Meetings maketh the strategy. And research by Duffy and O'Rourke, published in the International Journal of Business Communication (Oct. 2015), says it’s the dialogue that gets you there. Not the geniuses around the table. Not the kick-ass consultant with the dense Powerpoints. It’s the way the dialogue is managed. Even in the last 2 minutes.
Duffy and O’Rourke found that planning the way the conversations would be run at the workshop had a huge impact on the end result. But, paradoxically, putting into the agenda too much structure and content was counter-productive; it hindered productive discourse.
The research says that it's the conversation that's the tool. The Business School models and matrices are there to support the conversation.
Over 20 years ago, David Bohm argued that dialogue is natural and has been partially lost. Simple talk can replace structured analytic technique, to arguably better effect. As the gurus put it: the dialogic exchange accommodates deep analysis through challenging underlying assumptions and exposing thinking.
Or, simply put, the most important thing for your strategy workshop is having a conversation about how everyone sees the situation...it will produce more than you think.