For as long as Trump has been orange, design activity has been synonymous with the ‘workshop’. And by workshop I don’t mean the ‘old man shed’ environment where stuff gets made (although that it of equal importance), but the term afforded to a bunch of people sitting in a large-ish room with a bunch of Post-It notes, being ‘creative’.
It rose to wider prominence in the 90’s when design awareness was on the rise (albeit still a relatively peripheral industry to many) and soon became the tool of preference to ‘engage’ the client and ‘build collaboration’. And it worked. It was a great way to permit access to the creative process whilst retaining control and sharing a little of the magical synaptic gymnastics that normally went on behind closed doors.
It was also a good way to ‘condense’ creative ideation into a few hours, a morning or a full day (or if you were a true glutton for punishment…a multi day ideation marathon). Being somewhat cynical, it was also a good way for agencies to charge top dollar for an intense phase of billing. Some larger agencies turned it into an ‘event’ with high delivery expectations and associated razzmatazz.
The principles behind a ‘brainstorming workshop’ are sound. Remove the daily noise. Lock everyone away in a single room for a finite amount of time with coffee and carbs. Feed them a series of prompts and provocations. Allow everyone to be as bonkers and ridiculous with their ideas as they wish. Suspend belief. Build on everyone’s thoughts to create bigger ideas. Flatten hierarchies. That sort of thing. For many years it worked really well and creativity was respected.
I’ve been in and run countless workshops over the 30-ish years I’ve worked in and around agency land. Some are simple affairs with just a bunch of respected peers for a few hours where you just need to effectively ‘pick their brains’ on a topic that it would take you weeks to research yourself. Others are behemoths costing gazillions of British pounds featuring numerous client teams assembled from all four corners of the earth, run across a whole week, and destroying young creative minds in the process. Plus all the variations in between.
I used to be a reluctant believer in workshops. They did what they set out to do. Bring people together and harvest the hive mind to find solutions. Genuinely creative solutions. Things that formed the basis of new directions of travel that would otherwise be left untraveled. They were often intimidating as hell but a necessary part of the ‘coming of age’ required of a young aspiring designer.
But I’ve become a little jaded to them in recent years. Not because of what they were or the core principles, but more what they have become or have been led to represent. I still fervently believe in the power of collective and collaborative creative thought, but the way workshops have been prostituted troubles me.
I thought I’d outline some of these issues and see what you think…
1. Devaluing individual thought.
One of the key issues with modern ‘brainstorming’ is that it often presumes to replaces intense, considered, individual endeavour. Like paracetamol when you have any sort of pain, so brainstorming seems to be the de-facto, knee jerk reaction to any ‘problem’ requiring a solution.
I’ve been in so many client and project discussions where a brainstorming session or workshop is suggested in an attempt to quickly solve the problem, as if the sheer existence of the workshop itself will sort everything out. Sometimes, a challenge requires proper ‘sit in the dark’ type thinking where one thing leads to another in careful procrastination, rather than a happy go lucky, anything goes, no idea is a bad idea, free for all. I’m all for getting together if the collective brain is better suited to tackling a problem at a superficial level but let’s not deploy a workshop like a sticking plaster if in reality it requires extensive and iterative concentrated attention.
It’s also key to ‘deploy’ a workshop at the correct time in the creative process. Too early and you just end up with a whole load of random, irrelevant claptrap. Too late and you are too far along the ideation timeline for it to be useful. It needs to provide wide thinking and broad inspiration at the right point to initiate new directions for exploration.
2. A timesheet nightmare.
Brainstorming should be something that you use within a creative team to assimilate multiple viewpoints. Give yourself – as the project lead – a rapid explosion of different opportunities worth investigating in a short burst of time and energy. It saves hours and days or staring blankly at a sketch page willing the next idea to implant itself and show some semblance of opportunity, or doom scrolling through Pinterest or Google images hoping for something to leap like alien spawn into your conscience.
But here’s the rub. Agencies run on ‘time and motion’. As a designer you are expected to hit your billable hours ‘utilisation’ target depending on your seniority, or level of expected sales or management (amongst other tasks), so if there is a job that can be billed to and you need those hours, you can bet they will be billed. Which means that if you suggest a brainstorming session, you can be sure that every attendee will destroy your job code with every hour they can justify.
Which in turn means that such sessions need to be carefully controlled, painstakingly timetabled and attendance monitored based on seniority (which equals hourly rate ‘punch’). If you invite 4 people to a 2 hour session, you have just lost over a days worth of billing budget to complete the remainder of the task at hand, and it is highly likely that the original budget was calculated based on a single designer (or possibly 2 at a push) working on it for an expected amount of time.
Which is why such sessions have become less ‘creative’ and more ‘staged’. More about demonstrable client magic than a genuine desire to tap into the collective creative hive mind to find the best solution. Budget conscious designers will now do whatever they can to avoid such collective discussions for fear of their budgets’ demise. At least if there is any level of accountability for the budget by the designer…which is now invariably the case. Shame.
Call me cynical, but it’s a current reality.
3. An excuse for activity.
Harnessing collective thought is incredible if done effectively, but I’ve attended so many workshops where activities or tasks within said workshop seems to be more about ‘demonstrable activity’ than any tactical reasoning in solving the challenge at hand. It seems to be more about the art of distraction than the seeking of solutions.
Almost as though the act of the workshop itself is enough to satisfy the need to run it. Doesn’t matter what output results from the activity, just that people have ticked a box to say ‘workshop complete’. A bit like those infernal H&S questionnaires every employee has to answer about lifting heavy boxes and using fire extinguishers. We all do the quiz and tick the box but how many of us actually remember it effectively or pay enough attention given the severity of what could go wrong?
I’ve seen so much collective time wasted on ‘workshopping’ or ‘brainstorming’ where that time would have been much better spent cleaning cars or eating cake. If you are going to ask of peoples’ time, then make sure that time is used productively and effectively in the pursuit of the brief. For sure, there is politics and stakeholder management involved, but if the pursuance of the brief is not advanced, then that time is literally wasted.
4. To prepare or to not prepare.
In my experience there are broadly two types of workshops or brainstorming sessions. The one run by creatives with other creatives and in a flat, informal manner. The other is a structured, calculated, planned, crafted and curated ‘spectacle’ (on a graduating scale) involving the client or other key stakeholders. For sure there are plenty of versions in between but the objectives (and vibe) tend to be aligned to one or the other. I guess you could call them ‘informal’ and ‘formal’ for want of better adjectives.
If you have a well honed creative team who understand each other, then the first can sometimes work ‘off the bat’. Some of the best sessions I’ve attended have been unscheduled (or at least previously unbeknownst) ‘lock ins’ with peers where it’s been about spitballing and idea volleyball to explore possible routes for further exploration. When everyone is firing on all cylinders, these are genuinely awe-inspiring things to be a part of. You can feel the palpable creativity and the raw potential for ‘inspiration’ and whilst 50% of it will be utter tripe, there will be moments of synaptic genius that may only result in an incoherent scribble as a result of a chance comment in response to a random thought. That’s the kryptonite you seek.
But these are rare. As rare as rocking horse shit as my Dad often says.
Most workshops require careful planning. Even for internal ‘informal’ sessions. Otherwise time is wasted and the budget is destroyed (see earlier point). And by planning I mean significant hours thinking about what you want from the workshop, how you are going to achieve it, who you need to invite, when you can best schedule it to align with everyone’s impossible diaries, activities you need to craft to extract the best from the assembled group, what pro-formas you may need to a capture it, the steps you need to build an idea, the team dynamics within the session…etc. etc. For every hour of workshop you may need many multiple hours of preparation.
A bit like a wedding. The day itself is a joyous occasion that seemingly runs without fault, but we all know the months (and often years) of anguish, politics and preparation by a select few that fed into ensuring that it does so. Which means that to make a ‘workshop’ work, you need to budget for significant pre-work and ‘capture’ to ensure it is a useful and meaningful deliverable.
An ‘off the cuff’ badly planned workshop is basically a hole into which you simply throw good money.
5. It becomes about the workshop.
Workshops are absolutely brilliant if they are part of the ‘food’ for the solution. If you can utilise community thinking and collaborative idea ‘building’ to better inform and explore a potential challenge then it is brilliant. Get the right kinds of (often different) people in the same space and align them to think about ‘how’, then truly amazing things can happen. Much like talking through a problem makes it feel less traumatic, so working with others to bounce potential ideas into shape is genuinely magical. The sum is almost always greater than the parts.
But only if it serves the purpose. And the purpose being finding potential solutions to the problem.
But more and more I see teams suggest a ‘workshop’ because it dilutes ownership. It seems to be a way to kick the problem down the road. Much like giving a petulant toddler an iPhone playing Bluey re-runs in a restaurant. Yes, we know it’s an easy way to soften the situation but we all know that it creates a problem we know we have to eventually face.
If the challenge genuinely benefits from a wider, creative, diverse discourse then absolutely schedule a workshop, but don’t simply suggest one because it’s either easy or it sounds like something that should be done. Make sure it’s an essential part of the jigsaw puzzle. Otherwise it’s just wasted time and effort and does nothing to instil confidence in the creative process. In fact, it can often do more harm than good (see preparation).
6. Facilitation.
The workshop ‘phenomenon’ has created its own industry. There are now myriad agencies whose sole purpose it is to ‘run workshops’. Facilitators are now a bona fide job description.
And this is often a good thing. I’m certainly not criticising or undermining the value of such skills. A well run workshop – as I’ve said in earlier points – is absolutely critical to success. But as with such things, there can often be a muddiness in the understanding and need for these skills.
To continue the wedding analogy from an earlier point, when a couple announce they plan to marry, the ‘wedding vultures’ appear (as my best man coined in the run up to my own wedding). The ever increasing number of ‘essential’ elements that you need to have a ‘beautiful wedding’ bear down and apply pressure. Of course you need personalised favours. Of course you need a full film crew to capture the day. Of course you need the organic, hand picked confetti. Of course you need the 12th century, regal hayloft for your photos. Of course you need a three legged Shetland pony to pull the antique gold chariot to the venue.
Parallels can be drawn to ‘creative workshops’. There is stuff you need and there is definitely stuff you don’t need. If someone can help you do what is required in an efficient, knowledgable and effective manner then by all means use them. Otherwise, ditch the bluster and as Gold Five says ‘stay on target’.
7. Forced creativity.
Aside from all of the issues I’ve described above, a huge obstacle to effective workshop output is the nature of ‘scheduled creativity’. It seems to be something I’ve noticed moreso in the last 10 years (with ever increasing regularity as the years progress), but sessions are now so tightly shoehorned into peoples’ diaries that no consideration is given to the mindset required to ‘be open and creative’. With the proliferation of visible diaries and back to back meetings, attendees are given little time (if any at all) to make themselves ready.
Now you could argue that it is the role of the workshop planner or facilitator (and associated process) to structure the session in such a way that takes the incumbent group of attendees and prepares them for what’s to come in such a way that opens their minds, rids them of the previous meeting clutter and sets them up for thinking creatively. But that isn’t always possible when sessions are a handful of hours and zero time is given between diary appointments.
Designers are trained (and by nature, able) to flex their creative muscles with relative ease, but when others from a client team are invited to attend and they come from more linear thinking disciplines or from roles where expected modes of delivery are very different, it’s like asking a 45 year old, slightly unfit, beer bellied bloke to run the Dad’s race at school in a pair of leather shoes against a 17 year old sports protégée in spikes and lycra*. For sure, a workshop benefits from different perspectives and outlooks, but you can’t simply press a button and expect people to perform in unfamiliar territory and ways and then expect top drawer results.
*I’m not suggesting designers are fit and other disciplines are not…I just needed a suitable analogy to describe the difference in ‘immediate mental creative acuity’.
It is why workshop preparation is so critical. And part of that is selecting the attendees carefully, giving them time to understand what is expected of them, and giving them the time to ‘warm up’ before putting them under any metaphorical spotlight. It isn’t about expecting the accountant to think like a designer, but it’s definitely about giving that accountant time to ‘decompress’ from their typical accountancy work and to understand the framework and approach to the workshop before being expected to contribute effectively.
8. Superficial pap.
Workshops that are not planned well or crammed into fewer hours than they deserve concern me. To use yet another analogy, they feel like the first hour or so of a polite party, where everyone is asking everyone else banal and vacuous questions. Things like “What do you do?” or “How many kids?” or “What car do you drive?” The kinds of questions that do nothing to advance your knowledge or really get to know the person.
I’ve seen it so many times. Workshop attendees are not given enough forewarning or time to wrap their heads around a subject to respond meaningfully, so they react with predictable and shallow ideas. Stuff that is obvious. Stuff you don’t need a workshop to unearth. It’s not their fault, the spotlight lands on them so they say something…anything. The first thing that pops into their diary-addled frontal lobe.
But because it will be the only time that these people can schedule to spend together, they feel the need to collect all of these simple ideas, ‘capture’ them on ideas sheets, get the team to awkwardly present their ideas to the rest of the workshop and then request everyone to vote so they can say that they have a ‘winning direction’.
If you only feed fingernails, gristle and feet into the mincing machine, no matter how good the seasoning, the sausage will always be a bit shit. Feed in prime, well curated cuts of meat from well considered sources and you will have yourself a half decent sausage worth eating.
It doesn’t matter how senior the people in the room are, or how ‘significant’ their vote night be, if you don’t give people the time and space to let ideas really develop and to prompt them in the right way to really think about possible solutions, then you will never have anything worth developing.
Crap in = crap out.
9. More ‘ringers’.
One of the ironic things about creative workshops is that the more senior you get, the more likely you are to ‘facilitate’ the workshop rather than contribute to it. It’s something I’ve always struggled with as whilst the role of facilitator is incredibly important and is typically handled better by people with ‘more experience’, it tends to remove the very same experience from the act of creativity itself.
I’ve found myself leading workshops in the past when I would have been much more useful and effective as a contributing member of the workshop. Your role as a facilitator is to frame and set up the exercises or tasks, ensure workshop ‘flow’ and prevent individuals from dominating or negatively impacting the output. But it also means you can’t (or shouldn’t) ’offer ideas’ or ‘steer the witness’ so to speak. You role is relatively administrative and one of maintaining pace and energy. Skills that are not necessarily always reflective of creative experience.
It is why I tend to structure workshops in a way that allow me to contribute to ideation and solution building, without detrimentally affecting or subjectively steering the output. It’s a tricky balance but by simply only facilitating, you often remove opportunities for experienced creative people to offer potential solutions for others to build on.
It might sound like I’m not a big fan of workshops. I guess I’m just not a fan of the current interpretation or tendency to default to workshops as a route to solutions, regardless of the wider context. If a workshop is an effective part of the solution finding puzzle and is both commercially relevant and creatively effective, then absolutely…use it. But make sure it isn’t being used as a substitute for something else, be it proper thinking, targeted research or stakeholder politicking.
There’s no doubt that more minds on a problem is a good thing. Different viewpoints. Tangential thoughts. Change of direction. Expertise injection. That sort of thing. But its a fine line between productive use of people’s time and wasted effort and budget simply because it sounded like a good idea at the time. Creative brainstorming (or whatever words you may use to describe this act) is critical to new ideas if done in the right way and in parallel to (or in sequence with) other equally critical parts of the creative process.
Some of the best ideas I’ve been privileged to see come to life have done so in workshop sessions or in creative brainstorming sessions, but so have some of the worst. And there’s nothing worse that seeing a shit idea get traction because it’s easy to vote for something that is there than something that isn’t.
Rant over.
