Whether it’s developing new product or refining internal processes, chances are as a product manager you’ve had to facilitate an ideation workshop at some point. If you’ve not yet, you certainly will at some point.

There are tons of ways of running an ideation workshop, but there’s also a plethora of mistakes people make that stop them achieving the goals of the workshop. Here are the most common of those problems, along with tips on how to overcome them.

Problem 1: Jumping straight into ideation

It’s really difficult to be creative off the bat. Ask someone to come up with a new business idea and generally speaking, you’ll be met with a blank face and an ‘err…’

One of the common mistakes people make when facilitating ideation workshops is to just tell people to come up with ideas. There are rarely more than a few suggestions and you might miss out on some great ideas.

Tip - Warm people up with context

There are various opinions on where great ideas come from but generally speaking, it’s about synthesis and making new connections. Load people up with ideas for inspiration and give them easy ways to combine those ideas.

You could spend some time before the ideation session exploring other related solutions to the challenges you are addressing and have people note down the most relevant information then use it as inspiration later. Or you could map out what you know about the problem so far and have that available to people when they are ideating.

Problem 2: Sticky note chaos

So you’ve asked for people to note their ideas on sticky notes. Then it’s time to share the results. Some of the notes have tiny writing that’s too small to read, others have one idea per note, another is an essay written across 30 notes.

This makes the information hard to return to later and difficult to understand. And you can avoid this with this simple tip.

Tip - Be clear on how to use sticky notes

There are a few opinions on this but most people agree on the following tips:

• one idea per note
• big enough to read
• use a black (or dark) felt-tipped pen (sharpie or similar)
• base the note size on the amount of information you want captured
• if you are going to use colours for themes, explain them and make them logical (eg. green for positives and red for negatives)

Problem 3: Setting quality expectations too high

People are often reluctant to share ideas because they don’t want to feel stupid in front of their peers - especially if you’re asking for contributions in an unusual format like drawings. It’s important to give people an example of what you want, but if you share a fantastic idea drawn up like a professional cartoon, they’ll feel like whatever they do is inferior.

Tip - Give lo-fi examples

Give an example of a bad idea, but one that meets the brief, drawn in just enough fidelity for people to understand what it is.

Your example should be clear enough that people understand how to complete the activity but don’t feel inferior or self-conscious.

If you do have an amazing idea you want to share - save that for later when everyone else shares their ideas.

Problem 4: Not asking for enough ideas

Most approaches to ideation workshops involve coming up with a ton of ideas then filtering them down to the best ones. So it’s important to come up with with enough ideas that your filtering is worthwhile.

Generally speaking, if you ask people to come up with an idea, they might or might not come up with one. If you ask for 3, you’ll get 1. If you ask for 5, you’ll get 2, and so on.

Tip - Set a specific number, add time pressure and guide thinking

Here are some common formats to encourage people to come up with plenty of ideas.

• Crazy 8s. Work individually to come up with one idea per minute for 8 minutes. Draw each idea in a box on the page. BONUS TIP: Prepare canvasses with 8 boxes on them to make it easier to dun the activity.
• Race. Working in groups, set people either a number to reach (eg. first group to come up with 20 ideas wins) or a time (eg. the group that comes up with the most ideas in 20 mins wins). TIP: Give a fun little prize to the winners to make the experience more memorable.

Problem 5: Activity chaos

At some point, we’ve all been in a workshop where groups have misunderstood the task and gone AWOL. It’s usually down to lack of clarity from the facilitator.

Luckily, it’s pretty easy to avoid this by following an order of instructions that’s been tried and tested by teachers and facilitators for years.

Tip 1 - Follow this order of instructions

Setting up the activity using this order will make sure people aren’t distracted when you’re trying to explain what to do, and will give them the best chance of doing things right.

1. Tell people what you’re aiming to achieve. “We’re going to come up with a ton of ideas that we can filter later”
2. Get them set up in the right place. *“You’ll be working in groups of 5” checks people are sitting in the right places
3. Tell them what they are expected to do. “Your task is to come up more than 10 ideas in 10 minutes. Draw each one on a sticky note. The group that comes up with the most ideas wins a prize”.
4. Give an example. *“Here’s my example. As you can see, I’m no artist” *Holds up example
5. Give them the materials. “Here are your sticky notes and pens”
6. Remind them how long they have. “You have 10 minutes”
7. Get them started. “Go!”

Tip 2 - Put instructions inline with materials

If you’re using canvasses or templates to guide people’s thinking, annotate them with instructions. It’s much easier to remember what order to do things in, and what goes where when it is labelled.

Problem 6: Write-up nightmare

If you’ve followed the instructions so far, you should be on your way to a successful workshop. But there are still some things that could trip you up. For example, if you lose the paper with the ideas written on it, or if your photos of the canvasses you worked on are too difficult to read.

Make sure you follow these tips to make your life easy when it comes to writing up the session.

Tip 1 (For everything)

• Ask about anything you don’t understand or can’t read and capture the explanation alongside it.
• Triple-check you have captured everything and keep the original paper copies until you have done the write up
• Do it straight away! Don’t procrastinate. The longer you leave it, the harder it will be.

Tip 2 (For canvasses)

• Design it so it’s self-explanatory. The canvas should contain all the information needed for someone who wasn’t in the session to understand it.
• Scan them with a proper scanning app. Adobe scan is great and the free tier is enough for most people. Apple notes, One note and Evernote also have scan functions on mobile.

Tip 3 (For sticky notes)

• Take one photo that covers all the notes (so you can remember where things were) - from directly in front
• Zoom in to check you can read the notes
• Take more photos so you can stitch them together later if one photo is note clear enough
• If you have an auto-scan app - use that to digitise the individual notes
• Keep the paper notes notes if you plan to write them up. Blasting through a pile of them and throwing them away when done is easier than looking at the photo of them and trying to remember which you’ve done and which you haven’t.

In summary…

These 5 problems with ideation workshops are simple to overcome if you remember the tips. They don’t involve much extra work and will make your workshops more productive and your life easier in the long run.

If you want more help designing and running your own ideation workshop. Please contact us for a chat.

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