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For interviews, be clear on the purpose. create an interview guide that will help you conduct the interview but be flexible with it so you can get the most out of your convo. In the end, ask “is there anything that you like to discuss that we have not touched upon that you feel would be important for us to know?” Also check who else you can speak to for additional insights.
For workshops, you will need to do more work. Have a clear purpose, agenda, and prepare a deck that walks them through some content, exercises. Have breaks scheduled if needed. Have someone focus on capturing notes. If virtual, be mindful of how workshop can be as people start to tune out after couple of hours of heavy thinking.
Good luck
Spot on
Similarly to C1 I think about what does the end deliverable look like and mock it up. This ensures I’m gathering the correct data points. I also think about how I’m going to analyze the data so I collect it in the most efficient way (e.g do you need verbatim notes to count instances of themes or do you just need some loose examples). I send the interview questions ahead of time so the interviewees have time to come up with their answers. If it is a workshop I send a preread with summarized content so everyone has the same baseline information coming into the session. As for managing your Consultant during this time be very clear on their role. If they are going to serve as a note taker have them make a note taking template for you to pre approve (this should include prepopulated fields with the interviewees/attendees name, title, level etc) so that you can just confirm. I recommend looking at their notes after the first couple of sessions to make sure they are what you expect. If your interviews include a lot of people or are having multiple workshops every couple have a high level summary for the client as this ensures the client understands the level of data you are getting along the way and if they want more you can course correct.
One of my first projects as a new consultant to the firm was interviewing 100 people and surveying 100 to answer our clients question. It was me and a manager and I ran everything as the manager was only 50% on the project. I certainly had lessons learned but I came from industry and knew more on this topic and exercise than the manager. If the Consultant is new to the firm also make sure you understand their strengths and weaknesses before going into this. I was terrible at making slides I was very transparent with the manager so she spent her time giving me the slide template to use and I analyzed the data and could just populate the slides. We were extremely efficient. I worked every weekend to analyze the data but I didn’t care because I loved what I was doing and the process was efficient and effective. At no time did I feel I was spinning my wheels.
Rising Star
Personally I try to prepare a list of questions/topics but more importantly an idea of what information I need to come out knowing. The key in workshops in particular is knowing when a diversion from the agenda might provide ultimately useful info and when it’s derailing.
It’s also helpful to prepare (at least mentally) a sort of map of what you already know so that you have a reference point for what you’re hearing.
Apologies if this all may sound naive but I am fairly new to consulting as a manager and I have a very lean team to support me (1 consultant that is also new to the firm.)
Best thing you can do is anything to provide structure. Have an agenda, start with the goals for each day or session so people can stay aligned and if people go off topic you have something to anchor them back on when you need to pivot the conversation.
You want it to be collaborative - so you’ll need to keep in mind who are the chatty kathy’s, which folks are are more shy, just to make sure everyone is engaged. Also try to limit the folks that go on endless tangents…
If virtual try using mural! Awesome virtual collaboration tool
- As D1 said, Pre-Workshop Questionnaire is always helpful.
- Set up a concrete agenda for the workshop.
- Know the Success factors for the client from the project and talk around them as well.
- Discussion around Deliverables
- I like the session to be collaborative in order to gather all the requirements as well as share the strategy for a successful delivery.
- Be mindful of time and intermediate breaks
- I like to note down next action items or summarise every workshop in the outro and use that content to in a post-workshop email so that everyone is on the same page.
P.S. In our Professional Services team we have standard workshop processes which we all follow.