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Guide · 9 min read

How to run an AI workshop with your team (without a consultant)

Most AI workshops end with enthusiasm and no decisions. This guide is the run-sheet we use: what to prepare, how to time each phase, what to say when the room stalls, and what has to be written down before people leave the room.

Before you start: three questions

A workshop with no brief becomes a discussion about tools. Ten minutes before the session, answer three questions with the person who asked for the workshop.

  • ·What is the work we are talking about? Name one process, not "AI in the company".
  • ·Who has to change what they do on Monday? If nobody, the session has no owner.
  • ·What would make this a waste of time? Write it down; it is the fear you will surface in phase one.

The five phases

A session runs five phases in order. Each phase ends with something written — that is the only rule that matters.

1. Mind Mapping (15 min)
Surface the real problem and the fear underneath it. Ask what people are already doing with AI in private. You will hear more than you expect, and that is the honest baseline.
2. Activate Creativity (20 min)
Generate options against the named process. Quantity first, then one owner per option. An idea without a name attached does not leave this phase.
3. Kickstart Prototyping (20 min)
Define what "good enough" means and who verifies it. Most AI failures are verification failures, not model failures.
4. Iterate with Intention (20 min)
Sort the options: quick wins, strategic bets, traps. The traps list is the most useful artefact you will produce.
5. Adopt Systems (15 min)
Write the always / never / review rules. Set the date you look at this again. Without a review date, everything decided here decays in three weeks.

Two facilitation moves that fix most rooms

Nearly every stalled AI workshop is stalled for one of two reasons: one loud voice, or an unresolved disagreement nobody will name. Two moves handle both.

  • ·Silent write. Two minutes, everyone writes alone before anyone speaks. Seniority stops setting the agenda and the quiet people contribute.
  • ·Convergence. Before leaving a phase, read the written decision aloud and ask: who disagrees? Silence after a spoken decision is consent; silence after a discussion is not.

What must be written down

By the end you need five lines, one per phase, and each one needs a name against it. If you leave with slides instead, nothing happens.

  • ·The process you chose, in one sentence
  • ·The option you are trying, and who owns it
  • ·The definition of good enough, and who verifies it
  • ·One thing you are explicitly not doing (the trap)
  • ·The always / never rule and the review date

The follow-through

Book the day-30 review before people leave the room, with the same participants and the same five lines on screen. A workshop is not a deliverable; the review is where you find out whether anything changed.

The measure of an AI workshop is not what the team said. It is what a named person does differently on Monday morning.
Take it further

The five phases above are the session. It runs in the browser with the cards, the timers and the silent-write and convergence steps built in.

Run it now — free, in your browser →
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