Organizations create the illusion that they can be manageable. This article expands on that notion to argue why teamwork is critical for business success and why meetings are different from workshops. You can be better at running meetings or commissioning workshops. I will share one practical advice on improving your next meeting's agenda and one recommendation for your next workshop.

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White paper
Meetings vs. Workshops
Source: Open Space meeting at NASA ​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Space_Technology
Organizations create the illusion that they can be manageable. This article expands on that notion to
argue why teamwork is critical for business success and why meetings are different from workshops.
You can be better at running meetings or commissioning workshops. I will share one practical advice
on improving your next meeting's agenda and one recommendation for your next workshop.
March, 2016
Paul Nunesdea
CEO ­ groupVision | Optimizing group collaboration

2.
About the author
Paulo Nunes de Abreu, also known as ​Paul Nunesdea​, is versed in generating consensus and in knowledge
transfer technologies, Paul is actively involved in innovating group collaboration and peer learning in a variety of
industries and the public sector. Education and Healthcare are major areas of expertise, working with regional
governments and municipalities, consultancy firms, and international agencies.
Specialties: group decision support systems (GDSS), thought leadership and social lobbying, group facilitation,
inter­organizational strategy development and collaborative selling.
Preferred approaches to drive change: Soft Systems Methodology (Soft OR), Open Space Technology.
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3. Unmanageable corporation
Sir Richard Branson in an interview once said that companies cease to be
manageable with more than 100 employees. Nevertheless, I have seen the failure
or success of one­person firms depending much more on the external
circumstances rather than on the will or the skills of their respective owners. If
this is true for the smallest, what happens in larger companies?
Managing a large organization is like managing a country. By definition, a
government is composed of a varied number of organizations that supposedly
respond to a President or Prime Minister and obey her direct orders, right?
Nothing is furthest from the true as we all know.
The overall performance of any business or not­for­profit organization depends
as much on external factors as on management talent. Jim Collins and a number
of fellow researchers published in ​Good to Great​ a seminal study about a
number of 'great companies' that outperformed their competitors with a strong
and sustainable stock value. But just 10 years later, the economist ​Steven Levit
observed that those companies were not so great anymore and one of them
actually closed down. Even the most extraordinary well­managed companies
cannot resist my '50% chance of survival' law.
Would this mean that the best and largest companies today are going to collapse
one day? The Roman empire survived for more than 1.400 years but it eventually
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4. was dismantled and disappeared. Back in 476 AD, the pace of technological
innovation was very slow. Today, in the dawn of the XXI century's digital
revolution, external circumstances are much more volatile and unpredictable.
The old saying 'whatever goes up must always go down', will eventually apply to
the stock value of today's high­performing companies.
But there must be a secret for high­performing companies successfully enduring
external circumstances. I am not talking about the businesses booming in the
video game industry or entertainment such as Netflix, Activision or Nvidia,
where profits abound by default. I am talking about companies that started 10,
20 or more years ago, such as Microsoft, Apple, Google or Intel. Or companies
that reinvented their service offers such as Vodafone or Virgin. What makes such
giants remain kick­ass performers given their size and their de facto
unmanageability?
Teams are all that matters
The majority of successful enterprises in the world thrive on successful group
collaboration. This is most critical when an organization is a growing start­up.
Imagine when Exxon, the Volkswagen group or Boeing were start­ups? Without
a successful team of intrepid visionaries as founders, these companies would
never have become what they are today. For stable businesses like Oil&Gas or
industrial manufacturing, their growth requires brick after brick another piece
on the wall of what becomes a large bureaucratic organization. Start­up spirit is
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5. lost and the main drive of the organization becomes what has driven the growth
of the Roman empire ­ to conquer and to replicate the standard practice.
Start­ups that learn to survive in more unpredictable environments get a
different kind of organizational DNA. They tend to rely much more on the
delivery of teams rather than that of single individuals' cooperative work. These
are the kind of organizations where people huddle in meeting rooms that
normally have the supporting technology they need for group creativity and
problem­solving.
Source: MSpace ​http://www.yourmspace.com/
Visitors of the most fashionable companies today such as Google, Facebook or
Apple are impressed by the informal nature of such huddle rooms with seamless
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6. visual collaboration technology such as video conference and digital interactive
surfaces everywhere.
Meetings and workshops
Teamwork management is a completely different ball game than
individual­work­that­needs­to­be­coordinated. Smart companies have learned
to understand the difference and thrive on the former.
Individual workers that need to accomplish a collective purpose, such as
attaining an aggregate sales objective or holding a certain level of budget
expenditure, are often convened in meetings. Whereas the members of a team
that is working to deliver a certain group output, such as a new product or
solving a complex problem, they normally require a workshop.
What is the difference between a meeting and a workshop?
Essentially, the quality of the group output. Coordination meetings have a loose
set of objectives and pack a number of agenda items within a certain amount of
time. Typically people attend such meetings to watch presentations that inform
about someone else's progress. If time is well managed, the meeting host collects
sufficient information to make more informed decisions about the control
actions each person is expected to take. However, the problems associated with
business meetings are so well ​documented ​that it is worthless mentioning them
here.
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7. Workshops try to overcome all of the 'coordination meeting' well­documented
problems. Whereas a meeting is chaired by the team leader or a designated
member of the team, the workshop leader is a neutral figure that is not actually
part of the team. In a workshop, the meeting event (or events) are carefully
engineered by someone that is trained as a group facilitator or, at least, has some
trainer's experience.
Agile is lean
The software makers learned well the difference between meetings and
workshops. The Agile movement is a response to the failure of the dominant
software development project management paradigms (including waterfall) and
borrows many principles from lean manufacturing. Scrum is a programming
method in many ways similar to a workshop. It has an underlying set of
principles from the Agile manifesto, derived from the concept of
self­organization​, and defines a simple set of roles, responsibilities and meetings
which are facilitated by a ​ScrumMaster​ that keeps the team focused on its goal.
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8.
To govern vs to facilitate
"Conventional wisdom suggests that effectiveness comes from a strong leader, a
clear mission, and technically competent subordinates. Yet more is involved if a
team is to realize synergy. The key issue is how the parts act together ­
participation." ​(Blak, Mouton and Allen, 1987 cited in Williams R.B, (2007) ­
More than 50 ways to build team consensus).
By default, the design of a workshop specifies the number of steps that the group
must undertake to accomplish a certain outcome from A to B. Such outcomes
can be both tangible and concrete as well as experiential. Whereas in
'coordination meetings' such kind of group transformation is rarely produced.
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9. I promised to offer one practical piece of advice to improve you next meeting
agenda. From the many resources available I selected the `time flow picture'
from the book ​More than 50 ways to build team consensus.
The ​time flow diagram​ is an alternative way to post your meeting agenda.
Some people feel time as being more important than money. Representing your
agenda in a time flow communicates that agenda goals are within reach during
the time that is planned for the meeting.
When do you know when to stop trying to govern and simply to facilitate
teamwork that creates synergy in your organization?
This is probably the one million dollar question for reaching higher levels of
performance in the organization. The synergy notion that was quoted above is
not a chimera, it can be reached with well­designed workshops. Agile methods
such as Scrum, that are based on the notion of self­organization are proven
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10. widely effective. Seminal work of Harison Owen with ​Open Space Technology​ in
business organizations is also a demonstration that leap frog results are possible.
Yet my promised advice is to start with baby steps, you crawl before you walk.
The ToP (​Technology of Participation​) is probably the best firs step if your
organization is not yet mature in terms of a culture of employee engagement and
participation. ToP offers a simple and robust method that anyone who has a
strong background in change management and training can grasp by reading
Laura Spencer's book ​Wining Through Participation.
My recommendation for your next workshop is to hire a facilitator (the ​IAF​ has a
database of certified professionals) that can run a ToP workshop designed
according to your objectives. How to have a more collaborative culture in our
organization? How to have more effective virtual meetings? How to implement
an extranet that engages your customers and connects them to your company
brand? These are some examples of workshop topics you can commission.
If you are already a trained facilitator you can use ​MeetingSphere​ a software
designed for running ToP and other types of workshops at a distance. We will be
hosting a session during next ​IAF Congress​ in Oceania explaining how
MeetingSphere can be used in ​virtual workshops​.
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11. About us
groupVision is a pioneer in group
decision support software and
consulting services that uses
collective intelligence and peer
learning to solve key business
challenges, with a groupware­led
approach. From strategic planning
and customer engagement to
behavioural change, we help
organisations worldwide unleash
their hidden collaboration potential
and to achieve tangible results.
Our value proposition
­ groupVision combines a pool of
highly specialized consultants and
experts in MeetingSphere™ that
work as a global team to address the
group collaboration challenges of
large multinational firms.
­ groupVision works in close collaboration with MeetingSphere Inc. being their specialized partner
company for the design and implementation of collaborative working environments.
­ groupVision also partners with a number of specialized technology makers to deliver a consistent
collaborative working experience in any type of organizational context with unique features and
performance.
­ Finally, groupVision delivers successful end user adoption by means of participatory methodologies in
the design of our MeetingSphere­based solutions which always include personalized training to ensure
successful end­user adoption.
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