Gamify everything - life's too short
Updated: 7 hours ago
If I have a mantra, it's "everything should be an experience". And if there's an example of a very dull experience, it's meetings. No one will die saying "I wish I'd had more meetings".
But they are necessary. So how do you make them more enjoyable?
Gamify them. Turn them into a workshop.
You can gamify anything.
Ever asked your team in a retro who they'd like to celebrate this sprint and why, only to get nothing but crickets? People don't want to speak up, or they feel forced to think of something. So I created a spinning wheel with specific traits on it. Spin it, stop it, and ask who in the team has shown that trait. Not only do people respond, several people respond - and they often agree on the same person.
A good workshop means everyone leaves feeling they contributed. And they enjoyed it. But it is a skill. A whiteboard and some post-its does not a workshop make.
So what's the difference?
A meeting has an agenda, a discussion, maybe a presentation and someone taking notes. It can feel very one way. A workshop has a flow. It's sequenced, interactive, facilitated and visual.
Workshops work best when you need to:
Collaborate across people and departments
Get buy-in
Re-energise a team or a project
Educate
Understand needs or gather requirements
Plan
Decide
Come up with ideas and solve problems
There are different types of workshop, and each one is designed to gather different information and drive to a different outcome. I love a canvas. I also often use the sailboat, which has helped me in lots of different situations. It's great for working out product direction, but I've also used it when a team is feeling burnt out or demoralised. Often you can't change certain things - that difficult stakeholder isn't going to suddenly become a pussycat. But once you've worked out what holds you back and what makes the team go faster, you can work out how to get around the problems.
One core technique is simple: work alone, then come together. Everyone writes their own ideas first, one per post-it, before anyone talks. The loudest person in the room doesn't get to set the direction. The quiet ones get heard.
Bonus - remote sessions can work better than you'd think. Everyone generates ideas alone and drops their top five in the chat. Then you run them all through ChatGPT and ask for the themes and the ideas that came up most often. Ten minutes, not an hour of affinity sorting.
Once you've learnt some techniques and frameworks, your next skill is facilitating. Also not easy. It's actually the key to a successful day, and it's exhausting (but fun). You have to energise the post-lunch slump, keep things on time, make sure the quiet ones are heard and stop the HiPPO (the highest paid person's opinion) taking over. Your role is to get everyone aligned on where you are, gather current thinking, generate ideas, solutions and priorities, and then - crucially - decide.
Tip
For every point you were going to present, ask yourself: can I turn this into an activity? Even something small. The moment people pick up a sharpie, they stop being an audience.
Starter for 10 - some useful links
SessionLab - workshop templates
AJ&Smart - Workshopper
Strategyzer - for canvases
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