The better way to discuss with your stakeholders
Have you ever had an experience, especially as a designer, when we already got all the requirements from our stakeholders (product managers, client, etc.), then we start to execute the design, but our design result and exploration isn’t the one that our stakeholders want? It makes more revision, extended timeline, and makes you exhausted as hell.
Actually, we can minimize this issue by doing a better stakeholder interview. But, there is another way how to stay aligned with our stakeholders, in a fun way of course.
By making a workshop
But why workshop? Why not make a meeting?
The big contrast between workshop and meeting is its discussion structure. We know that meeting will allow one person to talk, and the others will be silent to listen. Then, another one will continue to talk, and the others will listen. If there are a lot of people in the meeting, it’ll take a long time to finish it. We called it linear discussion.
In the reality, not all participants have an equal voice in the meeting. Sometimes, only the higher-ups who can speak a lot, and the subordinates mostly will only be silent, listening to what their boss said. And sometimes, there is no timekeeper, so there are participants who talk too much and spend more time.
And, how about the workshop? What is the difference?
The workshop I meant here, is that we will be a facilitator for a special session, giving a post-it & a pen for everyone and asking them to write their ideas/opinions/issues. What’s good about this?
It saves time a lot
We know that meeting could spend a lot of time because everyone wants to share their idea or opinion. And they can only do that alternately. But, if we choose a workshop, by giving them a post-it and pen, we can collect more ideas or opinions from all participants at the same time. You can even decide how long you’ll give them time to write their idea. Normally I’ll make a timer for 5 or 10 minutes to let them write anything, as many as they want.
After we collect all the ideas, we can group those ideas based on similarities (or we called it affinity diagram). We’ll see that actually most of the participants have a similar idea. And we can make decisions faster with this method.
Everyone can share their ideas
If conventional meeting sometimes only allows the important person to talk, with workshop everyone can share their ideas. Everyone has an equal voice on the subject. Just write down the idea on the post-it and let everyone knows.
No more linear discussion
Because everyone writes down their ideas at the same time, there is no more to say in turns. But, sometimes it’s difficult to understand what are people's intentions just by reading the post-it. So, we can make “explain your idea session”, we still can do it alternately, but as a facilitator, you can make a rule. You only allow everyone to explain their idea in 3 minutes, for instance.
The discussion won’t go wild
This issue often happens if we do a conventional meeting. The discussion subject becomes out of topics, due to there being no facilitator in the meeting. Even there is a facilitator, sometimes it’s hard to stop a participant when they are in the middle of speaking. So, in this workshop we will always need a facilitator, to guide the flow of the meeting. Providing tools and telling the rules, also being a timekeeper, so the workshop will stay on right time.
Conclusion
Well, not all organizations will adapt to this kind of workshop, actually. But, this method is something that we need to try, instead of just using a conventional meeting with all of its issues. So, if you have any chance, I recommend trying it~
Reference :
https://buditanrim.co/2020/workshops-can-be-more-efficient-than-meetings/
https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/affinity-diagrams-learn-how-to-cluster-and-bundle-ideas-and-facts
