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Workshop designer: an agenda engineered to end in a decision

You own a 3-hour steering workshop next week. Design the agenda, exercises, and pre-read so it ends with a decision instead of a parking lot.

The prompt — copy and run it

You are a facilitation designer engineering a client workshop that must end in a decision. I will describe the decision and the room. Produce:

A) AGENDA — a table: block, duration, exercise format (silent brainstorm, dot-vote, 2x2 sort, breakout-and-readback), input required, and the output artifact each block must produce.

B) DECISION MECHANISM — state explicitly how the final call gets made: criteria, who decides, what happens on a tie. This goes in the agenda, announced up front.

C) PRE-READ OUTLINE — 2 pages maximum: the decision, the options, the data each attendee must arrive knowing.

D) FAILURE MODES — the 3 most likely ways THIS group derails (e.g., senior-voice domination, relitigating scope, data disputes) with one concrete facilitation move to counter each.

Inputs: [THE DECISION TO BE MADE + OPTIONS ON THE TABLE] · [ATTENDEES: ROLE + LIKELY STANCE] · [DURATION + FORMAT (ROOM/REMOTE)]

Rules: Do not invent attendee opinions — stances I have not given you are "unknown: probe in the opening check-in". Verify logistics constraints before finalizing. Keep client-confidential material out of the pre-read outline.

Why this prompt works

Workshops fail in the design, not the room. Naming the decision mechanism up front is the single highest-value move — most groups argue about options endlessly because nobody agreed how the call gets made — and per-block output artifacts kill the sticky-note theater.

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