Workshop in a Box
Preparation Guide
Guidance for preparing a
Workshop in a Box
Contents
Contents 2
Preparation Guide 3
1. Introduction 3
2. Preparation Support 4
3. The Break-Even Goal Prioritization Exercise 6
4. Workshop Walk Through 13
5. Draft Agendas 18
6. Workshop Logistics 20
7. Roles & Responsibilities 22
8. Using the Workshop Materials 23
9. Sample Emails 25
Preparation Guide
1. Introduction
The following provides a detailed guide to help you effectively plan and run a Break-Even Goal Prioritization Workshop, based on the Future-Fit Business Benchmark (FFBB).
This guide is intended for both business leaders inside companies and consultants wishing to facilitate workshops for and on behalf of companies.
A thorough review of this document will help ensure this is the right workshop to host inside your company (or facilitate on behalf of your clients) and that you fully understand the Benchmark, your stakeholders, and your desired outcome for the workshop.
This will culminate in a thoughtfully organized workshop, with the right stakeholders, who are well prepared to actively participate.
This document is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. You are free to share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) or adapt (remix, transform, and build upon) the material with
appropriate attribution. You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests that Future-Fit endorses you or your use of our work product, unless otherwise stated through partner agreements.
2. Preparation Support
Reaching future-fitness will require different skill sets and specialties across business functions, which means that while the destination is the same for everyone, the journey will be different. This is true not only for companies across sectors, but the journey to future-fitness internally can and likely will look different between departments. Keeping this in mind is fundamental as you decide what you hope to achieve through running a Break-Even Goal prioritization workshop, what success looks like, who to invite, and further considerations to take into account as you plan your event.
What do you hope to achieve?
Running the workshop with high level stakeholders might help to identify where the key priorities exist as a business, whereas inviting a product-focused development team will likely help to identify niche issues throughout the product creation process. Both of these outcomes will enable the business to move towards future-fitness, however you need to determine the approach that will best help you to achieve the outcomes you desire.
Consider the following questions as you set out designing the workshop:
• Is it your intention to create a shared awareness of challenges across the business (e.g.
do you want various parts of the business to recognize challenges they may not be aware of)?
• Do you want to pursue a deep-dive, focusing on a particular product / service offering / business division, to help define priorities for a specific group of stakeholders?
• Do you want to generate a deeper understanding of systemic issues across your sustainability team (e.g. your issue experts are currently siloed and focus only on their specific areas)?
• Do you know whether a particular goal is going to be fundamentally problematic and you think this might be a good way to brainstorm approaches, bringing together different stakeholders from across the business?
What does success look like?
All participants attending the workshop will bring their own sets of concerns, operational targets and biases and it is going to be important that they are empowered to set those aside, in order to think about challenges at a more systemic level. Thus, success depends not only on who you invite, but also in managing people’s expectations, including:
• Being clear regarding what needs to be completed in advance of attending the workshop.
• Clarifying why people are there (this could take the form of one-to-one conversations with each participant, to discuss their role).
• Ensuring participants understand this is a conversation about identifying opportunities to set a possible future strategic direction – this isn’t about announcing new targets tomorrow.
• Not trying to do “too much” during the session (e.g. don’t cover all 23 goals if you can only host a 3-hour workshop).
• Ensuring participants feel listened to.
• When introducing the session be clear around what might be expected of participants after the session has finished.
Who to invite?
Spending time considering who will participate is important, as the roles and priorities of participants will have an impact on both the conversations and the results of exercises. For example, if you bring together a communications executive and a product designer, they are going to have very different perspectives, regarding the priorities of the business. It will pay dividends to think carefully whether the group is the right group to take through this workshop and identify your expected outcomes in advance. Questions you should consider include:
• Are these participants from multiple business functions / different product lines?
• Is this session going to be built around a particular business division?
• Is the workshop focused on a single product?
• Are “Group” representatives going to be present?
• What can I expect each participant to contribute to the conversation?
• Will hosting this workshop with the sustainability team first provide a clearer understanding of how it will work across other business divisions?
Further considerations
Before spending time creating the materials and presenting the workshop, you should also take the below planning considerations into account:
1. Should you host a full day or half-day workshop?
Future-Fit Foundation recommends hosting a full day workshop, however we have provided suggested agendas covering both full day and half-day workshops. While the half-day workshop will help participants understand issue urgency, the full day workshop allows for a deeper, more immersive experience.
2. Will participants have time to complete any work in advance?
Future-Fit recommends that all participants review the online Crash Course in advance of participating in a workshop. This will ensure that the group is starting from the same knowledge base and that questions regarding the methodology or specific goals will be kept to a minimum.
3. Will the exercise cover all 23 Break-Even Goals?
When planning the workshop, you should decide whether you would like to cover all 23 Break-Even Goals or to filter the goals by asking workshop participants to vote on which goals they think are the most pressing. This decision will depend on the who you invite to the workshop, the amount of time you have to complete the exercise as a group and your ultimate definition of a successful workshop.
4. Will participants be expected to do any follow-on work after the workshop?
This is for you to decide as you’re planning the workshop, however if there will be follow- on work, participants need to be made aware in advance of attending the workshop. This is an important aspect of managing participants’ expectations and demonstrating that you understand your participants are likely to face competing priorities.
5. Will you have time to review the Future-Fit Business Benchmark in depth?
As you will be leading the group exercises, we recommend you spend time familiarising yourself with the Methodology Guide and Break-Even Goals, to ensure you’re adequately prepared to answer questions. This can be done either by reading the full documents or by interacting with our goal explorer web page. Without the necessary preparation, you risk misinterpreting the goals and potentially confusing workshop participants.
3. The Break-Even Goal Prioritization Exercise
The workshop will always revolve around the Break-Even Prioritization Exercise, no matter how the workshop facilitator decides to build the Agenda. This section outlines how to explain the exercise to workshop participants. The next section gives a full workshop walkthrough, which includes the Break-Even Prioritization Exercise.
At its heart, the Break-Even Prioritization Exercise is about identifying where a business should be focusing – i.e. which Break-Even Goals need the most attention or where there may be quick wins.
Before starting Break-Even Prioritization Exercise
Before starting the Break-Even Prioritization Exercise, you may consider introducing participants to the Future-Fit 8 Forces model. This will provide context and ideas which will, in turn, inform the discussion and results of the exercise.
Building off Porter’s 5 Forces, the model traditionally used by business to understand potential risks in their markets, Future-Fit’s 8 Forces has identified three macro-level pressures that are increasingly impacting business in new and unexpected ways. The workshop facilitator should ask participants to consider and discuss examples of these pressures including:
• Environmental pressures: These range from more intense and frequent droughts and flooding brought on by climate change, to the build-up of pollutants in nature, and increasing competition for natural resources;
• Societal pressures: Social norms and people’s needs are shifting, in response to factors as diverse as growing inequality, mass economic migration, and workforce automation – all exacerbated by a rapidly growing and aging population; and
• Technological pressures: A number of emerging technologies – from artificial intelligence to gene therapy – have the potential to rapidly disrupt a wide range of industries, by making it possible to meet societal needs in completely new ways.
When discussing these pressures, a potentially useful question to ask participants is:
“Could another company with no legacy obligations, sufficient money, and knowledge of your industry, meet the same societal needs as your business in a more Future-Fit way?”
The below table included on Slide 17 of the Workshop slide deck provides further examples of the types of disruption we can expect into the future.
ENVIRONMENTAL PRESSURES
EXPECTATIONS OF SOCIETY
EXPONENTIALLY DISRUPTIVE TECH Global warming
and extreme weather
Plastics and toxicants in nature
Habitat and biodiversity loss
Water scarcity
Land degradation
Ocean acidification
Ecosystem collapse
Competition for land and natural resources
Automation vs Jobs Mass economic migration
Growing inequality gap Power shift from
nations to cities and companies
‘Free’ services (user attention and data is the product) Short-term incentives
(e.g. for CEOs, politicians)
Degrading trust in experts, institutions
Rapid population growth, changing demographics
Additive manufacturing Artificial intelligence
Autonomous road vehicles
Big data Blockchain Digital agriculture
Gene editing Internet of things
The microbiome New (augmented
& virtual) realities Next generation
robotics Unmanned aviation systems
This alternative lens will challenge participants to think about disruptive forces which they have perhaps previously overlooked and will provide valuable insights which can then be kept in mind during the Break-Even Prioritization Exercise.
The Break-Even Prioritization Exercise
For the Break-Even Prioritization Exercise itself, workshop participants must:
• Have a good understanding of the Break-Even goals;
• Answer three questions for each Break-Even Goal covered during the exercise;
• How difficult will it be for the business to reach the goal?
• How much could society be impacted through growth of the business if the goal is not reached?
• How much risk could the business be exposed to if the goal is not pursued?
• Based on the answers to these questions, participants will assign each question a value from 0 to 3 using the following table as guidance for how to assess the criteria.
The following guidance should be kept in mind when explaining the scoring for each of the three questions.
Difficulty
Note that when workshop participants think about the difficulty of meeting a goal, they should set aside any concerns about whether the business has sufficient budget, or how much the CEO cares about the issues. The focus here should be on whether the goal is difficult to reach in principle, given the nature of the business’s products, revenue models, operational activities, and so on. Participants are encouraged to think about what it would take to change its products, operations or supply chain.
Score Description
0 Reaching goal presents no challenge at all because the goal doesn’t apply to this kind of business
1 Reaching goal requires minor changes to business elements like internal policies and/or systems
2 Reaching goal requires significant changes to products, core processes, and/or business models
3 Reaching goal is incredibly difficult without regulatory changes or major technological breakthrough
In some cases, participants may find that a goal presents no challenge at all. For example, if the company only sells services, and no physical goods, then it will already be Future-Fit with respect to the goal Products can be repurposed. This would be assigned a score of 0.
On the other hand, a goal may be extremely difficult to reach. For example, if the business makes all its profit from selling machinery that emits carbon dioxide during use, then the goal Products do not emit greenhouse gases will be incredibly challenging to achieve. In this scenario if the technology exists but the company would have to significantly change its operations to manufacture Future-Fit compliant products, the goal would be assigned a score of 2.
It is useful to keep in mind that the difficulty of reaching certain goals will differ depending on the part of the business. If this is the case, participants may want to consider the different parts of the business separately and run through this exercise on a department by department basis.
Societal Impact
The focus here should be on what the impact on society would likely be if the business continued to grow in its current form, given the nature of the business’s products, revenue models, operational activities, and so on. Participants should think through whether the impacts are global or local in nature and the scope of the impact. For example, does the impact double if the business doubles in size? Is it a matter of local communities being impacted or is the company a key contributor to a global issue?
Score Description
0
Not reaching the goal has no impact on natural and/or social systems because the goal doesn’t apply to this kind of business
1 Business growth would likely result in little or no additional harm
2 Business growth would cause additional but moderate levels of harm
3 Business growth would cause irreversible, ongoing, and/or high levels of harm
In some cases, participants may find that growth of the business has no impact with respect to some goals. For example, if the business is not engaged directly in any mining or agricultural activities, and does not use any animals, it is likely that it will already be Future-Fit with respect to the goal Natural resources are managed to respect the welfare of ecosystems, people and animals. This would be assigned a score of 0.
On the other hand, business growth may cause significant harm. For instance, if the company makes all of its money from selling disposable goods that are non-recyclable, then its impact with respect to the goal Products can be repurposed is likely to be very high. This would be assigned a score of 2 or potentially a 3, depending on the size and geographic scope of the company in question.
As with the difficulty question, if the impact caused varies significantly across different parts of the business, participants will need to caveat their logic and why they’ve decided upon a certain score.
Business Risk
The focus here should be on what the business risk would be in principle, given the nature of its products, revenue models, operational activities, and so on. What does reputational risk look like? What regulations are participants aware of that are coming into force that will disrupt business services? What about potential regulations being implemented within the next 5 years?
The discussions around the three macro-level forces of environmental pressures,
expectations of society and exponentially disruptive technology which occurred before the Break-Even Prioritization Exercise began will be particularly valuable when participants are discussing business risk.
Score Description
0 Insufficient action creates no business risk because the goal doesn’t apply to this kind of business
1 Insufficient action may result in minor reputational damage and/or regulatory problems
2 Insufficient action may pose significant risks to the license to operate, resilience and/or revenue streams
3 Insufficient action may undermine the long-term viability of the business
For some goals, participants may find the risk of disruption to be minimal. For example, a company that operates out of a shared office space in an established commercial zone probably does not have to do much to ensure that Community health is safeguarded. This would be assigned a score of 0.
On the other hand, the business may be exposed to significant risk. For example, a business that operates manufacturing plants that require vast amounts of water may be exposed to extreme risk if it does not act to ensure that its Water use is environmentally responsible and socially equitable. This could be assigned a score of 2 or 3 depending on the necessity of water to the company’s functioning operations and the conditions of the watershed within which the company operates.
Total Scores
When exercise participants have assigned a 0-3 value for the difficulty, societal impact and business risk, these numbers should be added together to get a sense for the overall level of attention that the goal should receive.
Score Description
0 Not applicable
1-4 Low Priority
5-6 Medium Priority
7-9 High Priority
Once the scoring for each goal has been completed, workshop participants will need to establish a short justification for their group’s final scores. This justification will then be used to kickstart the Group Discussion part of the Exercise.
Practical Techniques for the Break-Even Prioritization Exercise
There are many ways to undertake the Break-Even Prioritization Exercise. This section provides some suggested techniques to make the exercise more interactive and
productive. Note that these are not the only ways to undertake the exercise and we encourage facilitators to be as creative as they like when designing their workshop.
Filtering the Break-Even Goals
A key stage in designing the Break-Even Prioritization Exercise is deciding whether you will focus on all 23 Break-Even Goals or whether you will focus the exercise around a smaller selection of goals.
In the case of the latter, workshop participants should be the ones who decide which Break-Even Goals are the most pressing and, therefore, which should be focused on within the exercise.
To actively solicit the opinions of the workshop participants, you can use a “dotmocracy”
exercise, as outlined below:
• Either place a poster or project all 23 Break-Even Goals on to a wall.
• Each group of participants is given seven colored dots and asked to discuss which goals they think are the most important.
• A group representative places a dot beside their top 5 Break-Even Goal choices. They can place more than one dot beside the one(s) they think are the most important.
• The voting is then reviewed and the Break-Even Goals that have the most votes will be the focus of the Break-Even Prioritization Exercise.
Alternatively, you could set up an online poll either before the day of the workshop or at the start of the day, where workshop participants are asked to vote for their top 5 Break- Even Goals. Using a technological solution to determine which goals to focus on will save time during the workshop, as you can start with the Break-Even Prioritization Exercise almost immediately. However, by soliciting votes beforehand, you may lose some of the valuable discussion that will naturally arise with the “dotmocracy” exercise.
The Break-Even Prioritization Exercise
The essence of the Break-Even Prioritization Exercise is an interactive discussion – groups of participants are asked to answer questions and consequently score the Break-Even Goals. This can be done in a number of ways:
• The simplest is to give each group a printed version of the scoring handout to fill out manually for each Break-Even Goal (either all 23 or a defined number of goals), followed by a discussion.
A more interactive method would be as follows:
• Either place a poster or project the scoring table for all 23 Break-Even Goals on to a wall.
• Ask each group to use post-it notes to record their scores for Difficulty, Societal Impact and Business Risk.
• A group representative sticks the post-it notes onto the wall within the corresponding columns. As the group representative does this, their group provides an explanation for why they chose those scores.
• Once each group has placed its scores on the wall, the facilitator calculates the
average Difficulty, Societal Impact and Disruption scores by adding the scores together and dividing by the number of groups.
• This process is repeated for each Break-Even Goal that is discussed.
A final suggestion for leading the Break-Even Prioritization Exercise is to use an internet or smart-phone based technology to solicit real-time and interactive responses from
workshop participants. Online platforms, such as Sli.do and Poll Everywhere, provide services such as live voting and real-time infographics, which can bring the exercise to life.
By setting up a poll or Q&A based on the scoring criteria, participants can either submit responses as a group or as individuals.
4. Workshop Walk Through
This section outlines key components which can be included in any workshop. A company does not necessarily need to include all of the components; however, we recommend when planning the workshop, you keep your outcomes in mind and include the
components that will best contribute to your definition of success. For example, you may decide to forego a review of the Future-Fit Business Benchmark if you believe participants have a thorough understanding of the methodology and opt instead to hold a group discussion on the Benchmark.
See the Draft Agendas section for ideas on how to schedule your workshop using the various components.
Agenda Item Purpose Points to Cover Introduction
to the Workshop
Explain the purpose and structure of the workshop
• Recap why participants have been invited.
• Outline:
• The structure of the day (highlighting the Break-Even Prioritization exercise); and
• What workshop participants can expect as an outcome.
• Ask workshop participants if they have any initial reflections or questions on the pre- work.
• Define what success looks like with the group – what do participants want answered by the end of the day?
Agenda Item Purpose Points to Cover Review of the
Future-Fit Business Benchmark
Ensure all workshop participants understand the premise of the Benchmark
• Present the following slides contained in the workshop deck:
• Future-Fit in a nutshell;
• Rethinking how we value business;
• A new kind of business benchmark is needed; and
• Future-Fit is a clear destination to aim for.
• Open up the group to a discussion regarding the theory or individual goals.
• Note: The back of the deck contains individual slides covering each goal and these are linked to the master slide for ease of navigation.
Group Discussion of the
Benchmark
Allow time for workshop participants to ask
questions and express views regarding the Benchmark
• Ask workshop participants if they have any questions or views pertaining to the
Benchmark and encourage discussion around these. Questions you can ask the group include:
• How would you describe the Benchmark to your peers? To your boss?
• How would you describe the concept of Break-Even?
• Are there particular areas of the Benchmark you need more clarity around?
• Which goals do you feel least comfortable with? Which goals would you like to understand better?
• Can you give me some examples of how the Benchmark could apply to our company?
• What goals do you think will be most helpful for our company?
• What goals do you think will be most difficult to achieve?
• If the facilitator wishes, they can run through some stock examples of the fictional business, ACME Inc, to ensure workshop participants understand the Benchmark. This exercise can
Agenda Item Purpose Points to Cover
be done in small groups or all together.
Examples are included in Slides 12 – 14 of the accompanying slide deck.
Break-Even Prioritization Exercise:
Introduction
Explain the rationale behind and methodology for the Prioritization Exercise
• Workshop participants should be split into groups of 3 at a minimum (depending on numbers) to allow for meaningful discussions.
• Before running the Break-Even Prioritization Exercise, review the concept of emerging risks and Future-Fit’s 8 Forces.
• When preparing for the workshop, the
facilitator should decide how to run the Break- Even Prioritization exercise and whether it will be more beneficial to discuss all 23 goals, or to highlight certain goals that are particularly relevant for the company (filtering process).
• If the facilitator wishes to filter the goals, workshop participants should be engaged in a discussion on which goals seem to be most important to the company based on first impression.1 Once the key goals have been highlighted, the facilitator can move on to explaining the Break-Even
Prioritization Exercise.
• The Break-Even Prioritization Exercise
establishes how much attention your business should be devoting to each goal. In order to do this, for each goal, workshop participants will be made to answer three questions:
• How difficult will it be for the business to reach this goal?
• How much could society be impacted through growth of the business if the goal is not reached?
• How much risk could the business be exposed to if the goal is not pursued?
1 For example, an apparel company may highlight goals such as Water use is environmentally responsible and socially equitable, Procurement safeguards the pursuit of future-fitness and Operational waste is eliminated
Agenda Item Purpose Points to Cover
• Once the questions have been explained, the facilitator should introduce and explain the scoring system (attributing a score of 1-3 for each question and adding these scores together to get a final score out of 9 for each goal).
• Ensure all workshop participants fully understand the Break-Even Prioritization Exercise by actively soliciting questions.
• Note that more information on how to explain the Break-Even Prioritization Exercise can be found in Section 3.
Break-Even Prioritization Exercise:
Practical
Workshop participants to complete the Break- Even
Prioritization Exercise
• For the full 23 goals, or a smaller selection of filtered goals, discussions can happen in two ways depending on time and preference:
• All goals are discussed and scored by all groups; or
• Individual goals are assigned to each group to discuss and score.
• In their groups, workshop participants should work through each of the goals assigned to them (whether that be all 23 goals or a delegated portion of the full 23).
• By the end of the exercise, each group should have both a score out of 9 for each of the goals they were assigned, and a justification or their scores.
Break-Even Prioritization:
Group Discussion
Workshop participants share and compare the outcomes of the exercise
• Each group to present their findings back to the room, providing a brief explanation for why the goals were scored that way.
• Facilitator to encourage discussion and debate around the Break-Even Prioritization scores across goals.
• Workshop participants to come to a consensus as a whole around which goals are of the highest priority (should be those which have scored 7-9 points).
Agenda Item Purpose Points to Cover Next Steps
Exercise
Agree follow up actions for participants to carry forward
• Select several goals to review with a view to deciding next steps. This could include high priority goals that the company wants to tackle or quick-wins where participants identify small changes to be made.
• For each goal, identify the right person to assign responsibility for kick-starting action.
• Questions you could ask include:
• What do we need to do to begin tackling the goal?
• Who do we need to contact within the company to get approval?
• Will we need any external help?
• Which department / person will be responsible for pursuing goal achievement?
• Do we need to schedule a follow-up meeting or another workshop to discuss progress?
• Note that since the ‘Next Steps Exercise’ is not included in the Half Day Agenda, facilitators should ensure participants are aware that they may be asked to carry next steps forward, at the discretion of the Facilitator.
Workshop Wrap-Up
Conclude the day’s findings and clarify follow-up actions
• Draw together findings of the day (reiterate the goals of highest priority).
• Establish if the aims set out in the Introduction at the start of the day have been achieved.
• Explain follow-up activities:
• Workshop notes to be circulated;
• Feedback forms to be circulated;
• The Facilitator to follow-up regarding specific actions identified in the ‘Next Steps’ exercise.
• Encourage workshop participants to revisit the Benchmark materials in more detail when making important decisions in the future.
5. Draft Agendas
Full day workshops
Agenda 1
In this workshop, participants are encouraged to dive into the material early in the day.
While this can be effective in keeping the group interested, be sure they have a clear understanding of the Benchmark and the ambitions for the workshop in advance.
Timing Agenda Item
09:00 – 09:30 Introduction to the Workshop
09:30 – 10:15 Review of the Future-Fit Business Benchmark 10:15 – 10:30 Mid-Morning Break
10:30 – 10:45 Break-Even Prioritization Exercise: Introduction 10:45 – 12:15 Break-Even Prioritization Exercise: Practical 12:15 – 13:15 Lunch Break
13:15 – 14:15 Break-Even Prioritization Exercise: Group Discussion 14:15 – 14:30 Afternoon Break
14:30 – 15:30 Next Steps Exercise 15:30 – 16:00 Workshop Wrap-Up Agenda 2
In this workshop, the majority of the morning is spent focusing on the Benchmark, accompanied by group discussion. This is to ensure participants have a developed understanding of the Benchmark before any work begins. The afternoon is devoted to more practical work, with back-to-back small group exercises.
Timing Agenda Item
09:00 – 09:30 Introduction to the Workshop
09:30 – 10:15 Review of the Future-Fit Business Benchmark 10:15 – 11:00 Group Discussion focusing on the Benchmark 11:00 – 11:15 Mid-Morning Break
11:15 – 13:00 Break-Even Prioritization Exercise: Introduction and Practical
Timing Agenda Item
13:00 – 13:45 Lunch Break
13:45 – 14:45 Break-Even Prioritization Exercise: Group Discussion 14:45 – 15:0 Afternoon Break
15:00 – 16:00 Next Steps Exercise 16:00 – 16:30 Workshop Wrap-Up
Half-day workshops
While we recommend hosting a full day workshop where possible, we recognize that you may have time constraints and so we have provided suggested timings for a half-day workshop below. The amount of depth you’ll be able to cover will be limited and so understanding your ambitions for this workshop will be important to how you ultimately structure your time.
Timing Agenda Item
09:00 – 09:15 Introduction to the Workshop
09:15 – 09:45 Group Discussion focusing on the Benchmark
09:45 – 10:45 Break-Even Prioritization Exercise (Introduction and Practical) 10:45 – 11:00 Mid-Morning Break
11:00 – 12:00 Break-Even Prioritization Exercise (Group Discussion) 12:00 – 12:30 Workshop Wrap-Up
6. Workshop Logistics
This section is designed to help the workshop facilitator ensure that the workshop runs smoothly.
Pre-workshop Preparation
Before hosting the workshop, a number of tasks need to be completed, to ensure participants are adequately prepared. Below you’ll find a high-level Gantt Chart that will guide you through the workshop preparation phase, ensuring a well-run event.
Task
Date of Completion
At least 6 weeks before the workshop
At least 2 weeks before the workshop
One week before the workshop 1 Identify workshop
participants 2 Propose workshop
dates
3 Based on availability, set workshop date
4 Send workshop invitations
5 Confirm participation 6 Create any pre-work
specific to your company 7 Send pre-work, including
expectations of participants 8 Set-up prep calls if
interested 9 Hold prep calls
10 Ensure participants have completed pre-work 11 Ask participants if they
have any questions?
12 Ask participants what success will look like
Workshop materials for participants (Handouts)
Future-Fit has created a suite of handouts however they bear review in advance of the workshop to ensure they are useful and do not need any modifications. In the table below you’ll find a pre-populated list of materials, however you may decide to build additional materials in support of your workshop.
Handouts # to Print Complete Future-Fit Flash cards
Workshop Handouts Feedback forms
On the day
Last minute preparations are important, to ensure nothing is forgotten on the day. Below is a helpful list of materials which may be useful when running the workshop. For example, depending on where you’re hosting the workshop you may need to provide security with an advanced list of attendees. Having these resources ready will ensure no last-minute issues.
The “Responsibility” column is there for you to use as guide for who should be held accountable for the delivery of these materials on the day. Don’t be afraid to delegate responsibilities to your team; it’s important that on the day the facilitator can focus on workshop delivery.
Materials Responsibility Complete
Participant list for security
Computer connectors for Projector / TV Flip charts and easels
Portable office (masking tape, pens, sticky notes) Pens and notepaper for participants
Name badges and tents Handouts (see above)
7. Roles & Responsibilities
If you’re planning on holding group exercises and decide to identify facilitators and note- takers in advance, you’ll need to ensure they are prepared to execute their roles. The below provides initial guidance for both positions.
Guidance for the group facilitator:
Responsible for taking the lead on guiding the conversation, ensuring that objectives are met, all questions are covered, and all participants have an opportunity to speak, e.g.:
• Kick off the conversation.
• Keep conversation going by posing questions, clarifying responses and moderating answers.
• Maintain a “parking lot” of comments that participants think are important but are off topic (in case the note-taker misses these points).
• Tie conversational threads together where appropriate.
• Interrupt speakers if necessary, to advance the conversation.
• Be responsible for time keeping and explaining the rules of engagement.
Guidance for the note takers:
Note takers are responsible for capturing a fair and accurate representation of what was discussed, ensuring all questions and talking points are documented. Further instructions include:
• Focus primarily on the questions and the feedback from participants.
• Priority is to capture the gist of what is being said or asked, along with the name/affiliation (if relevant) of the participant.
• A full accurate transcript is not needed, but a good record for producing a summary report for the participants is essential.
• Maintain a “parking lot” of comments that participants think are important but are off topic.
• Examples of things to capture during the small group exercise:
• Any emerging issues or nuances raised;
• All specific questions and answers;
• General conclusions; and
• Instances where there is strong disagreement.
8. Using the Workshop Materials
There is a suite of accompanying materials and resources which workshop facilitators should draw on to organise and undertake the workshop.
The Future-Fit Crash Course
The Future-Fit Crash Course is a series of videos available on the Future-Fit Website. The video clips explain the main concepts of the Benchmark – why extra-financial performance is so important, why businesses have struggled thus far to make any meaningful progress toward being sustainable, how the Benchmark addresses these issues and the structure of the Benchmark.
The workshop facilitator and all the workshop participants should watch this video in preparation for the workshop, as it provides important context that will facilitate meaningful discussions on the day and will allow participants time to digest the information and capture any questions.
The Workshop in a Box PowerPoint Presentation
The PowerPoint Presentation is a graphic representation of the information for the workshop facilitator to use during the workshop. All possible components of a workshop are included in the slide deck, so the workshop facilitator may delete and edit content as appropriate, depending on the agenda they create.
Each slide has additional information in the notes section to help the workshop facilitator guide discussions.
Slide Deck Sections
• Agenda: A tailored agenda decided by the workshop facilitator.
• Recapping the Benchmark: This section is to consolidate the participants’ knowledge of the Benchmark, following the pre-workshop preparation that they will be asked to do. It is also an opportunity for participants to raise any concerns or questions pertaining to the Benchmark.
• Understanding the Break-Even Goals: This is a voluntary exercise which helps workshop participants put their knowledge of the Benchmark to the test. It does not have to be done but could fit well into the “Group discussion focusing on the
Benchmark” session.
• Break-Even Prioritization Exercise: This section walks participants through the
exercise in the workshop, providing additional descriptions for how to understand the scoring. It is about identifying where a business should be focusing – i.e. which Break- Even Goals need the most attention.
• Next Steps: This section is comprised solely of a placeholder, with notes including prompting questions in the notes section.
• Wrap-Up Discussion: This section is comprised solely of a placeholder, with notes including prompting questions in the notes section.
• The Break-Even Goals: Each Break-Even Goal is profiled on a slide at the end. The workshop facilitator does not have to go through all 23 Goals as part of the presentation. Rather, these slides should be used as a resource throughout the workshop to answer questions and guide discussions about individual Break-Even Goals. The slides themselves contain information about what companies must do to reach that specific Break-Even Goal and which Sustainable Development Goals relate to that specific Break-Even Goal. Additional information on why that specific goal is important can also be found in the notes section of each slide. Information on how to navigate these slides can be found in the notes section of the slide which lists all the Break-Even Goals.
Break-Even Prioritization Exercise Handout
The only handout necessary for the workshop is the scoring grids which workshop participants will need to fill out as part of the Break-Even Prioritization Exercise.
The workshop facilitator must decide whether to print the grid for the individual goal approach or the full 23 Break-Even Goals.
Regardless of whether the workshop facilitator decides to ask workshop participants to score all goals, or a subset of the goals, there needs to be enough handouts for each group to undertake the scoring process.
Workshop Flashcards
There are flashcards for each Break-Even Goal with the following information: the title of the goal, why the goal is necessary and what must a company do to meet that goal. These are an additional resource which can be printed to help the workshop participants.
9. Sample Emails
The below provides several sample emails for use when reaching out to participants in advance of and after the workshop.
Invitation Email
Dear XXX —
I’m delighted to invite you to our upcoming Future-Fit Break-Even Goal Prioritization Workshop. I am in the early stages of organising this meeting and given your role in XXX feel your attendance is incredibly important.
The Future-Fit Business Benchmark translates 30+ years of systems science research into practical tools, starting with a clear definition of the extra-financial break-even point that all companies must strive to reach. This extra-financial break-even point is expressed as a unified set of 23 social and environmental goals, complemented by indicators designed to measure progress. Over the course of our workshop we will review all of these 23 goals, to understand how they may or may not impact our business now and into the future.
We are planning on holding the meeting across XX day(s) in XXX. We’ve identified a number of days that work, which I’ve listed below:
• XXX
Please respond with the dates that work at your earliest convenience. Once I have a clear idea of everyone’s availability I will be in touch with the final dates and details of pre- work.
Kind regards, XXX
Follow-Up Email
Dear XXX —
Please find attached the notes and presentations arising out of our recent Break-Even Goal Prioritization Workshop. The notes capture the key points arising from the discussions and we have highlighted important questions that arose through the day in bold italics
(including points that were raised outside of scope). If you have any feedback regarding the attached summary don’t hesitate to reach out to me.
Finally, thank you for giving up your time and your thoughtful contributions over the course of the meeting. It is only through partnership and collaboration that we will be able to drive real change, and this felt like an important first step.
Kind regards, XXX
