Workshop and Awayday Facilitation

You're organising a workshop. You need 20, 40 or 100+ participants to leave feeling energised, motivated and clear on what's going to happen next. We design and facilitate workshops that deliver results like these examples:

Evidence gathering workshops

The UK's National Infrastructure Commission gathered evidence for the National Infrastructure Assessment from industry experts in 8 workshops. See more>

Facilitation of:
8 workshops over 5 months

Duration:
Each workshop 1 day

Number of participants:
600

Evidence to inform a vision of the UK in 2050

The National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) provides the government with impartial, expert advice on major long-term infrastructure challenges. Each Parliament the NIC carry out a National Infrastructure Assessment (NIA) setting out the Commission’s assessment of long-term infrastructure needs with recommendations to the government.

The call for evidence poses a range of questions divided into cross-cutting themes. These are transport, digital communications, energy, water and wastewater, (drainage and sewerage), flood risk management, and solid waste.

Accordingly ProMeet worked with the NIC to design and deliver 8 workshops, each focussed on a different theme, or aspect of that theme, to gather evidence from experts in industry, academia, NGO's, government departments and public bodies and interest groups.

In total 600 participants attended the 8 workshops over 5 months.

Results

As 'evidence gathering' workshops the outputs were key. Collectively the workshops produced just under 6000 data sets.

- 3121 gridcards answering key questions the NIC asked.

- 2638 fields of Slido interactive polling data.

- 113 written questions and suggestions for additional evidence.

- 93 session reports from 8 Open Space workshops.

- 432 unique page views of the webpage with workshop outputs after the workshops.

This evidence forms an important input to the NIA and the workshops helped c.600 industry experts both better understand the work of the NIC, but also understand the tensions and trade-offs that will be inevitable in such a significant and wide ranging enquiry.

Qualitative feedback

Additionally each workshop was evaluated live, using Slido, and participants offered much positive feedback along the lines of:

"One of the best and better facilitated workshop I have ever attended."

"The best workshop I've been to in quite a while. Really feels like we've contributed to the thinking on a very important subject. Well done to all who organised."

"Congratulations on the workshop structure and use of technology - excellent... open space worked well"

"One of the best workshops I've been to, thank you."

"Great host"

"Slido worked well"

"Really loved the structure and how it was very interactive. Liked grid cards, liked open space and liked slido. All very well done!!"

"Very good workshop, very well facilitated"

"Liked the use of Slido"

"Very helpful - imaginative format"

"Excellent workshop, very well facilitated".

Recommendations

"As a new organisation with a very wide remit, we wanted to gather a wide range of evidence from a diverse set of people across a number of different infrastructure sectors. We also wanted to inform people of our work, but also break out from the ‘normal’ workshop format and give participants something they would remember.

Sean and the team spent a lot of up-front time clarifying our objectives and designing the workshop format and content. He got up to speed with our ‘business’ quickly, and came up with suggestions and ideas that we were able to relate to. He introduced us tools such as Open Space and Slido and ensured that they were used to get the most from the workshop attendees. He ran the sessions with energy, positivity and patience – there was a clear ‘buzz’ in the room that doesn’t happen in many of these events.

I would recommend Sean both as a facilitator and co-designer of workshop events. His focus on quality and desire to improve meant that we met our challenging objectives for our events."

Adam Cooper
National Infrastructure Commission
Policy & Engagement Director

Design Principles

The work of the National Infrastructure Commission is complex. And the experts the National Infrastructure Commission need to engage with are clever. So how to facilitate a workshop that deal with multiple complex subjects, experts and differing views?

Think of the list below as a set of simple guiding principles to use in designing this kind of workshop:

- Take time to formulate the right questions to focus on
- Use different modes of engagement to allow everyone to participate
- Allow all voices to be heard
- Invite participants to engage with the tensions of differing perspectives
- Give participants the responsibility to discuss whats important to them
- Feedback 'key messages' to participants to help make sure they feel heard
- Share the workshop data with participants quickly after the workshop

Participation is the key principle we use to design every facilitation assignment, but what this successfully delivered set of workshops show is that when we use the ProMeet 'Five Principles of Meeting Excellence" its possible to deliver workshops that really deliver.

Team of the future

A team Lloyds Bank explore how they might need to change to meet the bigger set of changes happening at the bank. See more>

Facilitation of:
A team vision and planning workshop

Duration:
1 day

Number of participants:
50

Clear vision and behaviours, with LEGO® Serious Play®

A team used to more traditional workshop tools used LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® to explore how their team might need to develop to support the on going changes at the bank.

After a LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® skills build table groups build their vision for what a high performance team might look like in two years time. Over lunch a small group of eight 'builders', one for each table group combined the table models into a 'meta-model' that captured they key elements of each table vision.

The group them used 'Solutions Focussed' tools to imagine what working-together better looked like in their 'future perfect'. The workshop concluded by exploring positive and negative behaviours needed to active the team vision and work-together well.

Link to all LEGO® Serious Play® case studies >

Team vision, values and behaviour workshop

A new Performance and Operations Support team at IHG plan what their team will 'become famous' for, and identify the values and behaviours needed to succeed. See more>

Facilitation of:
A team vision and planning workshop

Duration:
1 day

Number of participants:
12

Clear vision and values, with LEGO® Serious Play®

A well crafted 'vision' is a mental model of a desirable future state. At their best visions motivate and inspire as well as help align individual action to support the achievement of common goals.

LEGO® Serious Play® is an excellent tool for vision workshops, because it allows participants to express their ideas about vision visually as well as in words (both written and spoken). LEGO models help people express more clearly what they mean as well as helping listeners understand better what is meant.

Physical models also allow people to interrogate each others ideas more fully and easily and with less interpersonal friction. This workshop combined well the power of LEGO® Serious Play® with the power of ProMeet tools like wallcharts and the powerful but humble gridcard.

Results

The workshop created a shared vision and agreed set of values and behaviours needed to deliver the vision and 90 day action plans for each member of the team.

Watch the whole workshop in 1:10 seconds...

Recommendation

“Sean designed and facilitated a critical workshop for our division.

The workshop delivered well above the outcomes expected, due in large part to the innovative methodology Sean applied through Lego Serious Play and the effort taken by Sean to understand our team, our context and our ambition.

Personally it was a pleasure to work together and in particular I appreciated his ability to advise us in how to maximise the value from our workshop.

Edward Bignold
Director, Hotel Performance and Operations Support - Europe at InterContinental Hotels Group

Link to all LEGO® Serious Play® case studies >

Certified LEGO® Serious Play® Facilitation

Sean is one of a small number of facilitators trained by the Association of Master Trainers in the LEGO® Serious Play® method.

Participants of this workshop reported in the evaluation that LEGO® Serious Play® was; "brilliant, everybody could engage", and that it "bought learning to life", "equalised everyone in the room" and "disinhibited my mind".

The three modes of communication (auditory, visual and kinaesthetic) that LEGO® Serious Play® was reported thus, "By being visual, it helps imprint the image in your mind''.

Call Sean to discuss how he can help you and your team create visions that live in hearts and minds (not word documents).

Real Time Strategy

A three day senior executive workshop to explore ambition, direction, scenarios and strategy, followed by a board meeting to agree strategic priorities. See more>

Facilitation of:
Strategic direction

Duration:
3 days

Number of participants:
6

A complex and changing landscape

Background

The RIPE NCC is one of five Regional Internet Registries providing internet number resources (including IP addresses and autonomous system numbers,) registration services and coordination activities to Europe, the Middle East and parts of Africa and Asia.

As the internet continues to grow and evolve, the landscape RIPE NCC operates in is becoming increasingly complex. Accordingly the leadership team of RIPE NCC wanted to develop strategy having considered a number of different future scenarios.

We used a process call ‘Real Time Strategy’, which enables teams to ‘play’ future scenarios in real time. By exploring future scenarios participants can make decisions, explore consequences, and understand different decision making logics. This then enables teams to develop ‘simple guiding principles’ - decision rules that hold true in different situations.

Objective

This workshop enabled the senior executive team to develop shared mental models of ambition, direction and the changing environment, as well as explore scenarios to develop a robustly considered strategy.

Board Meeting Inputs

The outputs of this workshop then became an input the the board meeting that followed, the board were invited to understand the thinking of the executives, and itself explore one key scenario before collectivity agreeing the strategic priorities.

Recommendation

Set with the challenging task of building alignment within a diverse team of directors, Sean managed to bring some much needed clarity and simplicity to an extremely complex vision, and for this we are truly thankful.

Sean, your insight, passion and dedication were noted and appreciated by all.

Serge Radovcic
Chief Communications Officer at RIPE NCC

Link to all LEGO® Serious Play® case studies >

Defining ambition & direction

A detailed Lego® Serious Play® case study. A strategy workshop for trustees and senior executives. See more>

Facilitation of:
Strategic direction

Duration:
1.5 days

Number of participants:
28

From heathy skepticism to enthusiastic support

Background

Ravensbourne is a London based university sector college in the field of digital media and design, with a vocationally focused portfolio of courses, spanning fashion, television and broadcasting, interactive product design, architecture and environment design, graphic design, animation, moving image, music production for media and sound design.

The trustees and senior executives wanted to discuss vision and strategy and invited ProMeet to facilitate the workshop.

Objectives and Process

The overarching workshop objective was: “To establish shared ambition and direction for Ravensbourne”.

This objective and the selection of Lego Serious Play as the primary workshop tool translated into an agenda or workshop process of eight steps to achieve this objective. Read a brief description of each step and see photos of the workshop process under the sections below.

Step 1: Learn how to use Lego Serious Play

The specific skills that are need to use Lego Serious Play are technical skills, learning to use bricks as metaphors, story telling, and learning to use the three modes of enhanced outgoing communication (auditory, visual and kinaesthetic), and the two modes of listening (eyes and ears).
Step 2: Model the core, external and aspirational identity (vision) of Ravensbourne
Each of these three aspects of identity was explored in three sessions. Open each tab to see what participants thought and built, and see how that came together as a shared identity.
- Step 2a: Core identity
  
  Participants began by building models to describe the ‘core DNA’ of Ravensbourne. Those qualities that make Ravensbourne uniquely Ravensbourne.
  
  To outsiders these photos are of Lego models with no story or meaning, but in Lego Serious Play, participants assign meanings to bricks, for example…
  
  Illustration: The meaning of the bricks…
  
  The first image shows two figures standing on 8 different coloured bricks. Meaning - “Ravensbourne stands on a solid foundation of inclusivity and embrace diversity” (eight coloured bricks), and “aims to embed these values in students and encourages collaboration between students” (two minifigures holding hands).
- Step 2b: External identity.
  
  The next step was to explore how participants thought others saw Ravensbourne.
  
  Illustration: The meaning of the bricks…
  
  The first image: Yellow flower, blue baseplate. The participant who built this model thought that “others saw Ravensbourne as good” (the yellow flower), “but insignificant” (the small yellow brick’s modest presence on the large blue base plate).
- Step 2c: Aspirational identity
  
  The third set of models describe the aspiration that trustees and executives had for the future ambition and direction of Ravensbourne.
- Step 2d: Build a shared identity model
  
  After rounds of different participants telling the story of the shared model, to assess if they really did share a common meaning, director Linda Drew records a final version of the shared model story.
Step 3: Model the ‘agents’ (factors or forces) that might impact the vision
Now the workshop enables participants to explore the factors or forces that might impact or be impacted by the shared vision / identity model.
Step 4: Create a system model, connecting the agents to understand the influences they have on each other and the vision

By making physical connections between agents and the identity model, we are able to explore the nature (and changing nature) of the relationships and interrelationships.
Step 5: Identify probable and possible scenarios

Having built a system model, participants identify probable and possible scenarios that they would like to explore.
Step 6: Use the system model to play ‘real time strategy’

Participants explore these scenarios both to understand risks and consequences, but also to understand why they might make the decisions they do. This is a systemic ‘real time strategy’ process that brings future scenarios into the present and allows teams to connect their aspirations to the reality of the changing landscape.
Step 7: Develop a set of simple guiding principles to guide future decision making
After having played several rounds of ‘real time strategy’, seeing how events impact the connected system model, and establishing and understanding a decision logic for each scenario, the group developed a set of ‘simple guiding principles’. These can be seen as decision rules that can apply in any event or scenario.
Step 8: Plan actions and share learning

The workshop concludes by planning actions and sharing learning.

Recommendation

Dear Sean,

Thank you for facilitating Ravensbourne's strategy awaydays so ably.

Facilitation is one of those activities that too many people think they can do well. Some of those people should watch you at work - professional, firm, authoritative, gracious and focused on the outcome we wanted, which was to have a senior team of executives and governors sharing ambition and direction.

I confess that when you and I first met I wasn't immediately sure that Lego Serious Play would be the right tool for our team. You quickly gained my trust and I'm absolutely delighted that, having listened carefully to what we wanted to achieve, you made such persuasive arguments for the approach.

I would be very happy to recommend your services to others.

All the best, Jon

Jonathan Drori CBE
Chairman, Ravensbourne Board of Governors

Link to all LEGO® Serious Play® case studies >

Acknowledgement and thanks.

Thanks to Ravensbourne for kindly allowing us to provide this detailed case study to illustrate Lego Serious Play in action.

Roadmap workshop

Innovate UK is the UK's innovation agency. It funds, supports and connects British business to accelerate sustainable economic growth. See more>

Facilitation of:
An roadmap workshop with strategic illustration

Duration:
1 day

Number of participants:
32

An industry sector working together for mutual benefit

The hydrogen fuel cell sector in the UK has much to offer in the way of clean transport and green power. The sector at present is small but has significant potential for growth.

The workshop bought together the key players in sector and asked them to create a 10 year roadmap to help align and present a unified vision and plan to co-ordinate activity and work together on overcoming shared barriers and challenges.

For this workshop, in addition to creating a plan on gridcards and a wallchart we also created a strategic illustration to bring the roadmap to life visually. You can see photos of the workshop on our blog, and see all outputs in the clear outputs and visual plans section of our website.

Results

The workshop bought sector representatives closer together and the roadmap is helping align the direction of travel for the next 10 years.

Recommendation

“Sean has transformed the way I am approaching a new piece of work - helping the Hydrogen and Fuel Cell sector to develop a vision and roadmap for the next 10 years.

Sean expertly facilitated the first workshop we held with the sector, but his role and influence reach much deeper than that. His supportive approach and skillful questioning were essential in pushing me to think more deeply and creatively about the outcomes I hoped to achieve, and he brought lots of great ideas to our discussions about how we might achieve those outcomes.

Sean is clear thinking, creative, energising, supportive and great fun to work with. His focus on enabling change rather than 'just' facilitating a workshop is really refreshing, and the Promeet tools he has developed both help to ensure clarity, and to ensure that the outputs of an event are professionally captured and disseminated.”

Liz Flint
Lead Technologist - Innovate UK

Innovation, creativity and design. Since 1989.

ProMeet founder, Sean Blair graduated with a first class honours degree in industrial design. He went on to be the first design director of the national body for design, the Design Council. Sean was also a founder of the Service Design Network. He has worked with the NHS, airports, government departments, pharmaceutical companies and well known brands, helping groups of people work together to think differently and create new products and services.

Call Sean to discuss how he can help you, your team, and your stakeholders innovate.

Strategy and business planning

A University of the Arts department use ProMeet to develop a strategy and business plan, and improve the culture and effectiveness of the whole team. See more>

Facilitation of:
A strategy project

Duration:
7 workshops over 4 months

Number of participants:
From 8 to 120

A department team work together to create shared vision and strategy

At the beginning of the University planning cycle, the head of libraries and learning resources (LLR) asked us to help them develop their strategy. We suggested a process that began with senior managers working on vision and strategy, and then increasingly involving the whole team, to help the strategy to 'live' in the hearts and minds of staff, as well as a short, well written document.

This participative approach helped create a common service culture across many University sites, and strengthen the inter-departmental partnerships that needed to work well, in order to deliver an effective service. This is one of eight strategy projects ProMeet has facilitated at UAL.

Results

New vision for LLR co-created by LLR leadership team.

Clear three year strategy to help realise the vision.

Full team (c.120 staff) engagement at operational level to plan the implementation of the vision and strategy.

Wider University understanding of, and support for LLR strategy, especially amongst key internal partnerships.

Postscript

Three years later, Pat Christie, who commissioned the work, reported the following:

"The objectives were successfully delivered in accordance with our strategic aspirations.

The department is viewed as a high achieving department by colleagues across the University and year-on-year increases in student satisfaction are demonstrated through our NSS scores.

Staff and senior managers within Library Services still talk about the Strategy as something they feel real ownership and pride in even though it some years old."

Recommendation

“Sean is someone I would highly recommend to anyone - he combines expert knowledge with a great personality. He also has energy and drive in abundance.

We have worked with Sean on two big projects - on strategy development and on improving our meeting culture - both experiences have been fantastic and have already brought many benefits to the department and to individual staff.

Ultimately Sean will work with you in a co-creative way to get great results.”

Pat Chrisie
Director of Libraries and Academic Support Services

Planning - a core ProMeet competency

Business planning, strategy planning and project planning are one of the most common kinds of assignment we are asked to facilitate. Clients say that they like the orderly and visual approach we bring to this kind of work, and participants report that they feel heard during ProMeetings. In some cases organisations go on to adopt ProMeet as the way they run meetings every day. We are happy to pass on the tools and skills to clients and other facilitators.

Contact Sean to discuss how to get commitment to your organisations plans with the participative ProMeet method.

ExportJam. A user centred innovation workshop

UK Trade & Investment held 9 export 'Jam' workshops around the UK. These workshops looked at how the government might provide export support in the future. See more>

Facilitation of:
London ExportJam:
An innovation workshop

Duration:
1 day

Number of participants:
45 at the London Jam

Users designing future services

"Jams" are typically very high energy events where people are encouraged to speak up, think outside the box, and explore new tools and skills like design thinking. Export Jam helped UKTI understand how to make it easier for companies to trade internationally.

The participants at all jams were primarily small and medium sized business people who kindly gave UKTI a day of their time.

They began by sharing their insights and experiences of current export support services, then they created roadmaps and prototypes of the products and services they wanted in the future, before writing detailed ideation maps outlining their views on how export services of the future could be.

Results

ProMeet facilitated the London export Jam. In this workshop participants generated:

35 detailed ideation maps, recording participants ideas
40 insights into how to stimulate demand for exporting
80 insights on positive and negative experiences of current services
10 roadmaps of future service landscapes (recorded in films, four shown below)

Recommendations

"Our team needed to find some excellent facilitators for our ExportJam days being held all around the country. Sean definitely fitted the bill. Despite the unreasonably short notice, Sean’s experience and professionalism meant he was able to design and lead an incredibly fun day of creative codesign activities for around 50 London participants. As a result, we have dozens of great ideas for improving export support for businesses and a very happy and engaged community of London jammers."

Audree Fletcher
Head of UKTI Ideas Lab

"Super massive thanks to Sean Blair for awesome facilitation and getting real engagement from everyone attending. All participants behaved beautifully and a few who looked disengaged at the start ended up some of our most active participants.

The Lego effect worked and we got some really good insight out of people. The workshop gave us clear interpretations of the issues, needs and opportunities of the export experience. Sean was quite literally amazing."

Tansy Robson
UKTI Ideas Lab | Strategy Team

Link to all LEGO® Serious Play® case studies >

Certified LEGO® Serious Play® Facilitation

Sean is one of a small number of facilitators trained by the Association of Master Trainers in the LEGO® Serious Play® method. Call Sean to discuss how he can help you and your team create visions that live in hearts and minds (not word documents).

Strategy workshop

A new advisory board had joined a Mayfair based firm of corporate advisors and financiers. The advisory board was inducted following a strategic planning workshop. See more>

Facilitation of:
A new advisory board

Duration:
2 days

Number of participants:
3 - 12

Vision, strategy and value proposition

This workshop ran over two days. On the first day the small core team of executives developed strategy on paper, though gridcards and with a strategic illustration of the vision, strategy, values and proposition they wanted to drive the business forward.

On the second day new members of their advisory board joined the workshop. They used the output from day one to be inducted into the business and reviewed executives thinking.

You can read more about this workshop, and see the strategic illustration on our blog.

Results

This workshop set the standard for WGP advisory board meetings. WGP now invite ProMeet to run advisory board meetings in this form every 6 months.

Recommendation

"Sean ran a 2 day strategy session for WGP. He is an expert facilitator who guided the leaders, advisors and managers of the business to coalesce around a shared vision, purpose and strategy.

He helped us to do this 'our way' rather than imposing his own agenda or templates. He facilitated in a way that encouraged participants to be relaxed, engaged and focussed.

He managed our egos with consummate skill and never sought to impose his own agenda."
Chris Disspain
Chairman
William Grosvenor and Partners

A chapter leaders workshop

Meeting Professionals International is an association for meetings industry professionals. Once a year European Chapters leaders meet to learn, exchange and plan. See more>

Facilitation of:
A Chapter Leaders Business Summit

Duration:
1.5 days

Number of participants:
40

Voluntary leaders exchanging best practice and planning the year ahead

The objective of this summit was to build a vibrant chapters leadership team, though exchanging best practice, developing the value in the chapter network and working-together to establish common goals and plans.

Accordingly ProMeet facilitated a one and a half day workshop process to encourage knowledge exchange, competency development and planning. We used Lego Serious Play and Open Space Technology as two core processes to enable participants to achieve the workshop objective.

Results

In this workshop participants generated:

Individual insights on chapter leaders core competencies.
Four scenarios & videos on possible futures for chapters.
Session reports from 13 open space workshops.
Key questions for MPI senior leaders.
Individual actions plans.
Individual key learning insights.

Recommendation

“Sean did a fantastic job facilitating our "European Chapter Business Summit" in Copenhagen for MPI in Europe.

We received great feedback from the 40 participants and Sean helped us (MPI) to come out with great input from the meeting. I definitely recommend Sean, ProMeet and IAF”.

Federico Toja
Meeting Professionals International

Link to all LEGO® Serious Play® case studies >

Certified LEGO® Serious Play® Facilitation

Sean is one of a small number of facilitators trained by the Association of Master Trainers in the LEGO® Serious Play® method. Call Sean to discuss how he can help you and your team create visions that live in hearts and minds (not word documents).

A manifesto for Manifesto

Manifesto is a rapidly growing, award winning London based digital agency. In its third year, the founders wanted the whole team to help create the new company manifesto. See more>

Facilitation of:
Company manifesto

Duration:
Half a day

Number of participants:
21

Values, behaviours and 'simple guiding principles'

In his book, "The Next Common Sense", Lego Serious Play pioneer Johan Roos (who's now the Dean and Managing Director of Jönköping International Business School), sets out a compelling argument for 'Simple Guiding Principles' as a smart way of enabling people to work together with a coherent viewpoint.

At a ProMeet workshop for digital agency Manifesto, we concluded our workshop by developing the following five guiding principles as a synthesis of all ideas about vision, values and behaviours.

These principles can be used as a guide for all members of the Manifesto team, and have become part of the staff induction manual.

Values and Positive behaviours

Simple guiding principles, values and positive behaviour models.

These simple guiding principles were created after having had a collective conversation enabled using Lego models on the values and key positive behaviours (below) the team felt were needed to achieve their company vision.

Recommendation

"We worked with Sean to build new values, behaviours and principles for Manifesto using Lego Serious Play.

In a short space of time he was able to gain the trust of our team and arm them with the skills needed to consider, articulate and select what we're striving to be.

Sean is an excellent facilitator with the skills and experience to adapt his approach to different settings and brief.”

Jim Bowes
Managing Director

Link to all LEGO® Serious Play® case studies >

Certified LEGO® Serious Play® Facilitation

Sean is one of a small number of facilitators trained by the Association of Master Trainers in the LEGO® Serious Play® method.

Participants in this workshop used the first two LEGO® Serious Play® application techniques, building individual and shared models, as an introduction to LEGO® Serious Play®.

Project team workshop

A newly assembled project team at the Department of Work and Pensions need to move quickly to manage the HR transition following a merger. See more>

Facilitation of:
A newly merged project team

Duration:
1 day

Number of participants:
30

Time pressured change planning

The DWP had merged with the National Offender Management Service. A new organisational development and change team was formed and needed to quickly plan the transition for the people in both organisations, especially the immediate priorities.

ProMeet facilitated this workshop as part of an evaluation of participatory meeting methods in central government departments. You can read more about this on our blog, where you can also download the full evaluation and read about the ProMeet process in the documents appendices.

Results

This meeting was more thoroughly evaluated than most, as it was itself subject of a research exercise.

Summary of the participants evaluation of this meeting:

82% of participants thought ProMeet is better than the traditional way of meeting.

89% of participants thought meeting objectives are better than the more traditional agenda.

The ProMeet wallchart and gridcard visual system gained near unanimous support for helping the meeting’s structure, focus, progress and record, as well as aiding full participation.

93% of participants thought ProMeet would be useful in their department.

Over three quarters thought ProMeet should be more broadly adopted at DWP.

Recommendation

"Having experienced ProMeet on a number of occasions I've found it to be an effective way to manage what have previously been long difficult meetings.

ProMeet ensures clarity of objectives and provides a meeting process that gives everyone involved in the meeting a 'voice'.

Coupled with this I have found Sean's professionalism and his commitment to bring learning into the meeting process gives people the opportunity to build stronger and more trustful working relationships"

Marina Bolton
Organisation Development
Department for Work and Pension

Service design workshop

Senior staff at the University of the Arts spend two days designing a new student service and address what had felt like a 'seeming insurmountable task'. See more>

Facilitation of:
An service design workshop

Duration:
2 days

Number of participants:
25

Service design, to fix an urgent problem

The University had achieved a low score on the national student survey. Senior managers gathered for two days with student representatives and together they undertook a service design workshop facilitated by Sean Blair.

We began by reviewing the entire student journey, seeking to understand the good and bad experiences students had as they progressed though University life. We then ran an open space technology workshop seeking to generate ideas to address the negative experiences students had reported.

The workshop concluded by writing up short form business plans of the strongest six ideas.

Results

The student journey, from pre enrolment to post graduation was split into 23 stages, and each stage assessed in terms of good or bad experiences.

This discovery insight led to 14 ideas being creatively considered.

After evaluating the ideas six were selected for development.

The workshop concluded after participants created six outline service blueprints for the six best ideas.

Postscript

The University then set up a Student Hub, as a cost effective way of improving the student experience at many points of the student journey.

Recommendation

“Extremely effective way of breaking seemingly insurmountable tasks down into tangible chunks.”

Jane Sloan
UAL

Innovation, creativity and design. Since 1989.

ProMeet founder, Sean Blair graduated with a first class honours degree in industrial design. He went on to be the first design director of the national body for design, the Design Council. Sean was also a founder of the Service Design Network. He has worked with the NHS, airports, government departments, pharmaceutical companies and well known brands, helping groups of people work together to think differently and create new products and services.

Call Sean to discuss how he can help you, your team, and your stakeholders innovate.

Learn to facilitate LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®.
LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® certification from ProMeet sister company:

Enable Learning & ChangeProfessional Meeting Facilitation

Workshop and Awayday Facilitation

Evidence gathering workshops

Evidence to inform a vision of the UK in 2050

Team of the future

Clear vision and behaviours, with LEGO® Serious Play®

Team vision, values and behaviour workshop

Clear vision and values, with LEGO® Serious Play®

Real Time Strategy

A complex and changing landscape

Defining ambition & direction

From heathy skepticism to enthusiastic support

Roadmap workshop

An industry sector working together for mutual benefit

Strategy and business planning

A department team work together to create shared vision and strategy

ExportJam. A user centred innovation workshop

Users designing future services

Strategy workshop

Vision, strategy and value proposition

A chapter leaders workshop

Voluntary leaders exchanging best practice and planning the year ahead

A manifesto for Manifesto

Values, behaviours and 'simple guiding principles'

Project team workshop

Time pressured change planning

Service design workshop

Service design, to fix an urgent problem