Opening & checks
Anonymous polls for expectations, and ten-second comprehension checks between steps.
Run the workshopthat changes something.
Everything from the empty agenda to the follow-up email: writing the objective, shaping the day, opening it, running it and closing it against what you promised.
Before anyone arrives
Most of what decides whether a workshop works happens while the room is still empty.
Write the objective
- An outcome, not a topic.
- One outcome. Four is four workshops.
- Something observable, produced or practised.
- Read it out in the first ten minutes.
Give the day a shape
- Narrow open, wide middle, firm close.
- Diverge before you converge.
- Say which mode the room is in.
- Neither narrow end is optional.
Budget the clock
- Length follows the objective.
- Plan content for 80% of the slot.
- Three hours means 2h24 of content.
- Add 30 minutes if they are strangers.
Build the deck
- One idea per slide.
- Picture over paragraph.
- The slide is not the handout.
- Export to PDF.
Pre-flight checklist
- The objective, written as one sentence.
- Agenda with timings and the buffer.
- Deck opened once on the room's screen.
- Materials the exercises need.
- A plan for whoever arrives late.
Open with expectations, Read the objective out loud, One idea, then something to do with it, Check before you move on, Change what the room is doing, Silence is not agreement
In the room
The plan survives contact with the participants only if the first ten minutes were built properly.
Open with expectations
Check in, read the objective out loud, collect what they came for.
Teach, then check
One idea, then something to do with it. Check before you move on.
Make asking safe
In writing, at any time, without a raised hand or a name attached.
Close against the objective
Answer the expectations out loud. Name the gaps you did not reach.
A three-and-a-half hour agenda (example)
Copy it, change the content, keep the proportions. The opening, the debriefs and the buffer are what make it work.
Asking in writing, Anonymous by default, Up-voted by the room, What happened, So what, Now what, Quiet thinking time first
Questions & reflection
An exercise without a debrief is an activity, not a lesson.
Top questions
Anonymous · Live- 01
How do we make this stick after today?
31 - 02
What if my team disagrees with the outcome?
24 - 03
Can we see the raw answers?
12
Send it the same day, The deck and the drawing on it, The questions raised, The actions committed to, PDF and CSV, Where the group struggled
Afterwards
The workshop is not finished when the room empties.
Send it the same day
The next morning at the latest. Memory of a session decays fastest right after it.
Send the whole thing
The deck, whatever was drawn on it, the questions raised, the actions committed to.
Name what you missed
Answer the expectations you did not reach, in writing, rather than letting them hang.
Read where it struggled
PDF and CSV of where the group lost the thread, so the next run is a better one.
Six common mistakes, and the fix
Planning content to the last minute
Fill 80% of the clock. The 20% is not spare, it is what the room will take.
Opening with logistics
Open with why they are in the room. Housekeeping takes ninety seconds later.
Asking “any questions?”
Ask a specific one instead, and make answering anonymous.
Running exercises back to back
Debrief each one. An exercise without a debrief is an activity, not a lesson.
Cutting the close when you overrun
Cut an exercise instead. The close is where the day becomes usable.
Sending the material a week later
Send it the same day, while the room still remembers what it means.
Where Diaposi fits
None of the above needs software. Four of the steps are hard to do well in a room of more than a dozen people, and that is the part it handles.
Questions
Written and anonymous, up-voted so the shared question surfaces first.
The hard part
Whiteboard and annotation straight over the slide you are already showing.
Reflection
Collect answers before anyone speaks, then discuss the spread.
The 24 hours after
The report generates when you end: deck, notes, questions, where the group struggled.
Good workshops are planned. Great ones are remembered.
Bring the deck you already run. Diaposi handles the asking, the checking and the follow-up.
Run the same activities as a live quiz
Go live with Diaposi