Workshop & Visual Facilitation

Create spaces of possibility to smooth processes and explore new ideas.

Devise strategies and improve operations for delivering programs. Walk away with the skills and resources to take immediate action.

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Idea Labs
Retreats

Smooth out your processes

Facilitated Idea Labs

Gather your teams to create new solutions, discover new ways to connect, and make processes more harmonious.

Virtual and in-person sessions available

The problem
We don’t have time for a lengthy consulting report no one will read. We need action.

The solution
Create a roadmap and action plan your team will actually use—because they helped make it! These half- to multi-day facilitated sessions blend group learning with real-life application tailored to your organization.

Improved outcomes to expect
Watch your teams take action with shared commitment toward your strategic plan. Your teams will demonstrate confidence and excellence in program delivery, engaging across disciplines in more nimble and responsive ways to new challenges and goals.

A very close-up image of a woman using a marker to write on a blue sticky note on a wall covered in multi-covered sticky notes
Kimberly takes a selfie of her flushed, happy face and a room behind her of workshop participants discussing an activity at their tables

Idea Lab objectives that clients have used successfully include:

  • Having a strategic plan doesn’t guarantee its implementation. Establish a shared vision and definition of success, get buy-in from your people, and create a learning culture in your organization.

    Learn and practice how to:

    • Shift the approach to change

    • Understand the Activation Curve, and meet people where THEY are … not where YOU are

    • Identify barriers to change ahead of time

    • Move from vision to action

  • Take some time away from your day-to-day to focus on where you’re going and what you might become. Clarify what supports your vision, and what opportunities are created as you work toward it.

    You’ll be guided to:

    • Create a bold picture of the future and consider key scenarios on a vision canvas

    • Generate a variety of ideas that can propel you forward

    • Determine what activities to start, stop, or continue

  • Confusion arises when a group isn’t clear on how decisions will be made. Discover how to establish roles, criteria, and techniques for deciding to reduce micromanagement and power struggles so you can focus on the great work you’re doing together.

    Learn and practice:

    • Group dynamics

    • Establishing roles

    • Defining decision-making criteria, rules, and techniques

    • Map who does what by when

  • Market, political, and social conditions change spectacularly fast. Embrace an innovative mindset to adapt proactively, ensuring you can continue delivering mission-critical services to your communities.

    Learn and practice how to:

    • Zero in on the right opportunities

    • Generate original and relevant ideas for new service, process, or experience

    • Match the business and funding model

    • Check the fit: does this idea match our values and what our customers need?

    • Plan an experiment to test vailidity

  • Even the most seemingly intractable challenges or lack of resources can be transformed with a shift in perspective. Walk away with a fresh set of questions and techniques to open your thinking and recharge your efforts.

    Learn and practice:

    • How to identify perceptions and assumptions

    • Ask what’s unchangeable about the problem

    • Activities to reframe your perspective and open paths for action

Step away to think clearly

Carve out time to dig into new solutions and deepen connections within your team.

Virtual and in-person sessions available

Retreats and Intensives

The problem
We’re too busy with the day-to-day to think deeply about our future or to be “innovative.”

The solution
Step away from the office to work across disciplines and map a short- to long-term plan for your organization, letting the facilitator guide each step of the conversation.

Improved outcomes to expect
Renewed relationships to each other and your communities with a visual map and action plan supporting the long-term sustainability of your organization.

Sample Retreat topics:

  • Create a compelling vision for the next few years of your organization. Take stock of current trends and potential disruptors, and connect your vision to the people who will be impacted.

    Leave with a change plan to set your strategies in motion.

  • Harness the power of low-fidelity prototypes and process diagramming to try out ideas before you launch them to the public.

    Use a robust evaluation criteria to match the best solutions to your capacity and context so you can leave confident in your ability to deliver.

  • Ensure your program and service efforts are aligned with your vision, mission, values, and capacity.

    Take time to reflect on recent efforts using structured feedback processes and discussion to improve how you deliver programs and services.

  • Does everyone on your team know each other? Do they know what other teams do and when?

    Bring your extended team together to create new norms for communication, shared priority setting, and deepening an understanding of how individual and department contributions fit together.

A group of people sit around a large conference table, some with laptops in front of them. One person has a hand raised to ask a question.
A hand drawn poster featuring the agenda and objective for a workshop, including illustrations for each item. The agenda is in the shape of a clock.

What is Visual Facilitation?

Facilitation is the art of guiding people through processes that lead to agreed-upon outcomes—in a way that evokes participation, ownership, and creativity among all participants.

If you can write, you can draw. Zahler Design demystifies drawing and guides you through a process to document the conversation as it unfolds. Together, we will use simple shapes to explain concepts, ideas, and models.

Making conversations visual enables the group to make sense—and ultimately meaning—together.

This results in immediate documentation that feeds the group intelligence.

Kimberly stands at the front of a large room full of people seated at tables. She is wearing a black polka dot dress and gestures toward hand drawn posters demonstrating the human centered design process.
A group of three women and two men sit at a table covered with sticky notes, pens, and an oversized worksheet where they participate in a facilitated activity
Kimberly sits with her back to the camera, holding up a small piece of cardboard to attach to a larger vertical sheet of cardboard. The cardboard rests against a whiteboard, on which a medical office is drawn in marker to prototype a check-in station

The secret to unlocking creativity is not to look for people who are more creative, but to unlock more creativity from the people who already work for you.

—Harvard Business Review