Management by objective works – if you know the objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don’t.
Peter Drucker (1909–2005)
Management Consultant
If you don’t have objectives for your workshop, don’t do it! Stay home, read a book, or enjoy some time with your friends and family. No need to take action.
Objectives of a workshop
There are different methods of goal setting. For different purposes each has its advantages. For workshops I would stick nonetheless on the classical SMART way.
Output
What do you want to have reached at the end of your event or workshop? What skills, knowledge, awareness should your group have after the participation. This is is your output objective, your overall workshop objective. This, however, depends on the outcome objective.
Outcome
After you have your trained, transformed, or enlightened group at the end of the workshop, the question is: What will they do with their knowledge, skills, awareness? What do you want them to do? This is the outcome objective. And this is the overall planning criteria, which you should have in mind while planning a workshop or an event. I repeat: What do you want them to do? This is your North Star of planning and realization.
Thereby, it becomes clear that only achieving the output is not enough. Participants should also have the motivation, the urge, the pressure to act on what they have learned during the workshop. And this must be woven into the workshop, too.
…and Objectives of its modules
And as every workshop has an objective, each part or module of the workshop has an objective, too. The moderation session, the presentation, and, yes, also the energizer have the objective to contribute to your overall workshop objective. If they don’t eliminate them and use the time for a more meaningful and contributing part.
Accordingly, the workshop plan has a column where you realize the objective of each module. And at the top