One of my most popular posts covered my top 20 workshop facilitation tips and secrets. I have Tip #21 and thought you might find it of interest.

During strategy and planning workshops it is quite common to organise breakout groups and assign them a specific problem or opportunity to explore. The convention is to ask a nominated group spokesperson to write up key points on butchers paper and report back to the wider group.

If you forget to pick up the meat on the way to the workshop, Google Docs provides a great alternative, and it works like this…

Level 1

Create a Google doc or slide and send the link to the group’s nominated (tablet or laptop with wifi) scribe. As the discussion progresses the notes are automatically saved and displayed on the facilitator’s computer. As a facilitator you can keep track of each group’s progress and focus your attention on those groups that are struggling or off-topic. When it comes time to report back, the only thing needed is to project the document. It’s really easy to add additional comments and suggestions from the wider group to the live document. At the end, all the discussion is documented and there’s no need for post-workshop write-up. And no butcher’s paper.

Level 2

An extension of this technique is to give two or three breakout groups the same topic with the same link. In this instance they’re all working independently but collaboratively on the same thing. With the ground rule of no deletions of others’ content, competitive instincts over take over and the outcome is a snowball of good ideas that become great ideas.

One could do this exercise with a very large group as well. Say you have 120 participants in 15 tables of 8 people. One could allocate three topics to clusters of 5 tables. The report back would just involve three relatively short presentations on the collaborative documents.

Level 3

In some instances it is logistically too expensive to get all the key people you need in the same room at the same time. One can run a similar Google doc workshop with teams in multiple locations and linked via video. It requires a bit of set-up and you need a skilled facilitator, but in my experience, the benefits far outweigh the costs of the alternatives.

In conclusion

Google docs is virtually free and offers a myriad of ways to transform strategy and planning workshops. Start experimenting today and let me know how you go.