Workshop Planning
Purpose & Goals card, MethodKit for Workshop Planning
Card 22 of 60 · MethodKit for Workshop Planning
  • ThemePurpose & people
  • CardCard 22 of 60
  • Questions5 to explore
  • StepStart with why
Purpose & people

Purpose & Goals

Why are you having the workshop? Goals?

The purpose is the one sentence everything else in the workshop has to serve.

Purpose and goals are the spine of the whole design. Purpose is why the workshop exists at all: what change, decision, output or shared understanding you are trying to create. Goals are the specific things the group should leave with. Without a clear purpose, every other decision in the planning becomes harder, because you have no anchor to test choices against.

A well-written purpose statement is specific enough to use as a design tool. 'Align the team on the product roadmap for Q3' is a purpose you can build a programme around. 'Have a good team session' is not. The test is whether you could use the statement to decide what goes in and what stays out.

The purpose also belongs to the group, not just the organizer. Experienced facilitators check that participants understand why they are there and what they are expected to contribute. A group that does not know the purpose of their own session is hard to engage, because they cannot see what their effort is for.

Easy to missWrite the purpose in one sentence before you design anything else, and then check every activity and exercise against it: if you cannot explain how it serves the purpose, it probably does not need to be there.

How experienced facilitators handle it

The same building block, handled by people who have run a lot of workshops. Patterns and illustrations to react to, not rules to follow.

One sentence, no conjunctions

If the purpose needs 'and also' to fit, it is probably two different workshops. Experienced facilitators push until there is a single clear purpose they can return to whenever a decision feels hard.

Check with the organizer

The stated purpose and the real purpose are sometimes different things. They ask the organizer what would make this session a success, and what would make it a failure, to surface the actual goal underneath the formal one.

Share it with participants in advance

Sending participants the purpose before the day helps them arrive more prepared and reduces the time needed to orient the group at the start.

Distinguish purpose from agenda

The agenda is how you get there; the purpose is where you are going. Experienced facilitators keep these separate so they can change the route without losing sight of the destination.

Questions to plan around

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

  1. What change, decision or output is this workshop trying to create, and can you say it in one sentence?

  2. Who defined the purpose, and does it reflect what the participants actually need from the day?

  3. What are the two or three specific goals the group should leave with?

  4. How will you communicate the purpose to participants before and at the start of the workshop?

  5. If you had to cut two hours from the programme, what would you protect because it is essential to the purpose?

Watch for

  • A purpose that is too broad ('bring the team together', 'explore ideas') cannot anchor design decisions. Push for something specific enough to say no with.
  • The organizer's stated purpose and the participants' real need are often not the same thing. It is worth asking both before locking the design.
  • Purpose drift is common in long planning processes: the original reason for the workshop gets buried under logistics, and by the day itself no one can remember what it was for.