My best-worst workshop experience

How a workshop that "turned wrong" helped me learn more about myself and helping people ground their ideas.

Sometimes, even though we plan everything to the last minimum detail, the unexpected can sweep in and force you to rethink your whole strategy, and this is exactly what happened to me while doing my first week-long workshop in a foreign country.

It is hard to take into account the unknown, how to manage cultural differences, how to be precise in another language (even if you know it very well). As there are no formulas for success, I'll just be clear into what went wrong, and how to adapt.

First mistake: I planned everything to the last little detail. Usually this is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is when you need to adapt quickly and your planning is so tight, there is little room for mistakes. I made a beautiful excel with all the activities timed to the minute, and when the client started to have issues with the exercise, moving away from something that was so finished, so timed and so constructed became a problem. We had to really change the dynamic from thinking about problems, creating products and an economic model for a specific product to directly choosing a product option and designing functionalities for it. The service design portion was…