How to get discovery workshops right
Every audit we run turns up some version of this. The short answer to discovery workshops is that it is mostly a sequence of small decisions, not one big one.
Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.
Why this earns attention
A few focused hours prevents months of wrong direction. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. The failure mode is not doing it wrong, it is doing it once and assuming it stays done.
The steps
- Establish what you have today before changing anything
- Get the decision-makers in the room, not just their proxies
- End with written decisions, not a mood board
- Write down the decision so the next person does not re-litigate it
End with written decisions, not a mood board. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.
What to do next
How to tell if yours is fine
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
- End with written decisions, not a mood board — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
If you are not sure where your systems currently stand on this, it takes us about an hour to find out.