Workshop plan for seasons — Gerardo Cruz Q

Challenge

How might we create a coherent commercial proposal for the seasons with over 60 company leaders in 8 hours

Achievement

Increase sales company-wide by 5% vs. last year by conducting a workshop to define the commercial proposal for seasons.

My Role

Workshop planner and facilitator leader

Time line:

2 weeks

Year:

2019

The Method

I designed a workshop based on three central moments, listen, write down, and agree.
Listened to insights from the marketing team, wrote the main ideas that could be implemented in the seasons, and agreed on the proposal with different stakeholders.
I used the note and vote technique to drive the conversation and maintain the group order. I prepared a playbook for the facilitation and support team.

The Team

This assembled team had over 60 persons, directors of Operations, Commercial, Finances, and Marketing.
The facilitation team was two Designers, two Agile Business Coaches, and five other people's support teams.

The Process

This workshop was the perfect recipe for disaster, I was a disaster in previous attempts, and this was my opportunity to fix it.

I designed the exercise to ideate right before the team was exposed to insights and the facilitation team had to cluster all the ideas simultaneously.

We split the whole forum into three teams, allowing crucial conversations with the right participants.

Learnings

Too many participants added no value to the conversation but were included just for political reasons.

The team didn’t use the pre-work and facilitation guide I prepared for them.

I wasn't satisfied with the outcome, but apparently, the participants felt that they accomplished the objective