Run workshops, decided.
Also called: Evaluation workshop · Idea pressure-test · Stakeholder review session · Decision sprint
A short, structured session that pressure-tests the idea with the team and a few outsiders, and produces a real decision, not just discussion.
Get the right people in a room, run a tight agenda with structured exercises, and walk out with a decision. A workshop without a decision at the end is just an expensive meeting. Plan the questions, invite at least one outsider, and write down what you chose.
What running a workshop is
A workshop is a kitchen table, not a lecture theatre. Everyone brings something, the host keeps it moving, and the meal that comes out is a decision the whole table can eat. The point is not to talk about the idea. The point is to put it under pressure with the right people, run a few structured exercises, and come out the far side knowing more than you did going in.
The structured part matters. Left to itself, a room of clever people will circle the most interesting question and never land it. So you give the session a job, a clock, and an exercise for each block. A workshop that ends with “good chat, let’s pick this up next week” has failed, however lively it felt. You ran a session to decide something. Decide it.
The outsiders matter too. The team is too close to the idea to see its blind spots. In my experience one informed stranger, a real customer, a domain expert, someone with no stake in being polite, surfaces more in an afternoon than the team finds in a fortnight of internal debate.
Five rows, one page, and the last one carries the weight. A workshop earns its keep when the bottom row is filled in honestly before anyone leaves.
- No agenda, so the loudest topic wins the clock.
- Only the team in the room, all nodding along.
- Discussion, but nothing written down.
- Ends with “let’s revisit this soon”.
- A timed agenda with a job per block.
- At least one outsider with no stake in being polite.
- Structured exercises that force a view.
- Ends with a written decision and named owners.
The two sessions can look identical from the doorway. The difference shows up at the end, when one room has a decision on paper and the other has a vague promise to talk again.
How it fits the bigger picture
Run Workshops is activity 04.10.05 in the framework, the fifth of eight Evaluate-stage activities. It builds on the bias check before it, and feeds straight into product themes/types, where the decision you reached here gets turned into the shape of the product you will define.
What it can do
It pulls scattered judgement into one room and forces it to resolve. A good workshop turns “we should probably look at that” into a dated decision with an owner, and it surfaces the blind spot the team was too close to see. It also builds shared commitment, because people defend a decision they helped make.
What it can’t do
It can’t replace the evidence. A workshop sharpens judgement; it doesn’t generate the market data, the competitor scan, or the cost numbers that judgement should rest on. Bring those into the room. And it can’t fix a session with the wrong people in it, so spend more care on the invite list than on the slides.
See the full 10-stage process →
Try it yourself
Block two hours. Write the one decision the session must produce at the top of the page, then build the agenda backwards from it. Invite the team plus at least one outsider, and give every block a job and a clock. Run exercises that force a view, not a chat: silent brainstorms, dot-votes, a “would you buy it?” round. In the last block, write the decision down, name the owners, and log the one risk you could not settle.
Want a structured first pass before you gather everyone? Start the Free Sprint → and the GPT will help you frame the questions worth putting to the room.
Your workshop checklist
Project notes: the afternoon that nearly drifted
▸ From the notebook · optional reading
Project notes: the afternoon that nearly drifted
Two hours in Stockport with the founders, an engineer and a Sourdough School baker. The baker said one thing that changed the whole risk list.
3 min read · click to open
We ran the evaluation workshop at the Hartleys’ kitchen table in Stockport. Five of us: Dan and Anna, a contracting engineer I brought in for the feasibility view, and a baker from the Sourdough School as the outside customer. I hosted, and I kept the clock visibly on the table, because the first twenty minutes wanted to drift into a happy conversation about loaf crusts.
The exercise that earned its place
The block that mattered was a silent sticky-note brainstorm: ten minutes, everyone writing down what could kill the product, no talking. Silent first matters, because the moment Dan speaks first the room tends to agree with the founder. We got more honest risks on the wall in ten quiet minutes than the previous month of cheerful chats had produced.
Then we dot-voted. The top risk was not the one the founders expected. They had been worrying about the heater electronics. The room voted the £149 price as the real risk, because nobody outside the team had ever been asked to pay it.
The line that changed the list
The Sourdough School baker said the thing that reframed the afternoon: “I’d pay £149 for one that just works and never asks me to open an app. I would not pay £80 for one I have to babysit.” That single sentence moved “is £149 too expensive?” off the risk list and put “can we actually hold the temperature without an app?” at the top of it. The engineering, not the price, was the bet.
The decision out
In the last block I made everyone stop talking and write. The call was a clear go: take the £149 no-app box into the Define stage. I asked the engineer to own the one risk we could not settle in the room, whether UKCA and BS EN 61010 compliance testing fitted the budget, and to come back inside two weeks with a number.
The whole thing took two hours and one packet of sticky notes. The trap I had to watch the entire time was the pull toward a pleasant chat that decided nothing. Naming the decision out loud at the start, and the clock on the table, were what kept it honest.
— Evaluate stage, project notes, 2026
— Next in Evaluate → Product themes/types