How workshops help you cope with acceleration and uncertainty
Does this sound familiar? You have noticeably less time to complete bigger projects with higher stakes. In a sea of uncertainty, you’re being asked to make decisions more quickly with fewer resources to hand.
Journalist Thomas Friedman calls this “the age of acceleration.” Speed is bringing big technological and social change, and high degrees of uncertainty and dislocation. It’s harder to plan. At the same time, we all have increasingly long lists of tasks to keep pace. In this kind of environment, who has time for a day-long workshop?
Arguably, this is the very time we need to regularly step back and assess where we are. Here are three ways that taking time out for a collaborative workshop can help people manage and cope with uncertainty in the age of acceleration.
1. Focus
A properly designed workshop enables the group to step out of the rushing river of daily work to develop a better understanding of the situation and to reflect on what’s important. Is the “daily work” still fit for purpose? What are the key categories or concerns we should be monitoring? How do they fit together in a landscape of opportunity and risk? What alternatives are possible?
2. New perspectives
Enlightening insights often emerge in a workshop because people have time to explore issues using tools that are less common in daily work. For example they might:
Draw – sketch problems or diagrams, use imagery to represent key ideas
Build - create low fidelity prototypes (with paper, cardboard, tape) or build metaphorical models (for example using LEGO Serious Play)
Role-play/act out - adopt a persona, view a problem through a “thinking style hat”, or solve a problem in the style of an admired brand or thinker.
These tools engage different parts of your brain, bringing new ways of seeing and ideas about what’s possible.
3. Priorities
The workshop space also lets people invest time to choose thoughtfully from among alternatives. There are lots of ways to prioritize. On one end of the spectrum, priority might go to ideas that get the most votes or points. On the other end, groups might choose ideas that align with the group’s values, or choose the alternative that has the highest impact or feasibility.
In “scenario planning,” the group will define some possible scenarios and then identify key indicators to understand which scenario is unfolding. Based on the scenario they can adapt their ideas accordingly.
One workshop won’t be able to cover everything, but it will enable you to get started with some things. It’s a satisfying process to focus, find insights for solutions, and then test solutions in your workplace, making positive steps that cope with acceleration and uncertainty.
What’s your view? Do you reconcile taking time out of daily work for focused collaboration when we’re seemingly running low on time?
