Nearly a year into working restrictions due to COVID-19 and working from home is the new norm, but how has that effected how you bring team members together for group discussions and meetings? Consider the benefits of online workshops.
Before the pandemic group meetings could often be chaotic and challenging to run, but throw working remotely into the mix, how effective can we expect them to be now? One answer is to use online workshops.
Changing the format of these meetings from free flow, poise a question and expect everyone to immediately have some answers, to well structured workshops with a clear purpose, engaging dynamics and clear actions can have a profound impact on productivity and engagement.
If you think back to the last couple of meetings you had and think about; was everyone engaged and did they all contribute; did everyone come away feeling like they had accomplished everything the meeting required; does everyone know what the next steps are and the part they play in the next steps; where we focused on what the problem was at all times? The chances are you probably can’t even remember what happened in the last few meetings, let alone answer those questions!
Our remote workshops are delivered using Miro, an extremely powerful online white boarding software that allows all workshop participants to engage with the board and participate remotely.
It doesn’t matter whether the topic is innovation, strategy, business challenges, marketing, branding or processes, using a 4C structure creates flexibility to adapt to whatever the topic is.
1 – Collect
All workshops should start with information gathering; challenges, ideas, data, inspiration.
2 – Choose
Choose what the most pressing area is to focus on to avoid confusion or generating ideas baed on irrelevant solutions.
3 -Create
Create multiple potential solutions that answer the chosen area of focus.
4 – Commit
Workshops like meetings are useless without actionable takeaways, you need to end up with; this is what we are doing and this is who is going to do it.
Summary:
Workshops allow you to visualise meetings and make decisions based on the data that is visualised around you. A new way of working doesn’t consist of just remote working, it should use remote working as an advantage to change the way you format meetings where ideas need to be generated and decisions need to be made.
