanted to see a group formed that could establish standards for the industry around the accreditation of platforms and education of the demand side organizations. The group also expressed the need for greater advocacy and promotion.”

Open Assembly  tested their manifesto prototype with the community in the weeks following the Design Sprint. 

Since the Design Sprint, Open Assembly has created a 501c6 non-profit trade organization called the Center for the Transformation of Work (CTW). 

The Summit

Several months later, Open Assembly engaged with Voltage Control to design and integrate a collaborative exercise into Open Assembly’s Global Summit, a virtual, 2-day community event with over 160 attendees. Voltage Control designed a custom canvas, conducted live scribing during the event, and hosted a final happy hour to engage attendees in conversations about the event content and the mission. 

Open Assembly gained the support of the community as well acquired new tools to integrate into their business moving forward. 

“We have started using Mural in other instances and decided to incorporate the powerful tool and Voltage Control into our first annual global summit event. It was a great interactive experience for all of the attendees. ” —Catherine McGowin, Managing Director, Open Assembly 

Do you have an innovation you want to implement, a company problem you need to solve, or a meeting structure that needs improvement?

Voltage Control facilitates events of all kinds, including design thinking workshops, innovation sessions, and Design Sprints. Please reach out to us at hello@voltagecontrol.com if you want to talk or for a consultation.

The post Open Assembly Established Interactive Community & Nonprofit Trade Organization With a 3-Day Design Sprint appeared first on Voltage Control.

Lumos Pharma is a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on developing new therapies for people with rare diseases. Its focus is prioritized in areas where the pathophysiology is clear and medical need is highest. Lumos Pharma’s mission and strategy are to deliver safe and effective therapies to patients via time and cost-efficient drug development. 

In light of a recent merger, their human resources team wanted to explore a way to combine the two company cultures and build team unity across departments in the new virtual landscape.

“These sessions really helped us learn quite a bit about ourselves, our co-workers, and who we are as a team…we feel energized, excited, and impassioned about our work.” —Maggi Gentle, Senior Director of Human Resources at Lumos Pharma 

The Workshop

Lumos Pharma participated in a two-day teamwork dynamics workshop centered around the Clifton StrengthsFinder framework: an evaluation of 34 CliftonStrengths themes that reflect a person’s natural way of thinking, feeling, and behaving. The team completed the StrengthsFinder assessment to identify each team members’ core strengths and how they can be combined to form a healthy, productive company work dynamic. 

Identified goal: Focus on a way to help build our team unity in the virtual world we have found ourselves in. 

Day 1

We spent the first day diving deep into all aspects of the CliftonStrengths assessment results at an individual level and team level. 

The Process:

The team began with a team-building activity before diving into the work. Each team member added a picture of their favorite book in a “collective bookshelf” constructed in a MURAL template and we discussed our choices. 

Then, we observed a Macro View of the company’s Strengths dynamics—across teams and different organizations—among the four different CliftonStrengths domains: Executing, Influencing, Relationship Building, and Strategic Thinking. 

Team members then created personal profiles, based on their individual results, in a collective Mural board. Each person included self-reflection stickies with helpful mindsets and things to be aware of moving forward. They placed the profiles into one of three sections that corresponded to their main CliftonStrengths theme: Execution, Influencing, Relationships, or Strategy. The Mural board serves as an evergreen, transparent resource to get to know other team members and their strengths and refer back to when needed.  

Day 2

We worked through individual and company-wide blindspots and eventually looked at all company 2020 goals through the lens of what strengths could be leveraged to best achieve those goals. 

The Process:

The workshop narrative was set up so that each person could first appreciate themselves, then others, and eventually the entire team. We identified and worked through individual and collective blindspots to ideate unique strengths recipes for company success. The team first talked about the blindspots of each person’s strengths to be more mindful of. This knowledge was then used to workshop strategic strengths combinations within teams to create effective and productive team dynamics. We were challenged to appreciate people and teams through the lens of their strengths rather than only focusing on a person’s work title.

Next, we broke into four teams to 1) Look at identified 2020 company goals 2) Ask important, high-level questions surrounding those goals. To better understand the information, we organized the questions by color-coding stickies in a Mural board in accordance with the domain they most gravitated towards. 

The Outcome:

The Lumos Pharma team gained valuable insight into their individual strengths and their co-workers’ strengths, and by extension, they better understand who they are as a team. They have been able to assess their team dynamic more thoroughly and accurately based on who possesses which strengths.

“Are we utilizing our employees to their strengths or forcing them to work in other areas?” That is something Maggi Gentle, Senior Director of Human Resources at Lumos Pharma, says she continues to discuss with management. “I believe that the workshop helped us learn more about one another. We engaged with team members we don’t normally engage with and the discussion around goals was very inclusive. I also feel that the work around strengths was very enlightening for our management team, specifically our CEO.”

Lumos Pharma’s next step is to continue to work on company goals and the development of its mission statement and values—now better informed by team members’ strengths. 

“We learned about the strengths of our co-workers and how we might be able to collaborate with others to complement our own strength make-up. Many leaders are able to identify the strengths of their team members and play to them well. It is a very powerful tool for us as individuals to identify our own strengths. It is very empowering and affirming to name our strengths and embrace them. It is my hope that the two afternoons spent getting to know our own strengths and those of our team help in some of our exciting upcoming projects.” 

Looking for an Expert Facilitator?

Voltage Control offers a range of options for innovation training, design sprints, and design thinking facilitation. Please reach out to us at info@voltagecontrol.co if you want to talk.

The post Lumos Pharma Meaningfully Merged Two Cultures in a 2-Day Workshop appeared first on Voltage Control.

We’re here for all teams struggling to make quick group decisions when working remotely. It can be daunting and tricky to make a smooth transition to virtual meetings, even if you’re virtual savvy. That’s why we hosted a community Virtual Decision Making Workshop last week as part of our free weekly virtual workshop series. We wanted to give the community an opportunity to come together to learn and practice virtual decision-making methods and tools. A recap of the event is below. 

Topic: Discussing virtual decision making 

Voltage Control President Douglas Ferguson was the workshop leader and Chief Product Officer John Fitch and Event Manager Tara Weghorst were the minders. The group of 75 participants from around the world gathered in Zoom to discuss virtual decision making.  

Breakout Session #1

Groups of two participants were randomly matched four rounds of impromptu networking where they discussed the following prompts:

1. What is difficult about virtual decision making?
2. What is easy about virtual decisions?
3. What are you hoping to learn?

Here are a few of the synthesized ideas that were discussed about each prompt:

1. What people found difficult about virtual decisions

• Technology glitches and extra time needed to give people instructions and troubleshoot issues
• Lack of connection that in-person meetings offer – keeping people engaged
• Less sensitivity to the vibe/energy in the room 

2. What people found easy about virtual decisions

• Connectivity, the ability to bring people together that wouldn’t otherwise be together across the world
• Ability to make quicker decisions due to less emotional influence in the room allows people to stick to intellectual thought processing

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3. What people were hoping to learn:

• How to transfer to virtual
• Which virtual tools to use
• Virtual meeting best practices

Chat Storm

After the rounds of impromptu networking, all participants were rerouted back to the main event space for a two-minute collective discussion about their experiences. Participants who wanted to share used Zoom’s “raise hand” feature to volunteer to share what surfaced for them with the entire group. Several participants shared their input. 

Decision Tree using MURAL 

Attendees were split into 20 different breakout groups of 3-4 participants to work on a Decision Tree in MURAL. Each group had an assigned section in the app for their group number which served as their workspace. All participants were anonymous in MURAL. They had three minutes of solo worktime to quietly consider bold ways to more easily and more quickly make decisions virtually. Then each person picked their three favorite ideas to share amongst the group. The group had three minutes to vote on the most compelling idea, something that they want to tangibly start now. This was followed by four more rapid rounds of voting to land the group on the single most compelling idea from everyone. Each group picked a delegate to share their idea in a ten minute debrief session with all other workshop participants. 

As delegates from each group shared their winning idea, Tara posted the group’s number and idea in the Zoom chat for everyone to see. Once all ideas were shared, everyone voted on the winning idea by typing the number of the idea they liked best in the chat and hitting enter at the same time. Here are the top three ideas:

1. To create physical templates for agreement/disagreement, other dimensions of a decision so we can quickly see various aspects of a decision that needs to be made
2. More refined focus – incorporating a meeting structure that includes a detailed agenda with a decision that needs to be made, how it will be made and logistics and clearly defined roles

3. Pre-work – done on the platform you are using so everyone is ready to make a decision during the meeting

Troika Consultant

Participants were randomly assigned breakout rooms of three participants each for a Troika Consultant exercise. One person volunteered to be the Client and shared their personal challenges with the transition to virtual and virtual decision making for one minute. The other two participants acted as the Consultants. They asked the Client clarifying questions about their problem for two minutes. The Client then turned off their camera and muted themselves while listening to the Consultants discuss solutions and options for two minutes. The Client turned back on their camera and audio and shared what they thought was valuable about the Consultants’ ideas and feedback. This process was repeated two more times, rotating the participants so that each person acted as the Client. 

Final Chat Storm

Everyone was rerouted back to the main event and discussed their findings and feedback in a three-minute chat storm. After the discussion, Douglas asked everyone to submit helpful and inspiring takeaways from the workshop in the group chat. Some are shared below:

 “Solitude is an opportunity to connect deeper and find a voice of sensitivity and wholeness.” -Nora Scully (Oakland, CA)

“Enable ownership & set the stage for the team to keep them motivated.” -Lisa Wagner (Berlin)

“Ideas that were combining perspectives that seemed conflicting – was a valuable piece!” -Vera, Budean (Moldova)

“Forming/initiating my own virtual meetings/happy hours for networking & connections.” -Mark Peterson (Austin)

Weekly Virtual Workshop

Join us for our free, weekly community workshops to collaborate, brainstorm, and network with others. Let’s continue to learn from and help one another. We’re all in this together!

Want to learn more about virtual facilitation? 

Voltage Control offers virtual services including Virtual Facilitation, Virtual Transitions, and Virtual Meeting Design. Please reach out at info@voltagecontrol.com for a consultation.

The post Virtual Decision Making Workshop Recap appeared first on Voltage Control.

I was working with a group recently and afterward, someone told me it was one of the most powerful experiences they’ve ever had.

I asked them to explain which tools and activities were most helpful, but they said more important than the tools or workshop design was the human connections made during the event.

In a follow up survey, someone else commented:

I felt safe to share my thoughts and feelings. I felt my unique perspective was celebrated in a way I don’t always feel on a day-to-day basis.

When we have the opportunity to facilitate a workshop or a gathering of people, we have a great responsibility. The gift of escaping a normal work schedule to discover new ways of creating and thinking together certainly begins with protecting time and space to work and learn.

But perhaps more important, and often missed, is the opportunity to be together in a new way. Working together differently is difficult enough, but learning to be together differently is an art the most intentional facilitators are able to master.

As you’re planning workshops or meetings asking yourself, “Can we do something different together to accomplish our goals?” is a great starting place — but we can take it further.

Asking yourself, “Can we be together in a new and meaningful way?” is how we create transformative and life changing gatherings.

A mentor of mine says all business and work really is is an excuse to be with one another — and we get distracted by the doing.

So how do we ensure everyone’s voice is heard and recognized so we can create a productive and powerful meeting? How do we make sure people feel seen and respected for who they are and what they bring?

This is the real work.

Google made some powerful and important discoveries in their search for what makes the most effective teams in what was dubbed Project Aristotle. They now host a conversation called re:Work about the principles they discovered.

Chief amongst the most important principles for healthy and productive teams is a sense of Psychological Safety — which is best summarized by ensuring each member of the team feels safe to take risks, ask questions, challenge authority and admit mistakes.

They then identified three key behaviors practiced by the most Psychologically Safe, and thus, most effective teams. They are simply:

Equality in Conversational Turn-Taking

If each person speaks roughly the same amount, that team is more likely to succeed.

Ostentatious Listening

Show team members you’re listening by repeating what was just said, or closing your laptop to pay attention.

Average Social Sensitivity

The ability to intuit how others felt based on their tone of voice, their expressions and other nonverbal cues.

How common sense are those? Your grandmother told you these things.

But we humans like to do what we humans like to do — which is overcomplicate priorities and optimize the heck out of human interactions in order to acquire with the idolized feelings of predictability, certainty and control.

Though certainty is alluring, I like what Craig Groeschel says about leading people:

You can have control or you can have growth, but you can’t have both.

If ensuring Psychological Safety matters on our dedicated teams, it’s equally if not more imperative as facilitators to ensure we’re creating workshops and experiences where people feel OK being themselves so they don’t feel compelled to prove or hide out of fear (hat tip to Chris McAlister).

When leading a session we’re not only asking people to do work in ways unusual to them, we’re asking them to do it in a rapid and high pressure environment. The tactics are sexy, but we must remember our chief responsibility as facilitators is to cast a vision for a temporary place where we’ll co-create something together using methods we’ve never used before.

This can be intimidating and scary.

Safety is our responsibility.

Including everyone is our responsibility.

As you’re gearing up for your next workshop, here are a few guiding principles you can use to implement the wisdom from Google’s re:Work research to create Psychological Safety so everyone can get the two things we most need (in order of importance):

1. A chance to feel safe, included, valued and integral
2. Real traction on an idea or initiative that will have real results on their work after the session is over

What do do before:

Prep yourself internally- Remember the workshop isn’t about you doing something to a group of people — it’s about you being with them and helping them get what they need. Success is not adhering to a structure, but as our Liberating Structures friends like to say, unleashing the potential inside of each person.

Survey the group- Use a Google form to ask a few questions about the work to be done and ask a few questions about how people are doing like:

• In a word or short phrase, please describe how you feel about your work right now…
• What contributions are you proud of in your work?
• Where do you feel stuck in your work?
• When you’re doing your best work, what do you feel like?
• What makes you feel validated by your team?
• What makes you feel under appreciated by your team?

How to begin:

Have an activity in the beginning of your session to ground everyone in the room in gratitude where each person shares something going well in their work or lives. This sets the stage by letting everyone share and puts the principle of Equality in Conversational Turn-Taking front and center.

Remember we must have an emotional connection before we can have an intellectual connection. My friend Chad Littlefield calls this Connection before Content.

Lay out the plan for the day, and then pause and allow others to offer their insights on what else might be important to cover. Make sure the whole group is invested in where you’re going.

During the workshop:

Allow for different ways of participating- Prepare activities that vary from between individual reflection, small group reflection and large group conversation to ensure people who process differently have opportunity to digest and share throughout the workshop.

Notice the energy of the room- If folks are discouraged or lethargic, pause and take a walk around the building, or circle everyone up for one of my favorite improv games, Stretch and Reflect. To do this, get everyone in a circle and have each person lead the group in a new stretch, while in the stretch, invite them to share a reflection on the day so far. Make it around the whole room to get everyone’s blood flowing and refocus the group on the task at hand. Beware of experienced yogis in the group! We don’t need an injury due to poorly executed Crow Poses!

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Another way of shaking things up throughout the day is to pause for a period of personal connection. Have people share personal stories about their lives in small groups they’ve never shared. I like to use the We! Connect cards to prompt meaningful conversations to deepen relationships.

Affirm dissenting opinions- Be willing to pause if the group seems stuck on an idea or it seems the meeting would be better served if you veered from your initial plan. This gathering is less about you getting your agenda right and more about giving the team what they need. Sometimes this means attending to thoughts or emotions that arise. Shutting them down reinforces the negative idea not all opinions are valued.

Interventions:

• Throughout the session be sure to monitor the contributions from participants. Are there a few folks who speak more than others? Thank them for their contributions and announce to the room you want to hear from everyone equally — this is Equality in Conversational Turn-Taking at work.
• When individuals are speaking make sure you’re listening intently and be an example for others in the room. It’s OK to ask folks to put devices away — I like what Jake Knapp says: “When we’re distracted by our devices, the whole room gets dumber — we need everyone’s attention to make progress today.” If there are side conversations, guide the room toward Ostentatious Listening by inviting them to give the floor to whoever is speaking.
• Notice if individuals are quiet or reserved by practicing Average Social Sensitivity. If someone seems down or unengaged, the greatest insult would be to ignore it. Perhaps it’s not best to call them out in front of the group, but chat with them during a break to let them know their contributions matter and you’d love to hear from them.

How to close:

Give everyone a chance to call out what mattered most to them from the day. I like to say, “Let’s go around the room and have everyone share something they want to make sure we don’t miss — a thought or insight you believe is important for everyone to remember from our time together.” Document what everyone says in front of the room — this ensures minority opinions have equal weight as popular opinions.

Another way of closing is to have each person write down their responses on sticky notes to the following prompts:

• I liked…
• I wish…
• What if…

These prompts are also powerful:

• I saw/heard…
• That made me think/feel/wonder…
• Now I want to…

Have each person read their responses aloud and place sticky notes on the wall so everyone’s reflections are seen and heard.

How to follow up:

When you send outputs from the meeting, be sure to include all opinions expressed throughout the day. Offer your own insights to leadership about your honest assessment of the culture of the group and what they might try as a team to continue including everyone. Don’t be afraid to be a bit polarizing — they enlisted you for your unique perspective!

If possible, ask if you can write a follow up email to all participants thanking them for participating, acknowledge their commitment to the work (this stuff isn’t easy!), and remind them how continuing Psychological Safety on their team will enable them to accomplish the work you began together.

If you can send a follow up survey, keep it simple. Ask questions like this:

• On a scale of 1–10, did you feel like your ideas and opinions were heard?
• On a scale of 1–10, how confident do you feel about momentum continuing after our workshop?
• Have you or will you change anything about the way you do your work? If so, what?
• Have you or will you change anything about the way you interact with your colleagues? If so, what?

What a great task ahead of us to create new and inclusive spaces for people. For us to create such spaces, it’s important for us to remember what Bill O’Brien says about the responsibility of leading a group:

The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervenor.

When we take the time to align ourselves with the larger purpose of belonging, we’re able to share that with others. And by remembering the importance of Psychological Safety in our workshops we get what we were after all along: A more inclusive and a more effective experience.

Resources:

• re:Work by Google — the research behind Psychological Safety and effective teams
• Liberating Structures — a fantastic treasure chest of easy to use activities
• Improv Wisdom — a wonderful book about the power of improv and play in business
• We! Connect Cards — a great tool to help participants have meaningful conversations and connect on a personal level

The post Creating Psychological Safety in Workshops appeared first on Voltage Control.

Many businesses fall into one of two buckets. First, there are large, long-standing legacy companies that feel intense pressure to innovate to keep up with the pace of change; customers demand more than ever and they can no longer rest on their size and power alone. They have to change the way they have been doing things, and quickly.

On the other hand, you have start-ups that are actively trying to disrupt a competitive space (from mattresses to cabs to healthcare) who also rely on innovative ideas to get ahead and breakthrough and win the hearts and wallets of consumers.

With either party, innovation is absolutely fundamental. And, one way to spark the creative spirit in your team is to conduct an innovation workshop.

What is an Innovation Workshop?

Many people have heard of or participated in, a design thinking workshop. You can think of an innovation workshop as a slightly broader term, but the two have a lot in common. An innovation workshop is where you gather key stakeholders or team members together to generate novel solutions around a particular business problem.

Often, innovation workshops are led by a professional workshop facilitator who creates an agenda and set of activities that allow you to collaboratively work on your goal. Your innovation workshop might be a half-day, a week, or even a few weeks long depending on your needs and the time you’re able to commit.

At Voltage Control, we don’t use one set of activities or methods in our innovation workshops.

What Should I Expect in an Innovation Workshop?

Because there is no one “cookie-cutter” approach to innovation workshops, agendas, activities, and the methods used will vary. A well-planned innovation workshop is tailored to your challenge and problem space. At Voltage Control, we don’t use one set of activities or methods in our work. We like to leverage all types of methods to design innovation workshops that match exactly what our clients need.

But, these are some common activities that you might expect to see in your workshop:

• Discuss hopes and fears about your project.
• Review data, customer research, or information that relates to your company or challenge to immerse people in the problem space.
• Identify key opportunity areas for your business challenge (i.e. we really have an opportunity to capture more people at the sign-up moment).
• Work as a group or in teams to brainstorm on new ideas and then refine them.
• Rate or rank ideas against desirability, viability, and feasibility.
• Agree on next steps and/or make a roadmap.
• Create light prototypes of potential solutions.

When Should I Consider an Innovation Workshop?

There are a lot of good times to bring together a team for an innovation workshop. Here are the times that we see companies are most looking for help and the clarity that an innovation workshop can bring.

• When you’re starting a project or initiative. The innovation workshop can start the work off on the right foot and ensure that the key people who are involved are all working toward the same goal and vision.
• When a project is stalled out or needs new momentum. Maybe you started strong, but now your team is struggling, at odds, or confused about the next steps. An innovation workshop can give you a renewed focus.
• When you need to evolve your current offering or change course. If you know you need to do something different, but you don’t know quite what, an innovation workshop can surface all of the potential next steps or paths forward and help you hone in on the write on.

Are There Different Types of Innovation Workshops?

At Voltage Control, we like to build custom innovation workshops for our clients; depending on the time you can dedicate and your goals, we’ll draw up the activities and timeline to match. However, we are also big believers in the Design Sprint, which is a clear-cut, five-day formula that moves you quickly from problem framing to prototyping and user testing in one short week. It’s definitely a great way to kick off an innovative project or initiative.

What we love about the Design Sprint is that it jam-packs a ton of activities and action into five days.

What we love about the Design Sprint is that it jam-packs a ton of activities and action into five days. It’s a great ramp-up for a project and you’ll typically accomplish months of work in that focused week. The key is finding five days when you can get about 7 essential people from your team to set aside their work and dedicate it to the Design Sprint.

If you want to learn more about Design Sprints, check out these articles:
–Why a Design Sprint is Always Worth the Time & Money
–What Happens in a Design Sprint Workshop?

What Do I Want in an Innovation Workshop Facilitator?

When you’re ready to seriously-consider running an innovation workshop, most people will reach out to a professional facilitator to help them craft, organize and lead their workshop. If your company doesn’t have an internal innovation team that runs workshops, consider looking to a consultancy like Voltage Control to help you shape your innovation workshop. Some of the things to look for in your facilitator are:

• Obviously, experience running many workshops for many different types of companies.
• Someone with a broad set of skills and industry expertise. (Usually you don’t want a facilitator who is overly-focused on one industry; you want them to bring perspective from many businesses and challenges.
• Someone who isn’t afraid to ask the tough questions of the group during the workshop.
• Someone who will collaborate with you before your workshop to understand your needs and build an agenda based on what you need to get out of the workshop.
• Someone who is open to working with you after your innovation workshop for coaching, additional workshops, or other ways to keep the momentum going.

Are you looking for someone to plan and execute your innovation workshop?

If you need a collaborator on your next innovation workshop or design thinking project, give us a shout. Voltage Control facilitates events of all kinds, including design thinking workshops, innovation sessions, and Design Sprints. Please reach out to us at info@voltagecontrol.co for a consultation.

The post The Value of Running Innovation Workshops appeared first on Voltage Control.