Workshop activities to Analyse, Understand and Innovate

This is a structured discussion activity for exploring a topic by answering questions in three different set-ups: individually, in pairs and in teams. 

The premise of this game, therefore, is to disclose and discover unknown information that can impact organizational and group success in any area of the company—management, planning, team performance, and so forth.

You can enable participants to find novel approaches to challenges by immersing themselves in the activities of the people with local experience—often their colleagues on the front line or anyone who uses their product or service. You open the door to change and innovation by helping participants explore what people actually do and feel in creating, delivering, or using their offering. Their observations and experience can spur rapid performance improvements and expedite prototype development. The combined observations may make it easy to spot important patterns.

You can quickly and effectively share several innovations or useful programs that may lie hidden within a group, organization, or community. Shift & Share gets rid of long large-group presentations and replaces them with several concise descriptions made simultaneously to multiple small groups. A few individuals set up “stations” where they share in ten minutes the essence of their innovations that may be of value to others. As small groups move from one innovator’s station to another, their size makes it easy for people to connect with the innovator. They can quickly learn where and how new ideas are being used and how they might be adapted to their own situations. Innovators learn from the repetition, and groups can easily spot opportunities for creative mash-ups of ideas.

Using multiple digital whiteboards, participants float to different whiteboards to add their thoughts, contributions, or questions. Final whiteboards are discussed and reviewed.

Here's an interesting game that produces humorous results. Hidden behind the humor, however, is subtle provocation that forces participants to think deeply to justify some of the basic principles and assumptions related to the training topic.

Participants write “Why?” questions related to the training topic. Then each participant writes a response to someone else's “Why?” questions. The questions and answers get mixed up, producing incongruous results.

Systems thinking is a way of approaching problems that asks how various elements within a system — which could be an ecosystem, an organization, or something more dispersed such as a supply chain — influence one another. Rather than reacting to individual problems that arise, a systems thinker will ask about relationships to other activities within the system, look for patterns over time, and seek root causes.

A persuasive activity where participants "give" each other terrible presents.

This is a practical, dynamic and versatile method for groups to explore ideas and questions together. Something like a physical questionnaire; participants respond to questions by walking around the space and placing themselves on an imaginary line. This provides a starting point for reflection and discussion and brings teams together.

The goal of this game is to map out the motivations and interactions among actors in a system. The actors, in this case, may be as small-scale as individuals who need to work together to accomplish a task, or as large-scale as organizations brought together for a long-term purpose. A give-and-take matrix is a useful diagnostic tool, and helps players explore how value flows through the group.

Applying a linear scale to gather a diversity of perspectives, opinions and responses.

A critical thinking mindset supports people to reflect by using critical thinking questions when they discover and discuss new information. Critical thinking involves the evaluation of sources such as data, facts, media, stories, observable phenomenon, and research findings. Good critical thinkers can draw reasonable conclusions from a set of information and discriminate between useful and less useful details to solve a problem or to make a decision. Critical thinking skills are key to making better, and well-informed decisions.