Workshops
thepeoplepartnership conducts a huge number of workshops involving a wide range of different participants including clients, consumers/citizens, agencies and combinations of these. Workshops can be conducted pre-/post-research projects, as one methodology within a qualitative project or as a completely standalone exercise. The form, content, number of participants involved and length of the workshops can vary enormously, as these depend entirely on the specific objectives of the task in hand.
A great workshop achieves the right balance between facilitating blue skies/original thinking and channelling this into realistic, actionable 360° solutions. It needs to be disciplined but, at the same time, flexible enough to change tack partway through, if it becomes apparent that the original objectives are losing relevance.
A flavour of the types of workshops we get involved in....
a) Generating solutions to complex issues
We often use workshops to help generate solutions to complex issues where a straightforward research session will not be sufficiently detailed or directive.
In these instances we normally pre- and post-task workshop participants so that the issue can be prepared for, examined and then revised.
More specifically the workshop(s) may be part of a mixed methodology research project involving depths to get more detailed/individual information as well.
In terms of workshop composition there is value in getting a single stakeholder type perspective as well as mixing stakeholders up in order to understand the bigger picture, how needs are similar versus different and, most importantly, how a policy/product/service solution can take account of this.
Many of the workshops of this type, especially those amongst more senior/male audiences, need to be handled carefully in terms of the techniques used. Whilst there is clearly value in keeping these events human and including approaches to stop participants becoming too rational/competitive, it is also best to avoid techniques which are too expressive/off the wall as these can easily backfire.
A typical flow might be
- Detail overall aims and schedule for the day
- Warm up: each to write their own name label in a creative way that says something about themselves and introduce themselves to the group
- Spontaneous ideal policy/product/service generation: identify commonalities and differences
- Specific policy/product/service elements: how could each be optimised
- Closing the gap between the ideal and reality: what are the triggers/barriers to getting to the ideal from where you are now
- Each break out group to work on one particular area
- Summary: each team to present their preferred policy/product/service.
b) Deliberative engagement
We also conduct deliberative events, which are less focused on generating specific solutions to issues, rather they seek to understand the dimensions of complicated issues and facilitate people engaging with and commenting on these.
Depending on the project objectives, we bring together a relevant range of people to explore the topic via techniques including
- Introducing expert evidence/opinion to inform and encourage debate (whether delivered by an expert or ourselves, and ensuring that each presentation is balanced and/or the overall range of opinions presented is neutral)
- Using case study material to encourage participants to think about different situations/points of view and what this means for the issue
- Practical exercises putting participants in the place of the client, ie ‘if you were [the client], what would you do with the available resources?’, to encourage exploration of trade-offs
- Collecting quantitative evidence of views (either on paper/via IML) and how these change throughout the course of the event.
We favour smaller, focused events and break-out groups, to ensure that there is enough time for true deliberation: we sometimes find that larger events lose detail and direction because there are too many people to listen to in a limited amount of time.
A typical discussion flow might be as follows
- Introduce the event and the schedule for the day; participants fill in initial questionnaire to ascertain ingoing attitudes
- Warm up: spontaneous attitudes to/feelings/bugbears about the issue
- Session hears evidence on the nature of the issue and possible consequences if not addressed
- Responses to the evidence: how it changes opinions on the issue and spontaneous views on how to address it
- Session hears client’s ideas on how to address the issue
- Responses to the ideas: use of case study material to explore what this could mean in practice for people in extreme and/or divergent situations
- Exercise putting participants in the place of the client: explore the trade-offs of different solutions and decide ultimate course of action for client
- Summary: each break-out group presents their conclusions back to the wider group and debates the issues
- Final questionnaire to explore whether attitudes have changed throughout the event
- Question and answer session with client, if appropriate.
c) Illustrating and embedding new thinking in client organisations
thepeoplepartnership gets involved in lots of projects, the results of which mean that organisations may have to start thinking about their clients/consumers or policies/products and services in a very different way. This is particularly common when thinking about segmentations.
In these instances workshops are frequently used to help clients understand the new segments, as well as to motivate them to think about the implications of segments for future products and services.
These kinds of workshops typically last all day and can comprise up to 50 people. Sometimes participants are all clients and/or their agencies but often consumers are involved as well, either in the form of participation in viewed groups and/or by taking part in the workshop.
A day would often involve the following sorts of activities/flow
- Illustrating each segment via a short presentation/mood boards/edited videos or viewings of 'demonstration' groups
- Dividing attendees into groups, allocating a segment to each group and asking each group to role play the segment – more specifically each individual within the group may be asked to role play a different person within the segment, so that across the group as a whole the full spectrum of possibilities is represented
- Extrapolation from the segments to likely policy/product/service/communication requirements.
The benefits of this kind of workshop tend to be both emotional and rational ie
- Personnel across the organisation are more likely to buy in to the segmentation if they have been 'formally' introduced to it
- The role play and generation of ideas/initiatives relevant to each segment can provide people with the necessary understanding and momentum to move forward in their individual teams/on their own.
d) Development of a marketing action plan based on feedback from a debrief
Some clients for whom we conduct large scale strategic projects hold a workshop soon after the research debrief, in order to capture the key implications of the study for each of the key personnel involved and to generate an agreed way forward.
Everyone is sent the full debrief prior to the workshop and the workshop itself often kicks off with the key implications from the researchers' perspective.
Time is then spent eliciting views from everyone regarding the most relevant points for them and how the feedback impacts on what they are doing within their job roles. Finally a way forward is drafted based on both the research and individuals’ input.