ThemePurpose & people
CardCard 38 of 60
Questions5 to explore
StepStart with why

Success

What are the criteria for success?

If you do not know what success looks like before the day, you will not recognize it when it happens.

Success criteria are what you and the organizer agree would make this workshop worth the time it cost. They are not the agenda or the activities; they are the outcomes those activities are supposed to produce. A session might succeed because the group made a decision, or because a team that had been stuck got unstuck, or because twenty people left with the same understanding they did not share when they arrived. The form of success depends entirely on the purpose.

Criteria that are specific are useful before the workshop as well as after. If you know you are trying to leave the day with a prioritized list of three options, you can design backward from that output. If you know success means a group that feels heard and aligned rather than a deliverable, that shapes the design differently. Vague criteria ('a productive session') cannot guide design decisions.

It is also worth having the success conversation with the organizer and with participants separately, because they sometimes mean different things. The organizer may count the day a success if a decision was reached; participants may count it a success if they were genuinely listened to. Both matter, and knowing both in advance prevents the day from serving one at the expense of the other.

Easy to missBefore the workshop, write down the two or three specific things you would look for to know the session worked, and check after the day whether they actually happened.

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.

Define it before, check it after

Experienced facilitators write down success criteria before the design is locked, use them as a design tool, and then use the same criteria for their own reflection after the workshop.

Ask the organizer to be specific

When an organizer says 'a great team session', they ask what specifically would make it great. What would they see? What would they hear? What would participants say? Specificity makes it plannable.

Ask participants too

They often check in with participants on what success means to them, either before the day or in the opening. When participants' criteria differ from the organizer's, that is useful to know early.

Build in a way to assess it

Success cannot be evaluated without a moment to do so. They design a close that includes reflection or feedback, so there is actual evidence about whether the criteria were met, not just a gut feeling.

Questions to plan around

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

What specifically would make this workshop a success: a decision reached, a shared understanding, a deliverable produced, something else?
Do the organizer and the participants agree on what success looks like, or are they measuring different things?
How will you know during the workshop whether you are on track toward the success criteria?
Is there a close or reflection built in that will let you assess whether it worked?
What would you do differently if you realized halfway through the day that the original success criteria were not going to be met?

Watch for

Success criteria set after the fact tend to move to match whatever happened. Setting them before the workshop gives you something honest to measure against.
The organizer's success criteria and the participants' success criteria are often not identical. Designing only for one group's definition risks failing the other.
A workshop can feel successful in the room and still not deliver what it needed to. Energy and engagement are not the same as outcomes.