The workshop is not the main event.
Some years ago, I worked with a group of employees about six months after they had been on a training programme. Some had attended the workshop. Others had missed it.
From what I could see and was told about their performance, you couldn’t tell which was which.
That doesn’t mean the workshop was a waste of time. Perhaps those who attended got up to speed more quickly. But it did make me wonder what contribution the workshop had made.
We’ve become good at workshops because that’s what we’ve spent years doing. Naturally, we tend to reach for what we’re good at.
So we design a workshop and build a programme around it, perhaps with some preparation beforehand and follow-up afterwards.
We might even tell participants that the workshop is just one part of a much longer journey.
But repeatedly telling people the workshop is just one part of the journey isn’t the same as designing a programme that makes it so.
Here’s a thought experiment.
Take one course you’re delivering right now where you have clarity on the outcomes desired by the organisation.
If you were required to produce those outcomes without a workshop, how would you do it?
