Episode 037 | January 2, 2023 | 11:35
Guest: —
Published: January 2, 2023
Duration: 11:35
Description
Running workshops is a crucial part of improving sustainability in all companies.
At Green Innovation Group we’ve had lots of opportunities to do so and in today’s episode we’ve collected 5 actionable and easy-to-implement tips that you can use to improve the next workshop you are in charge of.
Enjoy!
Full transcript
About this transcript
This transcript was automatically generated and may contain inaccuracies, typos, or mistranslations. Episodes recorded before 2024 were transcribed by an on-site model and may have a higher error rate. The content reflects the original conversation to the best of our ability. For the authoritative version, please listen to the audio episode.
Hello, this is Joachim here from Green Innovation Group on the Sustainable Healthcare Podcast and today we’re doing a solo episode. I’m doing a solo episode on five very practical tips for doing workshops. They will relate to any workshops, but of course they are related to sustainability here as well. In the sustainability transformation in healthcare, whether you are in a pharma, medtech or a healthcare system, most likely you will be doing some workshops as part of that transition. Getting some amount of people in the room, having a dialogue, having discussions, doing some exercises, trying to move minds and hearts and maybe make better and smarter decisions. So here are five tips to do that. The first tip is to have a clear why.
The second is to engage early. The third is to align expectations with the workshop participants. And the fourth is to save time in the workshop for next steps and buffer time. And the fifth is to book the room 15 minutes before and 15 minutes after. If you do these five things, there’s a high likelihood that your workshop will go better. And workshops are a key tool in the transition, but it’s also very important to know that it’s only a tool. So not to have a man with a hammer syndrome and see everything as nails.
The first point, have a clear why. What are you trying to achieve with the workshop? What is the desired outcome? Is the workshop the right tool? For example, if you are not really in a decision process or you are not brainstorming or other things, but the goal is to share information, maybe it’s better to record a video. These days it’s very simple to do with your phone or in Teams. And you can share the information that way.
Maybe it’s better to do it in a shared brief, in a Teams channel or in an email. So that could be one thing. Maybe if it’s for fewer people, it’s better to do a walk and talk than a workshop. So think about is the workshop the right format? If it is the right format, make sure you have a very clear why. When you call in, it’s clear to people why you’re gathering. So maybe that could be.
So today for this workshop, it’s just basic sustainability training on circularity in pharmaceutical production. 101, this is why we’re meeting or we are meeting to discuss and work on this particular topic and we need to make a decision on whether to turn right or left on that particular issue. So that would be the first one. And I’m going to jump around on point two and three so that we take the next one as well, which is aligning expectations. And the reason why it’s important to align on expectations is that, of course, obviously, then the workshop participants will know what to expect and can better prepare, but it will also serve as a more natural guidance for taking the workshop in the right directions. If the expectation of the workshop is that by the end, we need to make a decision on a particular point. Then naturally it can all be brainstorming. So it also influence your design process of the workshop.
Aligning expectations is something that needs to happen ideally on several points where when you send out the invitation for the workshop ahead, you are clearly communicating what the purpose is, ideally with an agenda as well. But I would suggest to very early in the workshop as well, realign the expectations. The one way is just to say what you think are the expectations. But an even better way I found is to do an individual around the table and ask each and everyone, what do you hope to leap with by the end of this workshop? What do you hope we will have achieved? That gives you a good indicator of where the people and the energy in the room are and how they see things. And maybe the brief that you sent out beforehand was understood in a different way.
And that ties into the second point as well, which is engage early. So it could be with this question like what do you hope to achieve by the end of the workshop or what do you hope to leap with? But engaging early in any form is very important, even if it’s just saying what is your name and what do you work with if the people in the workshop haven’t met before. By saying something out loud, you go from just becoming a spectator in the workshop to becoming a more active participant. So with a simple question like that, we naturally lower the barriers for engagement because we have been in a hopefully comfortable and safe way when a participant have said their name or what they’re working with or the expectation or some kind of single question in the beginning. Now they have already said something. So engaging later on will seem easier.
And that’s often the whole part of doing a workshop is that you want the different voices to be heard, to get different points of perspective or to create engagement or ownership of the decisions that are being made. So engage early and engage often as well throughout the workshop. If it’s just deaf by PowerPoint and you as a workshop owner having a monologue, then it’s not really a workshop, I’d say. But we do see that happen quite a bit. So make sure in the design process to leave a lot of room for the people in the room and them doing exercises or engaging. Speaking of that point number four, save time for next steps and buffer. Try and send out an agenda beforehand when you’re doing a workshop but also for yourself have a semi detailed plan that all right for the first five minutes we’re going to do this and then for the next 15 minutes we’re doing that.
And in that plan make sure that you leave some buffer time because if you just do it back to back even if you make everything happen and you get to do all the exercises you wanted to there’s a high likelihood that it will feel rushed and often you won’t make it because some discussions tend to go on or you get caught up in a technical detail. So leave buffer time but also make it a habit to even if it’s a 30 minute workshop stop 10 minutes before and say okay this was a great discussion the key points with this isn’t that. What do we need to do to put that into action on from here? We don’t do workshops to do workshops we do them to make the green transition move faster and take action. So always try to have that action oriented input and leave time for the follow-up. It also it can really speed up the process if for instance by the end of the workshop maybe already call into the next workshop so in that time so people put it in the calendars if the outcome of the workshop are that someone has to do something or become the owner of a specific task you can make sure that is delegated they have committed to doing the task they block the time in the calendar to do so and as well just to have some time by the end for reflections and condensating so often the parts of a workshop will be where we go into an expanding or diverging mode where we brainstorming or coming up with new ideas testing concepts and other things make sure that there’s time to condense that down and say okay so what does this mean for our team or our department what do we need to do next and for the fifth point very practical make sure you book the room 15 minutes before the workshop or 15 minutes after the workshop I would say that actually includes whether it’s just physical hybrid or only online I have made that mistake many times myself on doing whereas an internal workshop or workshop with a client that I have a room from two to three and then the ones who had the room before they are of course also booked back to back so now your plan is running over schedule already from the beginning because you can really get in ahead to set up and sort of take ownership of the room make sure all the technical stuff is working and at the same time at the back end if you haven’t booked any time after the workshop what you will see is that somebody else will be sitting waiting for for you to leave and them to get into the room which creates sort of a rushed atmosphere and it’s often in that slipstream to the coffee machine by the end where a lot of the golden nuggets are and you sort of decompress maybe after some intense discussion so book the room 15 minutes before and after and of course there’s also there’s a lot of other different methodology on how to do things but with someone had told me these practical steps when I started doing workshops many many years ago so make sure you have a clear why for why you’re hosting the workshop if a workshop is even the right thing to do engage early and often align expectations and save time for both buffer time but also for doing the next steps in the workshops and make sure you book the room 15 minutes before and 15 minutes after thanks for listening in was a joy to do the episode and if you’re curious other things on the Sustainable Healthcare Podcast please listen to some of the other episodes and if you like them please share them with your friends and colleagues we’re doing this podcast so that we have a chance to help everybody that’s doing the green transition in the health care industry whether they are working at a large company or not or whether they have a budget or not and it seems like it’s providing some some insights and help for a lot of listeners out there so we’d really appreciate it if you would share one of the episodes with a friend or colleague have a great day out there and keep up to good work