How to engage

VENUE – try to find a venue that will make your group feel comfortable and that gives the right “mood” for what you want to accomplish. For instance if you are talking about start-ups, find a venue in a co-working environment or in an incubator. Make your audience happy – make sure that plenty of refreshments, including coffee, biscuits and fruit are available, especially if you expect people to work in groups.

ENSURE THAT EVERYBODY TALKS – research tells us that people who say something during the first ten minutes of a workshop will continue to contribute throughout the session. So, it is important to have a small exercise at the beginning where everybody gets the opportunity to say something.

COMMUNICATE IN WRITING – even if everyone has their say, just talking will not give you the full picture. Make sure that you also have parts of your workshop where people communicate in writing, for instance using post-It notes or big sheets of paper.

TAKE NOTES – appoint someone to take notes so that there is a record of what was said during the workshop.

FOLLOW UP – make sure that everybody who attended the workshop gets the opportunity to react to your documentation.
Once the first draft is complete, send it to everyone who attended or share it through a file sharing service for a couple of weeks.

HOW TO CREATE IMPACT

  So, you have engaged people and created specific policy recommendations for your region. But, how do you convert them from just being part of a report into real actions? Implementation is the next thing to consider.

MAKE AN IMPLEMENTATION PLAN
Most projects fail because there is no plan in place to take the recommendations and turn them into actions. So, plan for this from the beginning and also make sure that your plan has the support of people that can make things happen!

FIND YOUR AMBASSADORS
You can‘t do everything on your own. So, make sure you have support at all levels: politicians, public officials, journalists, people from universities and industry. Twenty people supporting you directly can influence a thousand – and then things start happening.

GO PUBLIC
Find relevant events in your region and present the recommendations there. Make a presentation that is easy to understand and access so that others can also use it.
Spread your presentation amongst your ambassadors; convince them to use it when they do presentations. Creating impact is about reaching as many people as possible.

GO FOR THE LOW HANGING FRUIT 
Always start with something that is easy. Choose the recommendations that are the most easy to implement and take action on them. It will not only give you some confidence, but it will also convince other people that things can be done. Then, you can move on to the things that are more complex.

ALLOW FAILURE 
You will make mistakes. Realise that and try to learn something from your mistakes and move forward. It is equally important to allow others to make mistakes and to learn from their failures too.