New Game-Plan: Brain-Pool Workshops

Services

About Us

Our services and capabilities:

• Providing a specialist facilitated workshop service - normally integrated with our other services
• Enabling people to think, learn and act collaboratively using a deliberative process
• Interweaving discussion with knowledge-sharing, using user-friendly technology
• Engaging participants intensively and with complete transparency
• Capturing all contributions electronically - in striking contrast with the 'flip-chart' approach
• Providing instant verbatim output, followed by our distilled synthesis to inform 'next steps'
• Expertly managed from start to finish - design, facilitation, analysis and reporting

How to make meetings productive?

Despite the accessibility of information today, building relationships, turning information into knowledge, and taking collaborative decisions still demands meetings. Getting real value -whether the meeting is a brainstorm, project discussion, seminar, or 'virtual event' - depends on defining outcomes, selecting the right design and tools, effective knowledge-sharing and analysis, and proper reporting and action-planning afterwards. In practice, meetings often fail because organisations simply 'sleep-walk' through these stages.

Traditional workshops and meetings often use tired old approaches - too many 'talking heads', too much 'telling rather than listening and sharing', and too many 'flip-charts and Post-It notes'. These formats often fail to engage or excite participants!

How does Brain-Pool help?

Brain-Pool Workshops dramatically improve the productivity of meetings. We use innovative technology to capture information more quickly and completely than is ever possible in traditional meetings. We prepare a distilled synthesis and a crisp set of recommendations based on all the inputs. Our Workshops are 'deliberative', enabling participants to work together to articulate, debate and take forward ideas. In particular, participants can readily review (on screen) the contributions made by others, and add their own further 'builds' or comments. These interchanges create a 'snowball of learning' and enable participants to review their own positions in light of what others say. We deliver better mutual understanding through reasoned, open dialogue.

We provide a complete service covering design, facilitation, analysis and reporting as illustrated in the diagram below. We assemble all the skills required, relieving clients of a substantial burden of expertise and time internally. We run each Workshop as a partnership project. 

The Workshop experience is described below and summarised in our leaflet. Workshops can be 'real' (one place, one time), or 'virtual', using Distance Brain-Pool via the internet to involve widely-dispersed people.

What are the benefits?

Brain-Pool Workshops transform not only the meeting 'experience' but also the outputs and follow-up action. The focus on collaborative working, combined with the structure, tools and innovative technology which we employ, distinguishes our services from those provided by subject-matter experts, individual facilitators, or 'big-name' consulting firms. We deliver a step-change in extracting value from collaborative working. The multiple benefits which Brain-Pool Workshops offer compared with traditional approaches include:

• All talking the same language - shared understanding of key concepts and terms
• All contributions are captured simultaneously - dramatically saving time
• Equal 'air-time' for all - not 'who shouts loudest'
• Everyone can contribute - without having to catch the Chair's eye
• Contributions made anonymously - greater honesty
• Assessment - inputs categorised and rated within the workshop
• Real deliberation - inputs reviewed, built upon, categorised and assessed in the workshop
• Parallel syndicate sessions - but without the need for break-out rooms
• Highly focused and stimulating - through use of structure and tools
• Guided by independent, impartial, expert facilitators and analysts
• Inputs can be labelled - for later analysis by interest or stakeholder area
• Transparency - Verbatim output is available at the end of the session

Applications for Brain-Pool

Brain-Pool Workshops provide a unique and powerful approach to tackle some of the biggest challenges facing organisations today. The intense deliberation, capture of inputs, and provision of a sound basis for action, are key benefits at any stage in a programme of work - just as useful in getting the team together to create a plan for a programme of Workshops as in supporting the Workshops themselves.

Areas in which we have successfully applied Brain-Pool Workshops, often as part of a wider programme of support, include:

• Roadmapping, Horizon-Scanning, Foresight, Future Planning, and Visioning - focusing on trends, impacts, and strategies.

• Decision-Making - transforming the quality of strategic decision-making and buy-in to new approaches.

• Managing Projects - ensuring buy-in and effective learning at kick-start, interim review and closure alike.

• Innovation - going far beyond brainstorming to generate develop and assess creative ideas.

• Supply Chains - enabling collaboration within supply chains to raise standards, improve productivity and innovate.

• Corporate Networking - forging effective Networks among people from diverse functions, geographical locations and cultures.

• Stakeholders - capturing diverse contributions from up to 100+ people at a time; enabling real deliberation - people working to develop each other's ideas; impartial - through independent facilitation and analysis; transparent for participants - through our Verbatim Report; valuable for our sponsors - through our distilled Synthesis Report; equally effective with groups of experts or members of the public.

Case-studies of Brain-Pool Workshops

These case-studies provide real examples of applications for our approach to collaborative working:

• Developing Innovation Programmes: developing and validating Innovation Programmes to deliver a Vision for the Agri-Food sector in Northern Ireland to 2020. This assignment demonstrated the value of our partnership model of working with stakeholders.

• Creating Roadmaps: providing Brain-Pool Workshops to enable stakeholders in Knowledge Transfer Networks to share knowledge, build networks, develop Roadmaps and set priorities for future innovation through research; and developing internal company Roadmaps for 'lean manufacturing' production sites.
• Defining Research Priorities: working with 200 stakeholders from 125 organisations in six Brain-Pool Workshops to identify strategic research priorities for UK Farming and Food. We distilled 200 cogent research proposals from the 800 suggestions which we captured, to enable priority-setting by the Sustainable Farming and Food Research Priorities Group.
• Engaging the public in policy: engaging the public in the debate over priorities for farming, food and the countryside. This convincingly demonstrated the value of the Brain-Pool approach in engaging citizens in policy debates.
• Consulting industry stakeholders: enabling UK Trade & Investment to present proposals for strategic change to trade associations and to gain immediate feedback - and constructive ideas for tackling the concerns raised - all in only one morning.

What is the Workshop experience?

Brain-Pool Workshops are not loose brainstorms, but structured, creative, and focused on delivery. We mix presentations, discussion, individual work and group exercises. The distinctive element is the use of special laptops, linked by a wireless network, to input and read contributions. No special skills are required.

The value of Brain-Pool Workshops comes from focusing not just on the event but also on quality preparation, analysis and reporting. Well in advance of the Workshop, we take time with the sponsor to design the event to achieve its goals, ensuring that objectives are clear and attendees are well-selected and briefed. We often ask participants to undertake some work before the Workshop (e.g. to comment on drivers and outcomes).

A full service	Planning	Analysis	High-quality Materials

The Workshop starts by establishing the objectives, explaining key concepts, the agenda, and our special tools and processes. Everyone is provided with easy-to-use mini-laptops, linked by a wireless network, to collect views and opinions. We have used them with equal success with groups of technical experts and members of the public - including participants who have never used computers before.

Workshop participants can work individually, or in pairs or groups. The system allows easy syndication without the need for break-out rooms, thereby minimising disruption.  For example we can split a list of 40 research ideas into four sets and allocate each set to one table for discussion and then comment via the mini-laptops.  Then we can switch the allocation, so that each table considers another set of ideas.

Participants enter their own contributions (e.g. 'My research priorities'). Others then read and review these. Comments, builds or questions are used to refine contributions (e.g. from a list of 100 'one-liner' priorities, to develop 30 substantial proposals). Participants can respond through the laptops to points made by others - the interactive discussions can be very productive! All this is done anonymously.

Our analysts distill and comment on contributions, working alongside members of the sponsoring organisation and our subject-matter specialists.  They provide real-time feedback to participants and prompt the facilitators.

The refined inputs are then categorised and assessed. While a simple 'satisfaction' score is often enough, we also have sophisticated systems for assessing ideas (e.g. against multiple criteria such as 'distinctiveness', 'importance', 'sustainable benefits', and 'feasibility'). Assessments are conducted via the mini-laptops, and we present the outputs in graphical form. This provides immediate feedback, stimulates further discussion about promising ideas, and ensures everyone shares in shaping the outcome. All the initial contributions, refined proposals and comments are retained for subsequent reflection and analysis.

Special mini-laptops	Participating	Reviewing contributions	Sharing & discussing ideas

All Brain-Pool Workshops are supported by carefully selected, high-quality materials:

• Pre-Workshop briefings and exercises as necessary
• Presentations, Workbooks and templates for brain-storming and refining contributions on the day
• Our Verbatim report can be provided immediately - or a little later if a fully spell-checked, collated and indexed report is needed
• Our Synthesis report, which distills the findings intelligently, is normally available within 4-7 working days. This does not simply re-order the verbatim comments, but faithfully extracts and distills the essence from them, and adds further insights and independent recommendations.  It provides a sound basis for the sponsors to determine their 'next steps'.

Please contact us for brief videos on Brain-Pool Concepts and Brain-Pool in Action. Our leaflet gives further information on Brain-Pool.

What do participants like about Brain-Pool Workshops?

Typical comments recorded by participants when asked 'what did you like?' about our Workshops include: 

• ‘The use of the technology versus old flip-charts approach’
• ‘On-line commenting and communication - much more efficient than open dialogue’
• ‘Good progress on getting buy-in - technology cut out a lot of wasted time’
• ‘The technology definitely energised the opinion-gathering stages, speeded them up and ensured contributions from everyone. I particularly like the fact that you can see all other contributions live as they come in and also that you can add comments - even a chain of comments and responses.’
• ‘We captured all the responses and this data can be worked on and used to build up a good picture to use after the Workshop.
• ‘Technology gathers data very efficiently and actually offers opportunities for priority setting in groups and complex choice manipulation.’
• ‘A good way of getting a diverse range of opinions’
• ‘Encouraged individual contributions without individuals and their views dominating'
• ‘Allowed efficient use of time to capture all inputs and allow participants to bounce ideas’
• ‘The opportunity to contribute comments collectively, quickly, non-attributably’
• ‘The technology brought a new life to the workshop concept. Capturing people’s views anonymously undoubtedly releases creativity.’
• ‘It avoided everyone getting bogged down in a few small areas by allowing people to discuss and then all put in their own views’
  ‘Took me away from the trees to see the forest…great experience...will remember’
• ‘New experience in collaborative thinking and interchange, the technology innovation mirrors the overall innovation theme’
• ‘Clear and concise - with feedback available on the day - well done!’

Conventional Workshops

While Brain-Pool Workshops offer significant benefits over 'traditional' Workshops (especially through the use of special technology), our successful 'design, facilitate, analyse and report' model applies equally to conventional Workshops based around presentations, discussions, group working, and paper exercises. These are particularly effective with smaller groups. We have used such workshops recently with senior managers in determining 'next steps' for an ongoing programme for 'Mastering Risk', and with a Board of Directors in scoping the initial stages of a strategic change programme. Several of our larger programmes have mixed both formats.

Facilitation and chairmanship

Expert facilitation is a key component of all our Workshops - whether 'Brain-Pool' or 'conventional'. Our team also offers expert chairmanship skills, gathered from experience in business, stakeholder groups, statutory advisory committees, and professional forums. Our ability to take an independent, unbiased, objective approach to any area of subject-matter is especially valuable when organisations need to bring people together to deliberate in areas of uncertainty or dispute - where views are often both diverse and strongly-held. 

It has been calculated

that if the average

£30,000-a-year

manager spends one

hour a week in

meetings where they

don't pay attention,

the total cost to

British industry is

£7.8bn a year.

Source: Henley Management College 2004