Getting started with discovery workshops
This is one of those topics that looks small until it costs you something. A short on-ramp to discovery workshops for teams who have not touched it before.
Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.
Why it matters
A few focused hours prevents months of wrong direction. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.
Your first week
- Find out what is already in place
- Get the decision-makers in the room, not just their proxies
- Change one thing and measure it
End with written decisions, not a mood board. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. The practical test is whether someone new to the project could tell, in a minute, that it had been handled.
What this looks like day to day
Clear scope protects the client at least as much as it protects the agency. Three things worth confirming about discovery workshops before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Get the decision-makers in the room, not just their proxies — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.