An Enterprise 2.0 workshop

At work we recently held a workshop on Enterprise 2.0; opportunities, advantages, etc. the same as many organisations are running through. While the workshops were really interesting, as someone who fairly often runs workshops I found it really interesting to watch the facilitators techniques and think about how we could use them.

Probably the biggest change to what I usually do is to have two facilitators bouncing off each other; I usually try to get the participants heavily interacting but no one can listen my voice for a few hours and stay focussed ! We always have two people present anyway; one to watch body language and to take notes. Changing role very often worked very well. For BPM consultancy this would be easy to roll in, different processes from different people.

Another great trick was prioritising a SWOT by sticky notes, then everyone voting. You gained a focus on priorities while still capturing the variety; in the past I’ve populated the key points onto a SWOT but you loose the other ideas that way. People walking around to put the sticky notes helps keep people interested without the artificial ‘party games’ most facilitators resort to!

Any activities I’ve ever done with sticky notes work well; in the past I’ve been in workshops that build processes using the notes; the only problem is translating them to a BPM tool takes a LONG time. Working with the two facilitators, driving ARIS live translating what is happening with the sticky pads is probably a good solution; it would avoid people looking a screen of a live model being ‘built’, I find one of best ways to loose your audience!