Streamlining Workshop Timelines

Most strategic workshops follow the same pattern: Day 1: Big ideas on sticky notes. Day 2: Prioritization debates. Day 3: Someone promises to "write it up." Week 4: Nothing happened. We changed the entire model. It started with a concept called "Strategy Jams" — large-scale, time-bound sessions where you bring diverse perspectives into the room at once. Barclays once ran one with 30,000 employees in three days. We adapted the principle for SMEs. Instead of month-long strategic planning cycles, we compress the entire process into a single facilitated day. Here's the workflow: Step 1: Structured divergence. Before the workshop, we use AI to generate strategic options from multiple angles. Not replacing human thinking — expanding it. Breaking the "we've always done it this way" pattern. Step 2: Live synthesis. In the room, the team works through scenarios, trade-offs, and priorities. We use Atlassian Rovo to capture decisions in real time — not on sticky notes that get lost, but directly in a structured format. Step 3: AI-assisted backlog creation. Same day. While the energy is still there. Workshop outputs get translated into actionable items with owners, timelines, and dependencies. What used to take 2-3 weeks of "writing up" happens in hours. Step 4: Sprint start within 48 hours. The first 2-week implementation sprint begins before the workshop memory fades. The result: What traditional consulting compresses into a 3-month engagement, we deliver as a 1-day workshop + 2-week sprint. Not because we skip steps. Because AI removes the friction between thinking and doing. The bottleneck was never the strategy. It was the translation layer — from insight to action. — 📌 Save this post for later ♻️ Share it to inspire your network Follow Hartmut Hübner, PhD for AI insights that work.

Like so many things in life, Workshops happen in 3 stages. If you are an expertise business offering workshops, this might be useful. But not for the reasons you might be thinking. The 3 stages are: ➊ Pre-Session ➋ Workshop Session ➌ Post-Session You might be thinking that the Pre-Session is just about planning. It isn't. Pre-Session is about creating the conditions for maximum insight DURING the Workshop session. Like any gathering of people (virtual or IRL), setting up a workshop requires planning, of course. But the purpose of the workshop is not the workshop itself. The 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘁 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗽 exists to create an entryway into your client's world and convey your expertise in a way that its value and application are immediately obvious. ✺The good stuff happens AFTER the Workshop✺ So you must plan accordingly. 3 Assumptions and 3 criteria: 𝗔𝟭: Everybody is busy. Selling a long workshop can be harder. C1: Make the shortest workshop you can 𝗔𝟮: You can make a shorter workshop if you shift content from the workshop stage to other stages C2: If something can be shifted elsewhere, shift it. 𝗔𝟯: Some workshop interactions are easier to shift than others C3: Only include in the workshop the interactions that can only happen in a workshop. ✺What this means in practice✺ ▶ If your Workshop session has an exercise where the participant inputs some information while you wait, turn that into a form they fill in ahead of the workshop ▶ If your Workshop session has a section where you provide some content to help with a decision, send that content before the workshop session ▶ If your Workshop session includes a moment to recap, keep that recap short and send them a much more detailed and actionable recap after the session, via email. ❋Bonus tip❋ By keeping your Workshop sessions as tight as possible you make them shorter and easier to schedule. But that's not the best part. By shifting stuff to the pre-Session stage, you build up anticipation and reinforce your authority and expertise before the session takes place. – 𝗜'𝗺 𝗶𝗻 𝗹𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗮 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺: How can we make complex expertise easier to explain? Creating your own visual frameworks and workshops is a very good start. If this seems interesting, I think you'll enjoy my content.

In 2020, a single strategy “workshop” took us a month. Today, we do the same work in one day! A couple of years ago, I stopped giving workshops. I think I was exhausted by the inefficient process Too slow. Too much “fake” clap-clap at the end. Weeks of analysis 📸, ended often up in the 𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘥𝘳𝘢𝘸𝘦𝘳. A LOT of work for little real-life impact. It often felt like wasted energy. But since a couple of weeks I’m back into workshop mode, with one big difference: What used to take a month, we now do in a single day. How it works today: - Half a day: intro to project, AI-agent and get to 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 - 1h: small teams co-create ideas with AI-agents - 15 min: teams vote on their own top 3 and send it back to agent - 48 sec: AI finds patterns, synergies, roadmaps. - 30 min: people can review and give feedback - 5 min: final report & concept sheets are being generated. - we stop earlier because we “worked hard” The cool thing? 👉 Instead of a fluffy strategy timeline, they leave with real 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐣𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬. 👉 The next day, people can actually 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐭. 👉 The budget drops to ~20% of what it was ; making it accessible for SMEs, and freeing resources to actually 𝘥𝘰 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘧𝘧. The big difference? 𝐀𝐈 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐜𝐨-𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫. The new challenge? Managers or CEOs have to “approve fast” Curious how this could look for your team? Drop me a message - happy to share how we run it!

📐 The Architecture of Collab Workshop Design 👉 Meeting-by-Meeting Here’s the set of “Prep Meetings” me & my colleagues use for designing & planning our workshops. Context: ▸ My typical workshop prep time is ~ 5 weeks. ▸ I work typically with 1 or 2 co-facilitators. ▸ More of my colleagues are ready to consult. BEFORE, I would: 👉 Schedule the workshop (5 weeks in the future), and then 👉 Would schedule the prep meetings from week to week on an “as needed” basis, meaning: “Oh, it’s time to start working on the agenda. Hey team, let’s meet on this!” Not optimal, because: ▸ Calendars get busy ▸ My attention can slip, and I can forget ▸ Scheduling “every now and then” is a distraction So I came up with this fix: 💡 Schedule ALL prep meetings in advance. Like I would schedule a training curriculum. Here are the meetings: 🔵 Weekly Meetings 🔵 ▸ Progress check-in with the client/workshop requestor (30 min) ▸ Progress check-in with co-facilitators (30 min) 🔵 One-Off Meetings 🔵 ▸ Workshop prep kick-off with co-facilitators, requestor (30 min) ▸ Individual interviews with participants (1 with each participant, 30 min) ▸ Creative moment (all co-facilitators throw ideas on what to do in the workshop: 30 min) ▸ 1st Draft of Agenda (with co-facilitators; 30 min) ▸ 2nd Draft of Agenda (with co-facilitators; 30 min) ▸ Agenda Peer Review (with 1-2 colleagues who are NOT my co-facilitators; 30 min) ▸ Final agenda walk-through (60 minutes) That’s it! Now I schedule all those meetings immediately after we schedule the workshop. It saves me a lot of focus, and creates a nice & steady cadence for our team prep work. — Want to know more? Let me know in the comments! I might give this topic space in a future post 😏