How do we turn spectators into contributors?

The All Hands on Deck

YEAR: 2024
SCALE: 150 PEOPLE
CONTEXT: COMPANY-WIDE EXPERIENCE
STATUS: REAL-WORLD

Hands opening the custom workshop materials box — One box held the complete experience, from private reflection to collective decision.

THE PROVOCATION

A room full of people is not the same thing as participation.

A software CEO asked for a problem-solving session that felt collective. The company had problems to confront ahead of its annual All-Hands meetup, and the leadership team needed a way to funnel the voices of 150 team members into a unified prioritiy list in a way that also doubled as a team building exercise.

THE SITUATION

The usual voices already knew how to occupy the room.

Titles, confidence, proximity to leadership, and conversational horsepower could easily determine which problems received attention. Meanwhile, quieter employees, remote participants, and people closer to the day-to-day friction risked becoming an audience for decisions about their own work.

“We need a problem-solving session that feels collective.”

A large hotel workshop room filled with participants — The challenge was not filling the room. It was redistributing who had permission to shape it.

THE INTERVENTION

I designed a system that distributed permission.

The experience began before the meetup. Employees identified problems remotely, creating an input channel that did not depend on speaking first, speaking loudly, or holding the right title.

Surface the truth

Gather friction before the room can filter it through hierarchy.

Recompose the room

Build mixed-perspective teams instead of familiar power clusters.

Make thinking tangible

Give people physical structures that turn discussion into visible progress.

Force convergence

Move every group from individual thought to one accountable proposal.

THE MATERIAL SYSTEM

The materials were not decoration. They were choreography.

Every component told participants what to do, when to do it, and how their individual thinking would become a shared decision.

Exploded diagram showing the workshop instruction system and four stages — One connected system guided the room through four deliberate stages.

Diagram showing individual templates feeding into a shared final solution — Private reflection became independent ideation, then collective synthesis, then one final commitment.

Participants building a proposal together using the workshop materials — The structure gave people something to make together, not merely something to discuss.

MY ROLE

I was responsible for the whole thing happening.

I shaped the premise, designed the mechanics, directed the materials designer, aligned leadership, facilitated the room, protected the pace, and kept 150 people moving toward a decision. My job was not to decorate a workshop. It was to create the conditions in which a company could see its problems together, decide together, and leave with enough ownership to act.

Lead facilitator directing a large hotel workshop — Live facilitation environment.

Experience strategy
Executive alignment
Facilitation design
Physical systems
Room direction
Decision architecture

WHAT HAPPENED

The room produced more than energy.

Participants moved from anonymous friction to visible proposals, public review, and shared judgment. The company identified and prioritized its most consequential problems, then implemented the three ideas the room believed mattered most.

A large group reviewing proposals during a gallery walk — Gallery walk and collective review.

150
PEOPLE ENGAGED: 3
IDEAS IMPLEMENTED: 1
SHARED FIELD OF RESPONSIBILITY

THE TRANSFERABLE PRINCIPLE

Participation is not attendance. It is permission made structural.

The work was not the workshop. The work was redistributing ownership of the company's problems to the people capable of changing them.