When I suggest a workshop to clients, the usual expectation is for a half day format – or – if they are really serious – a full day event. I always find it interesting to gauge the reaction when I recommend taking three full days to address strategic impertatives.
There are many reasons why you should have multi-day workshops when tackling thorny issues.
Most importantly they give people time to think, and acknowledge the complexity that is inherent in many of the problems and challenges that are common to large organisations.Β It’s unrealistic to dumb this type of work down, and expect solid, coherent solutions from a half day workshop, let alone one that was conducted as an ‘off-site’ complete withΒ Jack Daniels and golf (although not necessarily in that order).
One of the more subtle reasons is that by focusing on issues over several days (three days is about right) you provide the opportunity to absorb, sort and frame new information.Β This is not a hunch, or some half baked concept, but something that has attracted serious scientific attention.Β For example, read this from The New Scientist :
Ever wondered why sleeping on a problem works? It seems that as well as strengthening our memories, sleep also helps us to extract themes and rules from the masses of information we soak up during the day.
Bob Stickgold from Harvard Medical School and his colleagues found that people were better able to recall lists of related words after a night’s sleep than after the same time spent awake during the day. They also found it easier to recollect themes that the words had in common – forgetting around 25 per cent more themes after a waking rest. “We’re not just stabilising memories during sleep,” says Stickgold. “We’re extracting the meaning.”
And, more recently from the BBC:
Sleeping on a problem really can help solve it, say scientists who found a dreamy nap boosts creative powers.They tested whether “incubating” a problem allowed a flash of insight, and found it did, especially when people entered a phase of sleep known as REM.
Volunteers who had entered REM or rapid eye movement sleep – when most dreams occur – were then better able to solve a new problem with lateral thinking.Β Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has published the US work.
“We propose that REM sleep is important for assimilating new information into past experience to create a richer network of associations for future use”
These findings reinforce the need to tackle complex issues – such as those prevalent in strategic innovation – over the course of two or more days.Β While the body is sleeping, the brain is processing, and that means that people return to the issues better equipped.
The findings also have an unexpected payback for office workers who are bored to tears with mundane roles.Β Armed with the above research, they can awake from a mid-afternoon desk slumber, ready with the defense: “I was problem solving.”
