Done well, workshops are the best way to roll out your findings before the final report is issued. However, a badly done workshop can unleash all kinds of problems, derail your assessment and expose rifts in the organization that you’re not prepared for.

My client and friend, the HSE Manager, looked broken after almost an hour of continuing attacks on the proposal we had developed. Even after more than 10 years, I still don’t know where we had gone wrong. Technically, the proposal was what the firm needed and we had a sound plan for implementation. In retrospect, I think that we hadn’t laid the groundwork with the management team well enough and they were feeling slightly overwhelmed by what we were proposing.

Hence the attacks.

“I’m not saying it’s complete sh*t,” the CEO said at one point. I managed to jump in, hoping he had a sense of humor.

“Great!,” I said. “Let’s take ‘not completely sh*t‘ as a win for today. I can live with that.”

Luckily, he had a sense of humor.

Everyone laughed and we took a break. Later, we were able to get the meeting back on track and eventually found a way forward but the project always felt a little harder than it probably should have been after that difficult start.

And this wasn’t even the most difficult workshop I’ve been involved in.

I’ve been yelled at and cursed at. I’ve had people accuse their management of leaving them alone in a warzone. I’ve had people break down in tears. I’ve had to call a coffee break after only 10 minutes while the group fought about the results of the previous day’s election. It was an hour before we could start again.

My favorite session was with one oil and gas firm where the managers simply replied to every point saying “We don’t recognize that threat.” Because, as you know, that’s all you need to say to make the threat disappear…

So Bobbie’s workshop wasn’t that unusual because workshops and group sessions are hard.

However, these are also incredibly useful tools to help you review, update and start to integrate your risk assessment.

Because, for all the terrible workshops I’ve run, I’ve also had many more sessions where people’s relief at finally understanding what they are dealing with has been palpable. There have been numerous times where you could tell that this was the moment when everything finally came together.

So for every ‘not completely sh*t’, there have been many more ‘that’s exactly us – spot on’.

The question is how to avoid the former and end up with the latter?

First, let’s go back and review the whole point of this exercise before I scare you off workshops for the rest of your life.

The challenges of a risk assessment

As a reminder, there are two main challenges with a risk assessment. The first is that these are significant pieces of work often with a very broad scope, involving a large number of people and many moving parts. So from a basic, technical perspective, these are significant, complex projects.

The second issue is that you are delving into the deepest, darkest corners of an organization and will be asking the organization to confront the things that can threaten its existence. Sadly, that’s often accompanied by people trying to avoid taking the blame for what’s ‘wrong’. This is probably the biggest misconception with risk assessments: these aren’t meant to be ‘gotcha’ exercises to catch people out and embarrass them.

In reality, people seldom react with a level head to bad news which, unfortunately, is often part of a risk assessment. Revealing the issues and challenges the organization wasn’t aware of or had been ignoring should be an opportunity to tackle these and therefore a good thing.

However, the problem with organizations is that they are made up of people and people have emotions. That’s not to suggest that you need to be a cyborg with no feelings but in an organizational setting, these emotions are what you’ve been bumping up against the whole time.

The truth is that often you can’t avoid these emotional reactions so you need to work out how to deal with them.

Like getting into a cold pool, you’re left with two options.

The first is the ‘cannonball’ approach. You dive right in and get it over with as quickly as possible.  The problem is that this is a big shock and usually makes a big mess.

The second option is to get in bit by bit, slowly accumulating to the temperature. At first, it’s still a shock but you can take your time and get used to the change. It’s slower but much less messy.

Reports-wise, the first approach – deliver the final report and then exit stage left – isn’t very common. Sometimes you might do this, say for a review of a previous assessment or with a stand-alone audit, but there’s usually some kind of follow-up action required so you aren’t done when the report is delivered. The problem with dropping the report in one go is the shock and mess you create can strain relationships and make it difficult when you need to engage later.

However, if you don’t plan the delivery, even if you think you are taking the cautious approach, it can still be a shock to the audience. As Bobbie discovered, unless you’re prepared for the emotional reactions, you can get caught out and the delivery of the report is compromised.

So with all this in mind, how can we prepare the ground to deliver the report?

Get the facts right

Firstly, we want to fact-check the assessment. Essentially, we are checking our homework with the subject matter experts: the organization itself. This can be difficult but the way I always open up these sessions is to outline the extent of the assessment both in scope and a summary of the work we did, e.g. number of interviews conducted, documents reviewed and even the counties visited in the course of the work. I then note that even though I like to think I’m a quick study, I’ve been learning about their organization for three weeks [or whatever’s appropriate] but they’ve been there for decades: I’m bound to have missed some things and I need their help to spot the mistakes. This does a number of things:

• Reminds everyone that we are looking at a draft and there are likely to be mistakes in what I’m about to present.
• Acknowledges the audience as the subject matter experts.
• Flags that part of what we are doing is fact-checking information which helps differentiate between the data (objective) and analysis (subjective).

However, even though this is a draft, you must treat this like a final product so the formatting, presentation, and writing must be of ‘final product’ quality. It’s the data and results that might have to be adjusted. Never, ever, show the client a rough draft of your work, no matter how good a relationship you have. Format, spell check and fact check everything you send to the client.

Sense-check the results

In addition to checking the data, we want to check that our results make sense. Even with the time and effort expended on our assessment, we still might have made some incorrect assumptions. That’s going to skew our results and create inaccuracies within our assessment.

The organization itself is best placed to help identify these inaccuracies and, by reviewing the results with the subject matter experts, you are going to be able to take advantage of their expertise to find the problems.

The challenge is that there are two competing factors at play. The kind of System One thinking (instinctive thinking that “operates automatically and quickly with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control”) that helps them identify things that are wrong, is also the same kind of thinking that will cause them to react more emotionally to the results. In short, the same gut feeling that tells them one result is wrong, will also make them reject a result that makes them feel uncomfortable.

Running the workshop

By this point, you might be thinking that workshops are a nightmare and the cannonball approach is much better but bear with me. Remember, these are enormously effective tools if you get them right. Plus, over time, your ability to read and control a room will improve, making the whole experience more effective.

However, to start with, here are some things to consider that will help the workshop go a lot more smoothly.

Preparation

The key consideration prior to a workshop is to determine the objective of the session.  This could be to review the results of the risk assessment or to brain-storm measures to address the risk identified.  These are both different types of session that need to be addressed differently and this should be reflected in the planning.

Next, you need to confirm your own role. You will be an active participant in the workshop as your role is to manage the process as carefully and respectfully as possible to achieve the objective.  Although you are an active member of the process, your exact role will differ with the situation so be sure you are clear as to what it is you are to do in the workshop. If in doubt clarify this with the project sponsor.

Then, think about time. That means preparing a schedule for the workshop. Break the session up into separate sections to ensure you cover the key elements you need to achieve the objective.  Determine a sub-objective for each part of the workshop. You also need to ensure that your planned schedule is realistic given the time available. Generally, workshops require at least three hours as the breadth and depth of material to cover cannot realistically be tacked in anything less. If you don’t have that kind of time available, revise the objective and narrow the scope of the session.

Once you’ve planned these elements, you need to get into the details of planning your workshop.

• Ensure you know your material and have empirical evidence available to back up your claims or to refute any incorrect assertions made during the session.
• Keep any slides or handouts clear and succinct.  Provide enough information to prompt the discussion or to highlight key points but don’t try to fit the whole report into a powerpoint.
• Prepare open-ended questions and generic examples where necessary.
• Try to pre-empt the response / reactions you will get before the session and consider how these will affect the objective.  Do not shy away from any contentious issues but know what these are likely to be in advance and prepare for them appropriately.
• Have at least one person to assist with the workshop as it is otherwise too hard to facilitate the discussion and catch all the key points at the same time.
• Plan and rehearse with your team.  Everyone must know their role, especially if you are presenting jointly, as it will confuse you and the audience if the presenters are continually interrupting each other.  If you are co-presenting, you should both be presenting similar ideas, data or examples.
• Test all of the technology you are using and arrive at least an hour early to set up and test everything.  Have a back-up of the material on a USB and email a copy of any slides to the sponsor on the morning of the session in case there are IT issues.
• Provide copies of appropriate briefing materials to the attendees prior to the session.  Some might not review it beforehand but others will and this will add to the depth of the discussions.

During

Despite all your preparation, the workshop still needs careful management and a degree of choreography for it to be successful.

• Begin by clarifying the objective, schedule and any ground rules for the workshop.  Establish what is in and out of the scope of the session but note that any areas of importance that arise which are out of scope will still be captured for consideration and action elsewhere.
• Quickly clarify if the objective and scope meet the participants’ expectations and if there is anything that they think the session should address.   This helps to quickly generate buy-in to the process but also identifies anyone who has concerns or is opposed to the project. Dissent isn’t always something to tackle at the start of the session but the sooner you can get the participants to speak up, the sooner you will be able to gauge their mood and read the group.
• If necessary, go around and ask everyone to introduce themselves but ask them to highlight a specific element that is relevant to the workshop otherwise this can soak up a great deal of time.
• Unless you’ve agreed otherwise, your role is to moderate and guide the discussion while also capturing any key take-aways.  You are there to help the group achieve their objective using a moderated process. If you are asked to provide input, it should 1) be based on the evidence gathered and, 2) based on the group’s needs and objectives, not necessarily your preference.  Any solution should be empirically based and has to fit the organization.
• During the workshop, remain focussed on the objective and adapt the schedule / discussion if necessary.  As with interviews, some of the most interesting discussion can come from what appears to be a tangential issue so let these run as long as the discussion supports the objective.  If a discussion becomes too heated or is counter-productive try to guide the conversation back to the objectives or call a break to get things back on track.
• Note any areas of contention or contradiction and work out when to tackle these if the participants don’t do this themselves.  Identify areas where you sense that there are still hold outs and try to resolve these before the end of the session. If there is not a consensus by the end of the workshop, it will often be hard to achieve outside of the group setting. But, in some cases, as long as the dissent is acknowledged, the group might still be able to achieve its overall goal.
• Keep track of time and try to stick to the schedule as much as possible.
• Review the key points / take-aways / actions with the group before the session ends.

After

Congratulations! The workshop is over but there’s still work to do.

• Send a thank-you note to the attendees and quickly outline the next steps to set expectations.
• Review and write up your notes.  Identify any loose ends that need to be confirmed prior to reporting.
• Draft an initial report and review this with your team to ensure it accurately reflects the discussion and outcomes of the workshop.
• Review the draft report with the workshop sponsor and record any changes requested. Make any reasonable alterations and issue the final report.