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This article presents a case study for designing a workshop for strategic planning. By describing the process of selecting, designing, and implementing a manufacturing strategy workshop as a marketable instructional product in a high‐tech company, the article illuminates the role of training and development in strategic planning. It describes how a workshop for manufacturing strategic planning was selected and developed by taking a market‐oriented approach to reflect customer needs. The interactive, collaborative design process among stakeholders was practiced, and a continuous needs assessment was employed to explore and exploit customer needs throughout the design cycle. The workshop covered both the conceptual and the experiential, and learning‐by‐doing was a key instructional strategy adopted. The article concludes by discussing key learnings acquired.

A wider participation from outside the top management team can support the strategy creation and execution of firms through improving access to knowledge, increasing innovativeness and creating legitimacy for the strategy. However, creating a climate of trust where ideas are freely expressed and challenged is easier said than done. This paper thus focuses on trust in strategizing, in particular in strategy workshops with wider participation.

The analysis is based on qualitative data from 10 strategy-making processes consisting of a total of 28 strategy workshops. Data were collected through interviews and joint reflections with the leaders, external facilitators and consultants, as well as through action research.

This study identifies three factors that influence trust in strategy workshops with wider participation, namely opening up the conversation, clarity of the participative process and delivering with honest intent. These factors could play crucial roles in creating the trust needed for wider participation in strategy workshops.

This paper provides strategy actors (e.g. leaders, consultants) with actionable knowledge about what strategy workshops with a wider circle of participants require to create trust.

This study relates to the ongoing and increased interest in openness for strategy-as-practice in general and open strategy in particular. Moreover, it contributes to the discussion that the boundaries between strategizing and change tend to become blurry. Therefore, the present paper contributes to the theory and practice of strategy creation, strategy execution and change by investigating wider participation in strategy workshops.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how a strategy implementation workshop design can be developed and tested while minimizing the time spent on developing the design.

This multiple case study at a diesel engine company shows how iterative prototyping can be used to structure the design process of a strategy implementation workshop.

Strategy implementation workshop design can be developed in resource-constrained environments through iterative prototyping of the workshop design. Each workshop iteration can generate value in its own right and at the same time the workshop design can be optimized until the final, most effective, design is found which can then be rolled out.

In a strategy-as-practice perspective, this study shows how scholarly attention to micro-level strategy praxis at a company can be enlightening to strategy consultants who need to conduct strategy implementation workshops.

By selecting an iterative modular workshop design, the strategy consultant has at his/her disposal a strategy tool that is easily adaptable to organizational practice and one for which s/he can draw on his/her experience as well as add to his/her knowledge base.

Introducing iterative prototyping in an organizational context can facilitate fast yet structured development of a rigorous workshop design. Strategy consultants are provided with empirical examples of how an iterative prototyping process can be structured across multiple workshops.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new framework for exploring the key elements of strategy workshops and provide empirical evidence on how these can influence strategy making within a firm.

The research is based on structuration theory and the “practice” view of strategy. The empirical data are based on a longitudinal case study, including ethnographic data, extensive observations and interviews.

The findings show that strategy workshops are institutionalized as part of a firm's strategy‐making process, and provide a forum for strategic discourse facilitated through knowledge‐sharing and/or promotion of strategic consensus. Strategy workshops may, however, also constrain strategy making through opposition and rejection of participation which may lead to strategic paralysis.

This research propose guidelines for managers on the effective preparation and management of strategy workshops.

The paper provides a new framework to explore key elements of strategy workshops and evidence of how these influence strategy making. The research highlights the dualistic nature of strategy workshops in strategy making.

Describes the experience of 40 strategy workshops conducted with the top teams of a variety of businesses. While the aim of the workshops was to produce high levels of commitment to good quality strategies, in a number of cases the outcomes were disappointing; little strategic change took place. Presents and discusses four outcomes from the workshop process: “impoverished strategy”, “consultants′ strategy”, “blinkered strategy” and “workshop strategy”. Indicates the importance of entering the “zone of uncomfortable debate”, and sets out techniques for exploring the “intuitive core” or shared beliefs and assumptions.

The purpose of the paper is to explore ways in which value pluralism in institutional learning‐technology strategy can be exposed and managed with the use of learning activities involving stakeholder groups across and between educational institutions.

The case‐study of a series of national workshops on technology strategy in the UK is situated against a broader model of “intervention points” in strategy development in institutions. The model is used to explain the rationale behind the workshops, and to situate their efficacy against the broader objectives of strategy development.

The workshops revealed significant areas of dissonance between the expressed values and priorities of different stakeholder groups within universities: particularly between the expressed wishes of learners, those of teachers and those of learning technologists. Revealing these value conflicts can be attributed to the particular ways in which the communications were managed using learning activities in the workshops.

The managed coordination of learning activities within and between stakeholder groups in universities can be effective in exposing the value pluralism that lies behind different approaches to technology. It is argued that, with more explicit identification of the tension between different stakeholder values, the likelihood of more realistic strategy development is increased.

The practical example of the case study has been used to articulate a deeper theoretical framework drawn from sociology. This framework has potential for use in situating a further range of strategic interventions in learning technology in the university, which extend beyond the scope of the strategy workshops.

Two generic uses of workshops are as an educational tool and as a vehicle for the development of corporate strategy. Most workshops commonly available have focused on the former. Examines the effect of an experiential hybrid workshop as a tool for developing corporate strategy and team building. It is hybrid in the sense that both indoor and outdoor activities are used. The results presented indicate statistically significant improvements in team functioning across several important dimensions. While there is more acceptance of the strategy developed, its improvement in quality is difficult to determine in the given time frame.

The paper fives the author's view on the effectiveness of strategy workshops and away days.

The paper draws on the author's experience in the field, and insights from anthropology are also used.

Managers need to think carefully how to align the design of a workshop with its purpose. There should be no great expectation that insights and conclusions arrived at in the event will necessarily transfer to what the organization does. If the aim is to get people to challenge and question the strategy significantly but there is a need to transfer the insights from that event into what the organization will actually do, then it makes sense to consider a nested series of events.

The paper presents a viewpoint of strategy workshop and away days from an anthropological perspective.

Scenarios are cognitive aids for thinking about the future in a sustained and disciplined manner. Because scenarios must be facilitated, scenarios must be considered in the context of their practice. In the strategic management literature, there has been a considerable conversation on the practical difference between “hot” and “cold” cognition. Thinking in this conventional literature demonstrates how the facilitators of scenario planning workshops establish and channel the productive cognition of their clients away from hot cognition and toward cold cognition. But how? As a thought experiment, we examine whether the sociological concept of “emotional labor” helps explain the cognition management of clients by facilitators during scenario planning. We end by considering how a deeper practical understanding of emotional labor might help facilitators identify mechanisms and adapt their tools to better manage the cognitive-affective dimensions of scenario planning in practice.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how a workshop can enhance first-year university students' understanding of their study strategies and self-regulated learning.

A qualitative content analysis was done of 190 reflective journals written by first-year university students.

The main findings confirmed that starting studies in higher education is challenging for many students. New insights were provided on how these challenges can be addressed, especially regarding self-regulated learning. Students perceived that they gained several insights from the workshop that they believed could benefit their studying and thereby enhance motivation.

This study showed that even small measures promote both good study habits and specifically self-regulated learning skills. Interventions like the workshop described in this study ease first-year students' transition to the university and foster successful studies for all students.

This study contributes to research on supporting students' transition to higher education by investigating how students perceive early study skill interventions. It adds to a holistic perspective of students' challenges and coping strategies during their first semester in higher education.