Build focus by defining your workshop’s foundation

When planning a workshop, it’s tempting to jump straight into activities like brainstorming, mapping, or voting. But an often-missed step is defining the workshop type. It’s what turns a good idea for a session into a focused, productive experience.

How the Workshop Type Shapes Everything

Provides a Framework

The workshop type provides the framework for the session before you even think about activities. Types describe the nature of the work being done and the kind of outcome you’re aiming for. Common examples include Discovery, Idea Generating, Sorting, Mapping, Scanning, Designing, Blueprinting, Planning, Validating, Reflecting, Prioritizing, and Critiquing sessions, among others.

Each type represents a different mode of collaboration. Choosing one helps set boundaries and expectations, directing the group’s energy toward a shared outcome.

Supports the Goal

Every workshop must begin with a clear goal, the North Star that guides all design decisions. Without that clarity, you can’t know whether the session is successful or when it should end. The workshop type anchors that goal and brings the group’s purpose into focus from the start.

Informs the Design

Once you’ve identified the type, the design choices start to fall into place. The nature of an activity can vary widely depending on the workshop type. For example, a card sort used in a Reflecting session serves different purposes than one used in Prioritizing, with vastly different prompts and flow. The workshop type and goal become the guidelines against which structure, sequence, and facilitation questions align—ensuring the session achieves what it is meant to.

Type and Activity: The Why and the How

Selecting the workshop type isn’t the same as selecting activities. The type defines why the session exists and the kind of value it should produce. The activities are what and how you use to generate that value.

Think of it like building a house. Choosing the workshop type is deciding what kind of structure you’re building: a bungalow, a duplex, or a skyscraper. Choosing activities is selecting the right tools: a hammer, a saw, a level. You wouldn’t use a hammer (like a brainstorm) to build the roof (like a mapping session) if your goal was only to design the foundation (Discovery).

When your type is clear, your activity choices become obvious and purposeful. The overall goal must dictate the tools, not the other way around.

Bringing It All Together

Workshop design is both art and engineering. It begins not with selecting the perfect activity but with clarifying the underlying purpose. Once you name the type, whatever it may be, you create a framework that gives every design choice meaning.

That’s the quiet magic of workshop alchemy: clarity first, creativity follows.

Next time you plan a session, ask yourself: Have I clearly named the workshop type to guide my choices?