The following post is meant to share the process of designing a workshop simulation and share the thinking processes behind it. Hopefully if you are tasked with producing a workshop or a learning activity this might offer some help.
The Brief
For an annual corporate conference different divisions were tasked with preparing presentations and workshops. The sessions were of a duration of one hour and for 40+ participants per session. My task was to prepare a workshop focusing on Safety & Risk Management for the entire Operational Division.
The Challenge
How do you design a workshop for participants, who have over 15+ years experience and as well provide a fresh take on the topic of safety?
Since the audience was a mix of senior management, heads of department and senior managers; all who have a vast experience in safety, a safety presentation would just be too boring. We were sure that we didn’t want a presentation and just treat it like a seminar, we wanted to raise the bar to do something different and unique. Also the fact that we only have one hour for the workshop put significant time constraints on what we could do.
Conceptualization: Step 1 – Brainstorming
With that abstract brief, I started brainstorming the different elements and challenges that the operational managers face on the line. What I ended up with, was the following final five elements.
- Operational time pressures
- Budgets
- Safety procedures & Regulations
- Information & Data
- Operational Objectives
These were the elements that as an operational manager you had to constantly juggle daily. So, I started working on linking all these elements together and try to design a workshop around it.
Conceptualization: Step 2 – Converging
Looking at each of these as 5 elements and trying to join them up together into one cohesive piece wasn’t easy. It took me a week just to come up with and fine tune the concept.
I focused on Operational Objectives as the first piece and tried to brain storm what could be a simple task that I could ask the participants to complete. Since the target audience was operational staff, I was thinking around what could be something that they could build. After a couple of ideas I settled on using lego pieces to build a structure as the task.
I used http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/efficientlego as a reference to look at some basic structures. At this time I hadn’t decided on the final structure but had a rough idea in mind.
Now that I knew what the task was going to be, the next piece to link was easy: Budgets. To build the structure I would ask the participants to buy pieces from a fixed pool of money. At this point I had decided on one structure and setting a points value based on the different colors used. So for example a structure built with red blocks, would have a higher point value than the same structure built with blue blocks. The problem with this was that, you would have no reason to build the structure with a lower value. This drove the decision to come up with 3 different structures using different pieces. You can see the final structures below.
Each structure would require an increased number of pieces with increasing complexity. The more complex the piece, the more points it had.
Now focusing on Information & Data, I came up with the idea that not only they had to build the products, but they also have to sell it to a country. Each country would require a certain type of structure (demand) in a specific color (commercial information). This information would not be readily available but would need to be bought using their Budget. To add another layer of complexity the commercial information would have two pieces of paper with conflicting commercial information – both were date stamped with the only latest date having the right information. This is what we call as TRAPS, within a workshop.
Traps are built into simulations as a wrong decision pathway thats used during the de-briefing of the activity.
The element of Safety procedures & Regulations was designed in two ways. The first was coming up with the concept that the pieces were corrosive and would require safety equipment to handle the pieces. Safety equipment which would need to be purchased using their Budget. This was another trap. This trap was linked with the regulation: for every violation there would be a regulatory fine, that would deduct from the revenue. If a threshold of multiple violations are reached than they could lose up to 100% of their revenue.
This was to bring to life the fact: that if you prioritize commercial pursuit with a total disregard of safety, you risk losing everything.
Finally the time pressure was added by giving participants only 30 minutes of the one hour to complete this task. Also during the workshop, as time winded down the time left would be emphasized numerous times to put additional pressure on participants to finish.
Conceptualization: Step 3 – Preparation
With the basic concept of the simulation designed, it was to piece all the pieces together. Purchase the required number of pieces, figure out the commercial values, figure out the total number of pieces that could potentially be built.
A briefing pack was designed with the objective, production guidelines & regulations/fines. This was given to each group during the initial brief.
3000 lego pieces were bought with 6 different colors to allow enough pieces for each session of 4 teams composed of 8-12 people per team. All the required pieces were color sorted.
Print outs of commercial information was prepared in enough packs to have for all 4 sessions for a total of 16 groups.
Below you can see some of the different components.
Muhudeen one of my team mates busy preparing the paper cash:
Another key aspect of the workshop was to have a team to help facilitate the workshops.
3 stations were setup with a team member assigned to one of the stations. The stations were:
- Production Supplies – To buy the required lego pieces
- Marketing Research – To buy commercial information related to a country
- Safety Equipment – To buy necessary equipment to safely handle the pieces
Each participant group were also assigned an observer to watch out for regulatory violations. They were also responsible for the final assessment and scoring at the end of the round.
Two rehearsals were organized with the team to practice, as well as try out the concept and see if it works. At the end of the final rehearsal an overall plan with roles was agreed upon. The rehearsal and trial of the concept was key in fine tuning the workshop mechanics.
The final setup of the workshop was following the: 10 – 20 – 30 principle.
- 10 minutes for setup and initial brief to participants
- 20 minutes for the debrief post activity
- 30 minutes for the actual activity
The Workshop: Conference Day
A summary of the brief given was:
You as a team, have been allocated $10k in cash. With this in hand you have to source and produce as many products you can. The materials for the product can be purchased from the materials station. Completed products have to be sold to a target country, the market research if required is available from the marketing station. Also please be aware of any safety equipment you may need during the production; safety equipment can be purchased from the safety station. At the end of the activity you will be scored, based on your successful production taking into account any fines due to any violations. A list of regulatory compliance rules can be found in your briefing pack.
The introduction brief was kept very simple. They were alerted to all the stations from which they can purchase information, materials or equipment. They were also introduced to each of their facilitators who could answer any further questions they have during the activity.
Below are a couple of shots of the sessions in progress.
One of the fears I had, was that I may have made it too complex for people or that people may not participate being in such big groups. To my relief the opposite came true! Everyone was participating and were up on their feet actively involved.
The Workshop: De-brief
Running the workshop is one part but the most important component is the final debrief. An excellent debrief allows participants to relate with what they have done to what they experience back in operations.
For the de-brief we focused on 3 points.
- Leadership & managing your team
- Managing your safety risks while balancing your operational needs
- Communication & collaboration
The teams did fall into the various traps that were setup and each of those were used as discussion points.
For example, some people used the wrong commercial information resulting in producing the wrong product. We used this to emphasize the importance of being up to date with procedures and always making sure you have the latest information/procedure to work with.
Another example was while on the table they used the gloves to handle the gloves while forgetting to use it when purchasing the materials. This was used to emphasize that we need to be safety conscious, not only during our operational times but be vigilant even when we are not within our domain of work. The facilitators at the material station also were not wearing safety equipment and this was highlighted and noticed by a few participants, which was perfect! This point, was used to highlight the fact, that we deal with a large number of third party suppliers and we need to up hold them to the same safety standards that we practice within our organization.
Finally, one point we emphasised is the aspect of information silos.
We asked “Why did you all need to purchase commercial information? Why wasn’t the information paid for once and shared between all teams instead of having all the teams purchasing the commercial information individually.”
This was used to emphasize the point about working efficiently and not becoming focused only within own departmental objectives. We are all part of a bigger organization and must work smarter and more efficiently maximizing sharing of information & resources.
Conclusion: Overall feedback
The feedback received was extremely positive. People were engaged, involved and it was a fresh take on safety that they had not experienced before. A positive experience is critical when ever you are trying to bring about change.
I would also like to thank all the volunteer facilitators who helped facilitate the workshop. It would have been extremely difficult to run the workshop without their help. Thanks Paul, Earl, Francis, Janine, David, Mihaela, Simon and Adrian.
Finally I would like to thank the big boss Paolo who had the courage and gave me the support with the creative freedom to try something unconventional.
“The views expressed on this post are my own and not those of Etihad.”