Coventry & Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce: developing proportion workshops

Coventry & Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce (CWCC) provide a range of added value services as part of their membership. This includes a programme of subsidised Masterclasses for small businesses intended to enhance organisational or individual performance.

The challenge for CWCC is to find presenters who provide genuine learning rather than use the platform as an opportunity to sell their own services.

The requirement: The challenge for Glued was to find a creative and engaging way to help businesses identify and express what makes their service or product different and valuable to their prospects.

Having delivered one Masterclass on a similar theme we gained a deeper understanding of how delivery could be improved.

The outputs: Determined to avoid a one-way chalk and talk technique, we worked on developing an interactive session. By setting tasks that applied directly to the attendees’ own businesses, we ensured they were engaged throughout the three-hour session.

Progression through a series of steps that related to Glued’s own methodology allowed participants to recognise the research, analysis, distillation and articulation required to develop an authentic and compelling proposition for their businesses.

The Masterclass would be driven by driven by a series of striking imagery, delivered as symbols and prompts to each step in the process. The facilitators would provide third party examples to show how other organisations had concluded each step.

At the beginning of the exercise, attendees form groups of four, away from people with whom they are familiar. A warm up exercise helps to ‘break the ice’, allowing attendees to feel easier about working with one another and being open.

Individually, either in pairs or groups of four, attendees are invited to debate and work on each stage of the process. From time to time, attendees are asked to complete handouts and/or provide feedback for the group as a whole.

Attendees who are struggling with the tasks are invited to share their difficulties with the wider group, while the facilitator works live to overcome the barriers.

The Masterclass concludes with each attendee being asked to write down the next step they will take in order to implement within their business what they have learned or realised during the session. They are then invited to put a timescale to the action they have committed to take. Finally, they are asked to write down the name of a person who they agree to contact and ask to be accountable for ensuring they achieve their stated action.

The results: A valuable and portable workshop that inspires, invigorates and encourages attendees to move their businesses forward, providing thought-provoking ways to think about, operate and promote their enterprises.

In the spirit of the interactive nature of the session, it is probably best to allow attendees to provide reviews.