Workshops for…
Starting out, heading your business in a new direction, or just looking to firm up your goals? A goal-setting workshop exercise brings clarity, direction and purpose. It’s a bonding exercise for your team, and gives them a clear picture of your group priorities.
Or maybe you’ve got your objectives down – but you don’t know how to achieve them, or what it will look like when you do. A workshop to help you plan how to reach your goals goes hand-in-hand with deciding what they are.
Goal-setting workshop tactics
Choosing an established tactic, like those below, gives you the tools and the confidence you need to get things done efficiently. Follow the links for step-by-step instructions for each of these approaches.
Of course, if you’re just starting out you will want to make sure you’re setting yourself up for success. Great product teams don’t happen by chance; they happen by design. You can lay great foundations by understanding what’s required to build a great product team.
Remote team? If the tactic mentions sticky notes, don’t despair. You can use online collaborative tools like Miro to bring the hands-on workshop experience to your distributed team.
Workshops for setting goals
Objectives and key results (OKR) workshop
One of the most well known and undeniably useful processes for this is an OKRs workshop. Within a couple of hours, this technique creates radical focus on an objective and allows you to start actively measuring the progress you make towards it.
Sounds good?
You can try it alone, with your team or even with the whole organisation. It’s aspirational, but also gives you solid output that helps cut the distractions – so that you can crack on with whatever will have the most impact. Best carried out once a quarter, this workshop adds ongoing value to your project and your team.
Newspaper headline workshops
Invite your team to gaze into the future and imagine what the press might have to say about your project with a Newspaper Headline workshop (also known as a Press Release workshop).
It might sound like a 30-minute day-dreaming session, but you’ll be surprised what comes to light as you guide people through this exercise: clearly defined problems to solve, a sense of direction and – ultimately – the foundations of a plan for achieving your grand vision.
Sailboat workshop
A Sailboat workshop helps you and your team to truly visualise your goals out on the horizon, and all of the obstacles that might keep you from reaching them. It’s also a great way to build bonds within and between teams, as well as with the wider organisation and other stakeholders.
Use the Sailboat tactic to find out and plan to overcome whatever’s slowing you down – a blocker on your progress, a poor sense of direction or an unreachable goal.
Workshops for making plans
Sticky Steps workshop
A Sticky Steps workshop enables you to create a step-by-step plan for reaching your goals – by working backwards. This approach brings your project to life for even the most cynical members of the team by giving you a tangible action plan.
G.R.O.W workshop
Spare up to two hours for your G.R.O.W workshop and you’ll emerge with that buzzing feeling you get from racking your brains for answers to all of your biggest questions – and finding them.
You start with your current context and one specific goal and explore options for achieving them – before committing your names to an action plan.
Other workshop techniques and exercises
Wherever you are in your journey from idea generation to understanding the challenges you’re likely to face, there’s a tactic that will help you guide your team to the answers you need with confidence.
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