T.M. Kayode

Monday, August 12 – Saturday, August 17, 2024

This week, I had the chance to read a few books that truly resonated with me. As someone who juggles multiple roles in life, I’ve reached a stage where I no longer have the luxury of spending time on irrelevant material. My time is precious, so I carefully choose what to read. Fortunately, the books I selected served their purpose well, and I’d love to share the insights I gained from them.

Let’s start with the first one.

The Workshopper Playbook by Jonathan Courtney

I stumbled upon Jonathan Courtney on Instagram, where he was promoting a course. Now, if you’re like me, you’ve probably seen countless “gurus” selling courses online. It’s easy to scroll past them, but something about Jonathan’s pitch made me pause. He runs a company that helps teams and organizations achieve their goals through structured workshops.

At first glance, that might sound pretty basic, right? But think about the brainstorming meetings you’ve attended where nothing seemed to get done—everyone talking over each other, discussions meandering off course, and in the end, not much gets resolved. If you’ve experienced this, then you know how frustrating it can be.

That’s what piqued my interest. I’ve been in my share of those meetings, and I wanted to learn how to facilitate more productive sessions. Although I couldn’t afford his full course, I found the next best thing—his book, The Workshopper Playbook. Jonathan offers it for free to those who attend his class, along with other resources. He also recommends additional reading like Sprint by Jake Knapp and Gamestorming by Dave Gray, which I also picked up.

The Workshopper Playbook introduces a method for guiding a team—ideally no more than eight people—through a series of activities designed to achieve their objectives. This process is broken down into four steps: Collect, Choose, Create, and Commit.

1. Collect: In this step, the team identifies what assets they have and what challenges are hindering them from reaching their goals. For example, they might be facing design challenges with a product they’re trying to deploy. The key is to categorize these challenges into themes by the end of this stage.
2. Choose: Once the challenges are identified and grouped, the team decides which ones are the most critical to address.
3. Create: Here, the team brainstorms solutions to the prioritized challenges. All ideas are welcome at this stage, and once all ideas are on the table, they sift through them to curate the most promising ones. Then, they vote on which ideas to execute, ranking them from most to least viable.
4. Commit: Finally, the team takes the best ideas and creates an actionable plan. They use an Effort/Impact scale to divide tasks into four quadrants: Do Now, Make a Task, Make a Project, and Ignore. This framework helps them focus on high-impact, low-effort tasks that can be tackled immediately.

I love how hands-on this book is. The steps are practical, and I can see myself integrating them into my own workflows.

If you’re curious, you can check out Jonathan’s company at Workshopper.

Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, and Braden Kowitz

Next on my reading list was Sprint by Jake Knapp. Jake developed this method during his time at Google, and it’s a five-day process designed to help teams achieve their project goals quickly and effectively. Interestingly, Jonathan Courtney, the author of the first book I read, was inspired by Sprint. In fact, Jake and Jonathan now collaborate on various projects.

Although Sprint is primarily geared towards software development, the principles can be applied across different industries. The book provides a day-by-day breakdown of the sprint process:

• Monday: The team defines the project’s goal and creates a roadmap. Experts are brought in to review the work so far, ensuring that the team is on the right track. The day concludes with choosing a target that will be the focus of the sprint.
• Tuesday: The team works on refining their ideas, sketching out solutions for the chosen target.
• Wednesday: It’s decision time. The team selects the best solutions and creates a storyboard to guide the rest of the sprint.
• Thursday: Prototypes are built based on the storyboard.
• Friday: The prototypes are tested with real customers, and feedback is gathered through interviews.

While the book is structured around a five-day sprint, it emphasizes the importance of adaptability. You can modify the process to fit your specific needs, which makes it a versatile tool for any project.

To Be Continued…

There are two other books I read this week, but to keep this post from getting too lengthy, I’ll save them for another time.

Did you find any of these insights helpful? Have you read any similar books that you’d recommend? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!