Overthinking the design can leave participants lost and results wasted.
The Trap of Complexity
The greatest danger in workshop design is the temptation to make things far too complicated. Design exists to make a session productive and outcome-focused, because a workshop that isn’t carefully designed is unlikely to achieve its goals. But when you over-engineer complexity, you can just as easily derail the entire session.
A Hard Lesson Learned
I learned this lesson the hard way early in my career.
I had designed a workshop full of intricate, hard-to-follow activities. Within minutes, it was obvious that participants were struggling. The executive co-leading with me saw it immediately and thankfully scrapped the whole plan on the spot. He created a simpler, more direct approach right in the moment so our clients still got value from the session.
I was mortified.
What That Failure Taught Me
That failure changed everything about how I work. I took away two key lessons: first, that every workshop needs to be properly designed and tested to avoid unnecessary confusion; second, that strong facilitation means being ready to adapt when things inevitably go off track. That moment was humbling but set me on the path to focusing deeply on workshop design as a craft.
Designing for Simplicity and Impact
A good workshop respects the value of its participants’ time. The design effort should go into optimizing that time, not layering in complexity. To design for simplicity and impact:
- Define clear outcomes. Work backwards from the results you need. Identify the right participants, structure, and activities that will help achieve them.
- Keep activities simple but strong. Design each activity to elicit exactly the information or insights needed to move the work forward, not to test anyone’s ability to decode complex instructions.
- Test the design. Do a structured walk-through or a live test run with trusted colleagues to ensure everything flows logically and predictably.
- Plan for failures. Pressure-test your design: Are the instructions clear? Could activities be misunderstood? Would success be obvious to everyone?
Try a Role-Play Test
Step 4 can actually be a useful exercise. Bring in a peer you trust and ask them to play the role of a well-meaning participant who completely misinterprets everything. How might they misunderstand your instructions or provide useless outputs? Testing these possible misfires ahead of time can save you serious frustration later. I wish I had done this before that failed session and spared myself the embarrassment.
Keep the Focus on Outcomes
By prioritizing clarity, testing rigorously, and keeping things simple during execution, you avoid the hidden risk of over-design. The goal isn’t to put on a complex performance; it’s to generate meaningful outcomes and make every minute in the room count.
