When asked to develop and deliver a workshop, something must be born into reality. It might be a different way of working, a new product or service, or a solution. Whatever it is, it needs to evolve from an idea into reality.

A workshop is not merely a shared moment of conceiving an idea; it should also kickstart executing it.

Executing ideas seems to be the hardest thing to do. It starts with people willing to take responsibility for getting things done despite their busy schedules. It also requires a lot of tenacity to work through organizational resistance to change. Great intentions aren’t enough to bring anything to life - those are merely the starting point. People need to find their own powerful reasons why they want to make something happen, overcoming obstacles.

A facilitator is a strategist. A facilitator starts by investigating the desired future situation that needs to be achieved from the perspective of all the key stakeholders. Then they strategize the way to action. They identify who needs to be involved, what the necessary workshop deliverables should be, why the desired future situation matters to the people involved, and thus, what might motivate them to act. I like to call this “framing the workshop”. Framing the workshop is necessary to define the most effective tactics for the workshop. The tactics are the workshop activities that lead to the necessary deliverable.

Some facilitators immediately jump into the tactics without spending enough time strategizing. Thoroughly understanding the workshop’s purpose and why it matters to the people involved, intentionally selecting the team for co-creation, and getting clear on the output necessary to drive action is a form of strategizing that makes or breaks execution after a workshop. The right tactics can only be defined, and the workshop can only be properly designed if there is a proper strategic framework that, in the end, leads to executing on the output of the workshop.

In summary, the strategic framework answers the following essential questions:

Why are we having this workshop now, and why does it matter to the people involved?
Who needs to be part of the core team and why?
Who will act on the output of the workshop to reach the desired outcome?
What is the output needed to work towards an outcome after the workshop?
Who are the key stakeholders not part of the core team or workshop, and what is their “stake”?
Which desired future aspects does everyone believe in, and which aspects cause controversy and why?

If you haven’t properly framed the “why”, “who”, and “what” of the workshop, you can’t build the right tactics into the workshop to ensure execution. Therefore, framing the workshop strategically is the most important step of preparation before designing the workshop. Furthermore, it is the moment where you, as a facilitator, can push back on having the workshop because too many questions are left unanswered, making it impossible to build the workshop for execution.

Ownership

Let’s assume the facilitator has done the framing, leading to an effective workshop design that appeals to participants. The workshop participants believe together in the value and their ability to co-create a new reality. They understand the jobs to be done in the workshop as a stepping-stone toward execution.

This is the ideal starting point but not a guarantee for execution. What can still keep participants from taking action after the workshop is their (lack of) sense of ownership or commitment. A sense of ownership is their feeling of responsibility for making it happen and their drive to act upon that responsibility. The facilitator can and should nurture this sense of ownership throughout the workshop in multiple ways.

1. Make it personal

A purpose that “moves” people doesn’t speak merely to their rational minds but touches them emotionally. When they share an emotional connection to the purpose, they bond and are bound to become an active group of changemakers. Therefore, it is apparent that the workshop needs to start with an almost therapy-like sharing of each other’s emotional stake in its purpose. Some topics lend themselves perfectly to connecting emotionally with. Other topics require the facilitator to ask the right questions to trigger an emotional connection. For example, if the topic of the workshop is to design a new operating model for the team to deploy in their collaboration, a trigger question might be, “Would you ever create an operating model for your family to function well?” or “When did an operating model save the day in your previous experience?” Asking the right questions can open people up beyond their rational interpretation of a topic and open them up to each other.

2. Stay clear of the content and the tools

If you share your smart expert views during the conversations in the workshop, you are presenting yourself as a collaborator, a changemaker. You are taking part in the commitment to action. It will decrease trust in you as an adequate facilitator, who should invest all your efforts and attention in enabling the best co-creative moment for the team instead of showing off your intellect on the matter. It will also shift the sense of ownership towards you. Ownership should not sit with the facilitator during the workshop. A team can only be effective in co-creation if the stakes are high, if they carry the load, and if it all comes down to them to perform the problem-solving. If they feel that they are merely invited to share their five cents and then they can be on their way, you will notice them checking their clocks and email quite early on in your workshop. Select the core team for the workshop based on their involvement in the project after the workshop. Avoid inviting too many “advisors” who are not given tasks to execute afterward.

If the team knows it will come down to them to make it happen, it is effective to make them feel like the owners of all the generated content right from the start. Don’t butt in. Instead, orchestrate the conversation to make sure everyone feels equally involved. Never mess with any tools, post-its, or a virtual collaboration board; instead, ask them continuously to capture the important insights and shape their work visually to represent their findings perfectly. They should always feel it is their creation, the product of their collective genius. Every time you move a Post-it, write things down for them, or suggest ideas, you deprive them of their growing sense of ownership. That doesn’t mean you can’t trigger their thinking; you are just not providing answers to the questions you ask, nor are you implying answers by asking a leading question.

3. Give them milestone moments

When do people feel they own the game? When they are winning! Nurture the feeling of successful collaboration, and you will boost that sense of ownership. Everyone wants to be part of a winning team.

The best way to make them feel successful together is to emphasize the milestone moments of resolution. Whenever they have decided on something, when they consolidate their thoughts into a clear conclusion, that’s when you need to help them turn that moment into an opportunity to unify the team. Ask them to recap the conclusion. Support them in articulating the summary of the most important decisions they made themselves; don’t summarize it for them. It will not only help them to see the progress they made together, but it will also nurture their belief in themselves as a team and as a valuable individual part of the team. This team is making progress, this team is winning, this team is owning this topic and is the best fit to make it happen after the workshop.

4. Help them become their own coaches

To take it up a notch, make them feel good about themselves in collaboration. Milestone moments are crucial to bond the team, like a sports team reflecting on their victories. But the real magic happens when athletes start complimenting each other on their individual efforts and contributions during a game, ultimately jumping around and dancing together when scoring or winning a match. It is a dopamine fest that drives the best behavior for ultimate performance. In the same way, as a facilitator, you can nudge team members to express their appreciation of other team members’ contributions, ultimately feeling good together about what is achieved at milestone moments. You, as a facilitator, giving compliments and acknowledging certain ideas brought to the table will already generate dopamine in the brain of the originator. But having a peer, or another team member, do this will have even more impact and nurture trust among team members. It will also generate oxytocin, bonding them together as one.

How do you do this? It is pretty straightforward. You start out by being an authentic example, finding the right moment to sneak in an honest compliment now and then, “directing their attention” (see Making conversations count) to a great addition to the conversation, particularly if it is the intelligent introvert who finally dared to share their breakthrough insight. It could be a simple, “Wait a minute, that is a different perspective we haven’t considered yet. Thank you so much for bringing that to the table, Marie. So team, what does that mean in light of …”. But it could also be an enthusiastic, “Wow, where did that come from, Marc? I am sure that sparks some completely new thinking on this topic. Who wants to share their thoughts …?”

The point is you are the biggest fan of this team, as their facilitator. You are monitoring their conversations with amazement and utter focus. Having built up enough trust from everyone by now, they will start mimicking your behavior, opening the door for them to potentially acknowledge each other’s contributions. And it helps if you prompt these acknowledgments. If the safe space is intact, and the collaboration has a good rhythm, you should often prompt the team to reflect upon someone’s thoughts and express their appreciation. For example, a good point has just been shared, and you know it is an addition to what someone else expressed earlier. You can prompt this person to react by asking, “So Amy, how do you like the view Marc has just expressed?” You are not asking Amy to respond rationally and continue the thought process; you are asking her to express her feelings about what Marc has just said. And Amy may reply, “Well, I love what Marc just said; it so beautifully makes the point I tried to make earlier …” which will impact Marc in a positive way.

When it doesn’t happen naturally, you can prompt team members to express their appreciation of other team member’s efforts and contributions to the conversation. The prompting has to happen subtly. It must feel authentic; otherwise, it could backfire and lose its effect. But when done authentically, turning the team members into each other’s coaches boosts the sense of ownership tremendously. It becomes their “baby”, the result of their great connection together.

5. Strategize for execution

When a team arrives at the output of a workshop, the desired deliverable, they will have to align on the approach to take the next steps. This is strategizing for execution. The team can leverage the connection they built with each other during the co-creation to close the ranks and outline what action needs to be taken and how it should be taken to progress on bringing it to life. It becomes a promise, almost a pledge to themselves and the team to commit to the necessary tasks before reconvening. All the facilitator’s efforts to build that sense of ownership provide the right energy to start planning a concrete strategy for execution. If this part is left out, there is no guarantee that the great intentions generated by the workshop will provide enough fuel to face the organizational inertia.

The first four points will set the right intentions for execution. It will shape the core team’s willingness to take action. As mentioned, it is a great starting point, but it will not be sufficient to turn things into reality given the multiple difficult obstacles ahead. These obstacles can vary from external factors like budget, time constraints, and silo working to internal factors like decreasing confidence, commitment, and distractions. This needs a proper strategy. Point 5 is the act of strategizing for execution at the end of a workshop. This is as far as a facilitator can go to ensure proper execution after the workshop.

Strategizing for execution

Just like framing a workshop strategically before developing tactics, the execution also needs to be framed. When a team has arrived at the output, the first step in framing the execution is defining the goals that need to be achieved in the short term. These goals are the first milestone of the execution. Therefore, the team needs to answer the question, “Describe the first milestone and the goals needed to unlock further execution.”

This is similar to a journey mapping exercise. The team could identify all the milestones or stages of the execution journey, but then, for now, only focus on the first one to detail into tactics. By focusing only on the first stage and deciding to reconvene again after the activities of the first stage are somewhat done, it doesn’t become too big or daunting. A mountain climber once said there is always enough energy to take the immediate next step but never enough energy to climb to the top, so it is best to focus each time on the immediate next step. This is the purpose of focusing only on the first stage until the team meets again.

Another part of strategizing is revealing the obstacles of the first stage. There is no point in identifying all the obstacles of the execution journey across all stages. You don’t want to gaze at the top of the mountain, thinking you will never reach it. Instead, the focus should only be on identifying the obstacles that might keep us from reaching milestone 1. It might help the team to categorize the obstacles as “pebbles” and “rocks”. The pebbles are obstacles that can be tackled or neutralized, while rocks are too heavy to move and need a workaround.

Identifying the goals of the first stage and the obstacles, big and small, is part of the strategy. It outlines what needs to be achieved and what needs to be overcome to achieve it. The final step would be defining the tactics only for this first stage until the team reconvenes. To get to action, the team needs a prioritized list of tasks, and it needs to be prioritized in a smart way keeping in mind all the identified obstacles. For example, what is the best order of tasks? Who should you talk to first? What information should be gathered before moving forward? What resources have to be made available? Which existing project should be explored? Who are the most important allies? All of this should be translated into an actionable and prioritized list of tasks.

No one should leave the workshop space not knowing exactly what to do next. Part of this prioritization activity includes assigning tasks to the participants, and the team members. If some tasks should be done by someone not present in the workshop space, then it should become someone’s task to brief the extra collaborators and activate them. The list of prioritized tasks should also include when and in what set-up to reconvene and which steps should be finished by then.

There will be tasks that need to be taken on by an individual or duo to get done as quickly as possible. Still, there are also supporting tasks to enable everyone to do their tasks. These enabling tasks can be done by extra supporting roles to add more momentum to the execution. I usually have the team assign three extra roles on top of the assigning of tasks: The Chaser, The Archiver, and The Organizer.

The Chaser

This person takes on the duty of prompting the team members to take action on their assigned tasks. The Chaser agrees on the most appropriate or convenient communication channels with the team for prompting them. Via these channels, The Chaser will remind each team member of the tasks and the timing, but also of any other updates regarding their tasks, like the availability of information stored in the team’s archive.

The Chaser keeps track of all the tasks and who is performing them. This makes the Chaser a perfect point of contact if anyone needs to know the status of a task being completed by another team member.

According to the Fogg Behavior model that explains how to drive desired behavior (see How To Get Your Workshop Participants To Do Pre-Work), people need prompting whenever they feel the ability to do a task, and they also have the necessary motivation to do the task. So, assuming the workshop convinced them of their ability and drove their motivation, The Chaser’s prompt might just be the only necessary spark for action.

The Archiver

The Archiver is the team member who agrees to organize all the gathered materials necessary to execute. The Archiver notifies The Chaser if anything gets added to the archive so that The Chaser can update specific team members on the availability of information. The Archiver might have conveniently taken on the tasks to gather certain information, or they might receive information from team members to store in the team’s archive.

As The Chaser agrees with the team on which channels to use for prompting, The Archiver agrees with the team on which platform to use to archive the materials.

If you don’t have an Archiver assigned and team members add documents and other types of information on a platform by themselves, it might become messy, and the team members who need the information might not be informed of the availability. The Archiver removes the hurdle of not having the right information.

The Organizer

The Organizer arranges the team meetings, such as the next time to reconvene the team whenever the team is close to ending the first stage. The Organizer doesn’t organize any specific meetings related to specific tasks of a team member. Instead, they will make sure that the team connects at the right time with the right team members available.

Just as with The Chaser agreeing on channels and The Archiver agreeing on the platform with the team members, The Organizer agrees on the timing and frequency of team meetings.

The team takes full ownership

Execution remains one of the hardest things about co-creation. As a facilitator, you have an important role to play in enabling execution by nurturing a sense of ownership among team members. This sense of ownership should set the right intentions for action and allow for strategizing for execution. Then it is up to the team members to make it happen and live up to their promises.

I like to call this act of building ownership “catalyzing”. A facilitator catalyzes a team into action during a workshop. This should provide everything the team needs to get things done until the next team gathering, the next milestone, which could be a meeting or workshop.

The essence of catalyzing is inspiring the intentions for taking action among team members by nurturing the belief in themselves and the team to make a difference on the topic or challenge at hand - and then helping them strategize so they have the tactics to overcome organizational hurdles and focus on immediately actionable tasks.

The last thing you want to do as a facilitator is to end the workshop with an open end or a very high-level conclusion, leaving people clueless about what should happen next. Participants shouldn’t wait for anyone to tell them the next steps; it should be part of the co-creative process. If they have a role in the workshop, most of them should also have a role in the execution because catalyzing team members in a workshop generates all the energy needed to create momentum in execution. It would be a shame to have one group in the workshop and then have another group execute – this would be a waste of “catalyzed” energy.