Communicate · Plan

Strategy workshop design

Designs the room a strategy decision is actually made in — who attends, what is decided versus consulted, and what leaves as a decision rather than an action to revisit.

Stage

04 Plan

Works at

All levels

Maturity

Scaling → Large organisation

Time

Two hours to design a session

What it is

A badly composed room is the commonest reason a sound analysis changes nothing. This designs the session itself as a deliberate instrument — who is in the room and who is not, what the session is actually deciding versus merely consulting on, what the pre-read is, and what specifically leaves the room as a decision rather than an action to revisit.

Who attends, and who deliberately does not: Both stated explicitly. A session with everyone loosely invited defaults to consultation; a session with the wrong person absent cannot actually decide.
Decide versus consult: Named for the session as a whole and, where it varies, for each agenda item. A room that thinks it is deciding and is actually being consulted leaves disappointed and disengaged.
The pre-read: What the room needs to have absorbed before arriving, so the session time is spent deciding rather than being briefed live. A session that opens with a presentation of information everybody should already have wastes the room's most valuable hours.
What leaves the room: A specific, written decision — not an action to 'follow up' that quietly becomes nobody's job. The test of a well-designed session is whether the record afterward matches what everyone in the room believes was decided.
The decision log: Captured live, in the room, and confirmed before people leave — not reconstructed afterward from memory, which is where genuine disagreements about what was decided originate.

The mistake people makeInviting everyone loosely rather than deciding deliberately, which produces a session that defaults to consultation regardless of what it was meant to decide — and then a written summary afterward that several attendees genuinely disagree with.

What it’s forA strategy session is being planned and the design of the room itself has not been deliberately thought through.

What it’s not forThe output needed is a written decision that does not require a room — a memo or a paper will do it faster and more precisely.

How you run it

Write the decision this session exists to makeOne sentence. If it cannot be written in one sentence, the session does not yet have a clear enough purpose to design around.
Decide who attends and who deliberately does notBoth stated, and both defensible if questioned. A missing decision-maker means the session cannot actually decide, whatever else goes well.
Name decide versus consult for the session, and per item if it variesA room that expected to decide and was actually consulted leaves disengaged from everything that follows.
Set the pre-readWhat the room needs to have absorbed before arriving, so session time goes to deciding rather than being briefed live.
Capture the decision log in the room, and confirm it before anyone leavesNot reconstructed afterward from memory. Confirming it live is what prevents the genuine disagreement about what was decided that shows up a week later.

The prompt

Two ways to run it

Run this tool in your own Claude

The short prompt starts your partner against the library on your disk. The long one carries everything with it and needs nothing installed.

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🔒 Prompt locked

Everything above is free — what this tool is, what it is for, what it is not for, and how to run it as a workshop. Three tool prompts a month are free with an account; beyond three, and for the printable canvas, it is the paid part.

See plans — from £19 a month

Your playbook

It lands in the earliest stage this tool suits. Move it on the Playbook page.

You’ll need

The specific decision this session exists to make, stated in one sentence
Who genuinely needs to be in the room to make that decision, and who does not
What pre-read is needed for the room to arrive informed rather than being briefed live

You’ll end up with

A room composed deliberately, with attendees and deliberate absences both stated
A clear line between what is being decided and what is merely being consulted on
A decision log that leaves the room as a record, not an action to write up later and hope survives

Runs well with

AI operating model options AI risk classification and governance Alliance and partnership design Assumption log