From Running Workshops To Creating A Business

Originally Published on June 9, 2017 — Reprinted to Medium

Over the last few months or so, we have been going around Australia and New Zealand delivering workshops over 8 locations focusing on Speed To Value. Each of us have been going out there telling our stories in our own way.

Delivering these workshops this week-in / week-out across the region was not easy at times. It was definitely work but work that we are all passionate about. The workshop presentations and demonstrations were designed, built and delivered locally. What we have is our own farmers market — we are deliver locally grown produce. I’m really loving it.

At times, it can be scary though to do that. You don’t know what will happen. It’s like since last year — we’ve gone out there to change it up. Take stock into what we did, and throw it up and see what makes sense. Nothing was sacred. All ideas were on the table. What it has allows us to do is to be more rounded in the way we have delivered these workshops giving us more experience to handle different situations, questions, points of view.

One habit that we have is to review. After each workshop, we discuss the feedback, we see that what worked and what didn’t. And see what we can achieve between workshops to make the next one better. I personally saw the progression from the first session in Auckland for us and to the last one of our tour in Brisbane — BIG difference. It wasn’t that Auckland was bad — it was that we learnt what worked and what didn’t. We learnt how to take a 2 day workshop into a 1 day. We also learnt that the workshops needed different audiences. We also learnt that we had recurring attendees across all of the workshops.

We actually found ourselves as product owners where the product was the workshops and us as a team was a business. Even as recent as yesterday, we were looking at these workshops and articles as not workshops but as products. Not from the perspective of delivering the workshops as outcomes or sales tools but from the perspective of creating an environment were we all treated what we were doing as a business. We discussed goals, roadmaps, releases, features, priorities, critical events, customers, marketing, sales, operations.

Using the word product is a nice fit for what we are doing and what is being delivered. Because there is a so much more to consider than the just “software” or “solution”. Here’s a couple of things that we’ve been talking about and putting into place.

I’ve seen over the last couple of weeks that some others that have shaped the way I’ve been thinking about what we do, what we are delivering and how we manage the creation of new products.

The interesting part of this process is including people into the whole process of creating the new product. Having said this a few times before — quicker you can get feedback and validation then better you are. And having the mentality to adapt, adopt and re-define the product and re-test it — the better. Getting people to be involved in the process means that people are vested all through the process to ultimately come out with a better product. I expect that this will take more energy in terms of collaboration, communication and expectations but I support the team at Corilla in making this move.

It has been an interesting year so far and there have been many changes. We’re still on a mission. We’re keen to drive this change and to deliver more to our customers and to the community. And to do that, we’re changing ourselves and our mentality from running workshops and demos to creating a business. We’ll see where this takes us.

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