We facilitated a two-day innovation strategy workshop for an industrial company. The company wants to make significant changes to a major production process. During the innovation strategy discussions, we addressed the production process changes from five different perspectives. In each of the five mini-innovation strategy workshops, we had a group of core team members, plus people familiar with each perspective. The overall group sizes for each innovation strategy workshop varied from fourteen to more than twenty-five people, depending on the topic.
From a facilitation standpoint, it was the most arduous couple of days of going through strategic thinking exercises I recall.
With groups changing out every few hours, there was a continual, tight window to get all the input we’d need to build out a strategic plan and timeline for our client’s strategic initiative.
As I described it to an associate, facilitation may look easy. You stand there, ask some questions, and crack a few jokes to keep things light.
In reality, I shared these eleven things going through my head at all times relative to the strategic thinking exercises we were using with the group:
Yup, those questions were all running through my head nearly continually. Add to that the constant headache I could not shake, and it was a two-day mental crunch, without a doubt.
But when we look back and see how we pushed the thinking on the initiative, it’s clear all the challenges were all worth it! - Mike Brown
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