Workshops
Workshops for Product Management, Marketing and SalesHow does a manager encourage people who may or may not have worked together on a new challenge they may or may not have the experience or expertise to face? One way is to reduce the risk and increase the reward by forming a special taskforce or workgroup to deal with a new challenge. If the same task is placed in front of a group of people who routinely work together, the difficulty can be magnified many times over.
One very, very effective way to deal with these situational bumps is to conduct a special purpose workshop to focus on this single bump. If an outside third party person is pulled in to conduct the process, it helps to level the hierarchical blocks to creative thinking and distributes the obligation to make a contribution evenly. This simple decision to use the workshop format moves the "bump" from the day to day environment of progress reviews, recognition and blame to a world of contribution. In this world the group can succeed or fail as a group. Each Person can measure their own visible contribution and has a public incentive to put contribution in the foreground and the assignment of blame in the background.
MarketGenesys used a variety of formats to help bring groups together and encourage new contributions. One is the "Levels of Abstractions" exercise which helps turn a bounded situation into one with dynamic pieces that interact and create a new level of perspective and solution. Another treats a situation as a living system with interacting biological cells that characterize and display qualities of symbiosis, parasitism, growth, and replication. An "ecosystem" with a network of lifelines is visualized for the purpose of the exercise. In addition, now-standard brainstorming techniques are used. Interactive computer databases, special purpose modules and graphics are employed where appropriate.
These workshops focus on taking the group outside of their situation so that they can better define the issues and make specific and visible contributions to the resolution. These workshops seek to find the need and rationale for change, and then create the agents by which it will be accomplished.
Benefit:
These custom workshops provide a "freeze frame" of your current business or marketing situation and enable your people to think in terms of other "frames" perspectives and action plans.
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