Strategy Workshop can be a powerful tool for refocusing your company on growth. However, it is important to ensure that you have the right participants and structure in place to get the most out of the session.
In a strategy workshop, key stakeholders gather to discover market dynamics, review strategic priorities, and make practical growth steps. The session also provides a platform to build teamwork and collaboration.
- Defining the Goal
The first step in planning a strategy workshop is to determine the goal. The strategic objective should be clear to all participants, and it is important to communicate the outcome you want to achieve from the session. It is also necessary to establish what metrics will be used to measure the success of the strategy initiatives outlined in the session.
Often, strategy sessions are conducted to gain a more holistic view of the company and what is needed to take it to the next level. This is why bringing all stakeholders together for the session is so important, and it is usually beneficial to choose a location that is away from the day-to-day work environment in order to help everyone focus.
Depending on the goals of the workshop, it may be helpful to invite external experts and key clients to participate as well. This will provide a fresh perspective and allow the workshop to have a more diverse range of ideas and approaches. Having an expert facilitator on hand to guide the process and ensure that all voices are heard is crucial. This could be a senior manager, or it could be an independent consultant with expertise in the area of strategy workshops.
- Identifying Key Stakeholders
It’s important to identify key stakeholders who will be involved in your strategy workshop. This will help ensure that all relevant opinions are heard and that no critical voices are missed. Stakeholders can include internal stakeholders like employees and leadership, as well as external stakeholders like clients, funders, partners, or community members. Ideally, you want to find a balance between both internal and external stakeholders to get the best possible input.
Once you’ve identified your attendees, it’s time to create an agenda for the meeting. This will give the strategy session direction, pace, and purpose. The agenda will also help ensure that all participants are aware of what to expect and what the expected outcomes should be.
If your strategy workshop will involve digging into specific technical information or data, it’s a good idea to have subject matter experts in the room who can help break down and distill this information for the other attendees. Similarly, if your workshop will cover topics that have specific gatekeepers in the field, it’s a good idea to consult with those gatekeepers before making any decisions. This will help prevent misunderstandings and confusion down the line.
- Creating an Agenda
A strategy workshop agenda must be prepared and distributed prior to the meeting. Having the participants review it in advance will help them be fully prepared and ready to participate. It will also help set expectations for the session. A well-prepared strategic workshop agenda will include a number of carefully structured exercises that are designed to extract the maximum amount of input from the group.
This might involve a research exercise that discovers industry trends or competitive threats, or a discovery exercise on how customers view the company or brand. Once this is complete, the team can begin to brainstorm ideas for future success. This could be anything from an idea to improve customer service to a new loyalty program.
It is important to invite a diverse group of stakeholders to the workshop. A mix of experience and perspectives will help generate the best possible solutions. Depending on the objectives of the strategic workshop, it may be appropriate to invite representatives from other departments or even from the business’s external partners. This will ensure that the strategic ideas generated are as broad and inclusive as possible. It is also a good idea to invite senior management to the workshop, particularly if they are overseeing or executing the strategic ideas being discussed in the session.
- Creating a Timeline
Strategy workshops are a powerful tool that help your business get unstuck, solve a specific strategic problem, create a shared vision, and have team buy-in and a coherent plan to execute. They are typically used to make strategic decisions for a new project, review existing plans, track growth, or to refocus a brand’s direction.
Typically, strategy workshops are part of the formal strategic design process. This is supported by the fact that they are triggered in the vast majority of organisations (36 per cent) by the need to develop an overall strategic plan, and only 29 per cent by external pressures such as a crisis.
These meetings typically involve a series of guided exercises to identify key strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for the business. This allows participants to develop a strategic roadmap with action items and responsibilities, along with the necessary metrics to measure success.
Some scholars, including Henry Mintzberg in The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning, suggest that formal strategy-making processes are now in decline. However, others argue that these workshops offer an opportunity to co-ordinate strategies as they emerge from within the organisation, communicate them effectively, and monitor and control their implementation.
- Creating an Action Plan
It’s important to create an action plan that sets clear next steps. Whether you choose to do this as an outline or Gantt chart, make sure it clearly communicates what you want to achieve, who’ll be responsible for what and by when. It’s also a good opportunity to identify metrics that will help you track the ongoing success of your strategy. These can be rolled into your OKRs or whatever progress-tracking methodology your team uses.
It can be helpful to refer back to the broader organizational goals set at the beginning of your workshop. This can give everyone a sense of purpose and ensure that the work done during the session contributes to the company’s ethos.
Choosing an outside facilitator is often a smart idea for a strategy workshop, as they’re able to keep discussions on point and productive. They’re also able to ask uncomfortable questions that people from within the organization might be afraid to raise, allowing for a more honest and revealing process. In addition, they’re able to record the meeting and create an easy-to-read report for anyone who wasn’t present. This makes the whole experience a lot more efficient and saves time on follow-up reporting.
- Creating a Report
A strategy workshop is a valuable tool to help you refocus your business growth and ensure that everyone is on the same page. However, you will want to make sure that the results of your meeting are actioned and carried out beyond the session. To do this, you should create a strategy report that includes an overview of the meeting’s outcomes and key takeaways. It should also include a clear outline of how those strategic initiatives will be implemented.
Before the strategy workshop begins, you should provide your attendees with an introduction to the process and the purpose of the meeting. This will help them feel more comfortable and engaged in the session. You should also provide them with any relevant documentation or data they might need to be prepared for the meeting, such as a copy of the workshop agenda and a list of expected outcomes.
Throughout the workshop, participants will work through a series of exercises to produce an Integrated Strategy Map. This is a visual chart that maps out the overall strategic direction of your business, including key objectives and strategic priorities, along with the measures and goals to drive change. Each of these is then mapped out with a series of action items, with a clear plan for who is responsible for carrying them out.
- Creating a Follow-Up Plan
Strategy workshops can be an incredibly powerful way to elevate collaborative problem solving and decision-making. However, it’s important to remember that the success of a workshop depends on a lot more than just its facilitation and agenda. It also requires a follow-up plan to implement the decisions and actions that are agreed upon. A well-thought-out implementation plan is the difference between a workshop that simply gathers ideas and one that actually results in real-world business changes.
This step is crucial in ensuring that the participants’ time and energy is worthwhile and translates into actual business benefits. This can include establishing follow-up tasks, creating subcommittees to further investigate specific topics or setting a timeline to implement the strategies discussed during the workshop.
It’s also important to communicate clearly the next steps and results of the workshop. This can be done by sending out an email or posting the information on the company intranet. In addition, it is a good idea to seek feedback from the participants. This will give them an opportunity to express their opinions and help make the next workshop even better.