Workshops & Labs
The Spotted Ape
Workshops & Labs
Structured working sessions for leadership teams facing consequential choices, unsettled assumptions or capabilities they need to develop.
Work on the decision, not the deck
A workshop should leave useful work behind.
The engagements below are designed around a real organisational question. Participants examine choices and assumptions, practise a relevant capability and make a working artefact they can take into the next conversation.
Every programme is scoped around its participants, decision, evidence, constraints and intended use. Formats and durations described as proposed below are starting points for discussion, not confirmed delivery commitments. No session by itself guarantees strategic alignment or implementation.
01 / Executive leadership, strategy and business-unit teams
Strategic Decision Workshop
The problem
An organisation can have extensive planning material without a clear account of where it will compete, how it expects to win, or what it must be willing to stop doing. More analysis may refine the plan while leaving the choices unresolved.
Who should attend
Executive leaders, strategy directors and business-unit leaders who can shape or sponsor a consequential strategic choice. The right participants depend on the arena and capabilities under discussion.
Questions the team works on
This workshop uses the Strategy Choice Cascade described in Playing to Win by A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin. The Spotted Ape facilitates its application to the team’s decisions, assumptions and capabilities. The questions below adapt that structure.
- What does success mean for this organisation?
- Which customers, needs, markets or channels will it focus on—and which will it exclude?
- Why will those customers choose it over the alternatives?
- What must the organisation be able to do well to deliver that advantage?
- Which management practices, measures and decision processes will support those capabilities?
What participants do
Participants frame the decision and use the Strategy Choice Cascade to connect their strategic choices. Leaders map boundaries across relevant customers, needs, geographies or channels, then examine whether the proposed competitive advantage is credible within those boundaries. They identify required capabilities and systems rather than treating them as a later implementation list.
Drawing on Roger Martin’s approach to strategic inquiry, participants ask: “What would have to be true for this option to succeed?” They turn assumptions into questions that could change the decision. In a stakeholder review exercise, another group takes the position of a selective customer, a capable competitor or a sceptical decision-maker and challenges the proposed choices. Participants distinguish a persuasive argument from an assumption that still needs evidence.
What the team develops
A connected set of strategic choices: what success means, where to compete, how to create an advantage, and the capabilities and management practices required. The team also identifies exclusions and priority assumptions to test.
What participants leave with
Participants leave with a one-page record of strategic choices and assumptions, structured using the Strategy Choice Cascade. It records the connected choices and makes unresolved assumptions visible. It is a basis for further evidence and executive decision-making, not a substitute for that work.
Proposed format
Possible formats include a one-day intensive or a three-session series. The suitable format, duration, preparation and follow-up need to be confirmed during scoping.
02 / Transformation, product, operations and learning leaders
Knowledge Sharing & Organisational Learning Lab
The problem
Organisations invest in repositories, procedures and training, yet important knowledge may remain hard to find, interpret or apply in changing situations. Experienced practitioners may carry crucial know-how that never travels beyond the immediate team.
Who should attend
Leaders responsible for organisational learning, transformation, product or operations, together with practitioners who understand where work actually happens and how expertise develops.
What participants do
Participants map a knowledge ecology around a concrete organisational challenge. They distinguish codified knowledge from knowledge developed through practice, identify where people learn from one another and trace what happens when knowledge moves between teams, tools and decisions.
The group looks for the conditions that help expertise travel: communities of practice, useful connections to people at the edge of the work, opportunities to observe and try, and places to make or test a new approach. It then designs a bounded creation space or experiment: who takes part, what work they can access, what they may try, what feedback matters and how learning returns to a decision.
Where AI has entered the workflow, participants can map what people and systems produce, which judgements remain consequential, where review or intervention belongs, and which practices should remain available for learning.
What the team develops
A practical account of knowledge stocks and flows, tacit expertise, relationships and learning conditions. The focus is not to replace repositories or conventional training, but to connect them to use, feedback and adaptation.
What participants leave with
A knowledge-flow and organisational-learning blueprint showing a priority challenge, relevant people and knowledge, important hand-offs, proposed creation spaces or learning practices, and questions to test. Depending on scope, this may include a Human Agency Map or a workflow and decision-rights view.
Proposed format
A two-day applied lab is a possible format. Duration, participation and delivery mode are unconfirmed and should be agreed around the problem and available evidence.
03 / Innovation, product and cross-functional leadership teams
Strategy Prototyping Studio
The problem
Teams may keep optimising a familiar model because evidence and established categories make it easier to improve what is already legible than to imagine a different arena. Alternatively, exploratory activity can produce concepts without a path to a strategic decision.
Who should attend
Innovation leaders, product strategists and cross-functional teams with a live strategic question or uncertain opportunity to examine.
What participants do
Drawing on John Seely Brown’s account of learning, the studio works across three modes: knowing, bringing evidence and experience into view; making, giving a possibility a form that can be examined; and playing, changing perspective and reframing the question.
Participants name what they know, what remains uncertain and what they currently assume. They then sketch alternatives to the existing model, form a hypothesis about how an alternative could work and build a scenario prototype that makes the idea discussable. A stakeholder review challenges the proposal from another perspective. Drawing on Roger Martin’s strategic inquiry, the team identifies the conditions each alternative requires, evidence that would challenge it, and a focused experiment to inform the next decision.
Making a prototype is not presented as evidence that an idea will work. It gives people something concrete to challenge, compare and revise.
What the team develops
The ability to move between analysis, imagination and practical testing without confusing a plausible story with validated evidence.
What participants leave with
Alternative strategic hypotheses, scenario prototypes, a plan for testing priority assumptions and visual sketches of possible business models. The final set depends on the question and the work completed in the session.
Proposed format
A one-day studio is a possible format. The format and time required depend on the scope of the opportunity and whether follow-up testing is included.
04 / Senior leadership and mixed stakeholder groups
Executive Offsites & Custom Masterclasses
An offsite is useful when a group needs protected time to work through a real decision, not simply to discuss strategy in a different room. A custom masterclass can introduce a shared language and then move directly into application, scenario work and synthesis.
We agree the decision, participant profile, learning outcomes, material, format, facilitation role and intended outputs in advance. Modules can combine strategic decision-making, knowledge sharing and strategy prototyping. Existing work on judgement under abundance, human–AI workflows, the Agentic Designer and the !Khairos capability progression can inform activities or follow-up where relevant; they are not a second product catalogue.
Outputs are agreed for the engagement. They may include a record of strategic choices, an assumption-testing plan, a knowledge-flow map, scenario prototypes or an agreed record of decision responsibilities. A workshop artefact records work completed in the room; it does not imply executive endorsement, implementation or a guaranteed result.
Illustrative programme / timing to confirm
Strategic Decisions & Organisational Learning Masterclass
This masterclass uses the Strategy Choice Cascade described in Playing to Win by A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin alongside practical work on the capabilities and knowledge sharing needed to act. It is designed for senior leaders, general managers and strategy directors. The sequence below is an illustrative programme, not a confirmed schedule or a claim that one day is sufficient for every strategic question.
- 09:00–09:30 · Strategic framing and the Strategy Choice CascadeClarify the decision and connect ambition, competitive focus, advantage, capabilities and supporting management practices.
- 09:30–10:15 · Choose where to compete—and what to excludeMap boundaries across relevant customers, needs, channels or geographies; make exclusions visible.
- 10:15–10:30 · BreakProtected pause and room reset.
- 10:30–11:15 · Identify the conditions each option requiresIdentify assumptions behind a strategic choice and evidence that could test them.
- 11:15–12:00 · Stakeholder reviewReview a team’s proposed choices from another stakeholder’s position; surface gaps, risks and unanswered questions.
- 12:00–13:00 · LunchProtected break.
- 13:00–13:45 · Knowledge stocks and flowsExplore what is codified, what is learned through practice and where knowledge must move.
- 13:45–14:45 · Designing a creation spaceMap tacit knowledge and relationships; sketch a bounded setting for making, exchange and experimentation.
- 14:45–15:00 · BreakProtected pause.
- 15:00–16:00 · Executive synthesisRevise the strategic choices, record unresolved assumptions and agree who will investigate the next questions.
The learning design distinguishes Knowledge (what participants need to understand), Skills (what they need to practise) and Wisdom (what they need to judge under uncertainty). It varies explanation, individual and group application, scenario challenge and synthesis to serve those outcomes. The precise rhythm, breaks, facilitation and timetable must be adapted to participants and delivery context.
The intended core output is a working one-page record of strategic choices and assumptions, structured using the Strategy Choice Cascade. It includes priority assumptions to test and an initial account of the learning and capabilities the choices require. It is not represented as a signed-off strategy or a validated diagnostic.
How we design the work
Specific outcomes. Structured practice. Useful artefacts.
Audience profile and learning outcomes shape the activity. Concepts are introduced only where they help participants do the work. Practice is followed by discussion or critique; scenarios let participants examine choices and consequences from a different position. Breaks and format changes are planned to suit the session rather than imposed as a universal rhythm.
The work combines established strategic choice and organisational learning approaches with learning activities designed around the team’s decision. It retains The Spotted Ape’s concern with judgement, human agency and the consequences of delegating work. It does not imply a formal partnership with the scholars or institutions whose ideas inform it.
Before we begin
Practical questions
Is this AI tools training?
Participants practise framing, evaluating and justifying decisions, and design where people and machines may act. Tool use supports those activities; the sessions are not a tour of AI features.
Do participants need technical knowledge?
No coding knowledge is required. We agree the starting point in advance, including participants’ experience with AI.
Is it tied to ChatGPT or a particular platform?
The workshops can use different platforms. Tool choices for exercises are agreed with your organisation.
Can we use our own workflows?
Yes. We can work with a relevant workflow or document, subject to agreed confidentiality and tool-use boundaries. An anonymised or synthetic example is an alternative.
Is it suitable for leadership teams?
The briefing helps leaders separate production from judgement and identify capabilities at risk of erosion. A workflow lab can examine how their team reviews work, delegates decisions and responds to failure.
Can workshops be delivered virtually?
Discuss the proposed format, group size and collaboration needs with us. Delivery arrangements are agreed before an engagement is confirmed.
How is confidentiality handled?
We agree what material can be used, which platforms are permitted and what must be anonymised or excluded. Do not send confidential documents with an initial enquiry.
Can it fit our existing AI policies?
Yes. Existing policies and governance requirements become constraints for the exercises and workflow design. Specific arrangements are agreed during scoping.