In today’s issue, I’m going to share 4 reasons workshops grow your team’s innovation capability.
When a team becomes more innovative there is a compounding effect that results in more ideas, creativity, collaboration, confidence and culture.
Ultimately, innovation capability increases the opportunity to remain relevant and retain competitive advantage.
Unfortunately, most organisations are stuck in a culture of bureaucracy, fear of failure and reactiveness which just doesn’t work in today’s disruptive and ambiguous world.
What’s more, often in an attempt to learn the skills in a ‘lecture’ style, teams are left without the required capability, rather than knowledge and skills ready to apply to real-world problems.
In this reflection following a recent workshop, a group of 10 public sector officials from several different regions, learned how to innovate during 2 days.
Read time: 3 minutes 👇
Here are four themes that emerged from delivering the workshop:
- Doing beats explaining.
- Collaboration beats constraints.
- Progress beats perfection.
- Fun creates a safe space.
Let’s get going!
Workshop Reason 1 - Doing Beats Explaining
The workshop was structured to have the group immediately doing innovation.
Within the first 30 minutes the group were completing an activity to innovate a product in a step by step process.
The activity was supported with theory and dicussion after each step.
The result was that some highly user-centred and creative prototypes were made in under 1 hour.
This was innovation by design in action.
Workshop Reason 2 - Collaboration Beats Constraints
Every organisation faces constraints that present challenges to innovation and change.
One activity focused on challenging assumptions using limited resources to build the tallest free-standing structure.
The activity required high degree of collaboration, experimentation and adaption to be successful.
What was interesting is that the winning team was highly collaborative and experimental.
Try this technique using workshops for decision-making.
Workshop Reason 3 - Progress Beats Perfection
One of the core aims of the workshop was to provide practical skills that can deliver tangible results.
To do so, it was important to allow the team to let go of perfectionism and focus on moving forward.
In business it is often the right anwer that is rewarded and this mindset was evident amongst the group.
However, after experiencing fast moving activities that required ‘a result’ not ‘the result’ and which iteratively built on concepts from customer feedback, I noticed that people became less concerned on being correct and more concerned with learning.
Workshop Reason 4 - Fun Helps to Create a Safe Space
The workshop was a whirlwind of activity that connected people with the fundamentals of innovation and design thinking.
Part of the ‘secret sauce’ is also to make the experience a lot of fun.
Fun created a safe space for failure and questioning, which in-turn results in strengthening the skills and knowledge the group will take back to their organisations.
If you are interested in learning some of these skills, try the free self-paced course.
The short of it
- Learning by doing accelerates capability.
- Teamwork can counteract perceived constraints.
- Shifting mindsets like perfectionism will help people to make more progress.
- Having fun helped with openness and a safe space.
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That’s all.
Let’s achieve together.
P.S. Here’s what people have to say about workshops.
🥇 Twitter Tip of the Week 🥇
I'm going to address something on your mind.
— Vaughan Broderick (@theVBroderick) November 29, 2022
Most meetings are just a big time suck.
Here's the thing ...
Unstructured meetings result in confusion and procrastination.
Structured workshops result in clarity and momentum.
Try the decision sprint:
Take the problem and...
🔥Workshop Quote🔥
“I would have a workshop attached to every school, and one hour every day given up to the teaching of simple decorative arts. It would be a golden hour to the children” – Oscar Wilde
