The Easiest Way to Future-Proof Your Career Right Now, For Free

Career planning in today's business environment can be tricky. Find out which skills will make you an MVP of any team and future-proof your career today.

From the upsurge of rapid technological advancements, rise of automation and AI, to unexpected pandemic outbreaks, there’s plenty of uncertainty in the job market right now. You want to plan for career progression (or even just career stability, for that matter) but how can you know for sure which skills will be in demand, and which industries will exist in 10-years time? Where does this rapid innovation leave us in our careers? Good news – the answer isn’t unemployed unless you refuse to adapt.

Let’s face it, there is no way to predict what the job market of the future will look like with 100% accuracy. But the good news is, you don’t need to predict to future proof your career. There’s one skill that keeps getting overlooked all too often. A skill that can transform your career (and life) and make you indispensable to any company or team.

The best part? It does NOT involve re-qualifying yourself as a STEM specialist, investing in a coding bootcamp (unless you really want to), or going through a lengthy process of getting another formal degree. While all those things are GREAT, and will most likely give you a competitive edge, not everyone can just take a few years off on a whim and go back to uni. There’s another, easier and, dare we say it, more enjoyable way to make sure you’ll stay relevant in any economic situation.

Ready to future proof your career? Then let’s dive right in!

Workshops are a career-changer that will help you stay afloat…in any market

Whoa, that’s a bold claim to make. How can we be so sure that workshops can single-handedly propel someone’s career?

Quite simply, because we’ve witnessed it happen many times over. In fact, our very own CEO, Jonathan Courtney, once changed his entire company’s business model and pivoted from leading a traditional design agency to running workshops. The effect it had? Going from barely profitable, to a multi-million dollar business, working with the likes of Google, Slack, and Netflix (you can read allll about it here)

Jonathan Courtney on why running workshops is the next step in getting your promotion

As Jon puts it: “When I discovered the power of workshopsI couldn’t believe everyone, everywhere wasn’t running them already! The only conclusion I could come to was people need step-by-step guidance to teach them which workshop to run in any situation.“

We’ve made it our mission to help people transform the way they work, and have been diligently pumping out an avalanche of free content and resources to help people adopt the new way of working and become Workshoppers. And then one day, the idea came to go even one step further… to write The Workshopper Playbook*an entire book on how to create and run Workshops. Which is exactly what Jon did,  (can we get a woop woop?) and this book is out NOW!

*We’re giving away the first 1,500 copies for FREE, you’ll just need to cover shipping. Hot off the press, get it here, only while stocks last.

But let’s backtrack a bit, and look exactly at why you need workshops and how they will make you the MVP of any team.

Bringing the real problem to the surface

The default way of working in teams–having no structure–is broken. It’s a fundamentally bad way to do meaningful work and get things done. Which is a shame, since regardless of which position you’re working in, collaborating with other people is unavoidable.

I couldn’t believe everyone, everywhere wasn’t running workshops already! The only conclusion I could come to was people need step-by-step guidance to teach them which workshop to run in any situation.

JONATHAN COURTNEY

Working together, collaboratively, is one of the hardest things for people to do smoothly, both in personal and professional lives. Just think of the variations in working-style, different temperaments, way to process information, different communication styles, gaps in seniority, hidden agendas and well with all of this, you have it–a recipe for disaster.

Do you remember starting at your new job? When you were excited and energized, ready to conquer the career world, get things moving and do work that matters? Well we’re willing to bet your initial excitement wore off pretty quickly, faced with the mundane reality of having to navigate politics, bureaucracy, complex processes and sit through endless, excruciating meetings.

The kind of meetings that would inevitably go off-topic, devolve into endless discussions, and would bring no tangible outcomes other than scheduling a follow-up meeting. Thing is, these meetings are deadly to productive work, not only because they leave all participants drained, but because they don’t do their main job. That is, providing clarity and alignment to a project.

Without a set of tools and processes in place, teams are just doing busy work.

It’s a plague of nearly every company – whether they are a startup, a small business, or a large corporation. Yes, including Silicon Valley’s biggest players. And it’s costing them millions.

Workshops are an antidote to that. They break the faulty dynamics of working in groups by installing the right processes and systems into place. What’s the outcome? Faster project cycles, better ideas, and (our fave!) more enjoyable work.

Which is exactly why…

Workshop facilitation is a skill all companies are after

Companies are obsessed about making their processes smoother, team work more efficient, and having faster turn-around than their competitors. But if teams everywhere struggle to do their best work, they need a guide, a facilitator, someone who can guide them through the challenges, and enable their teams to do their best work (aka a Workshopper, aka YOU!)

In fact, companies have caught on, and are switching the gears to adapt to the new way of working. Wayfair uses Design Sprints to stay ahead of their competition. Zurich Insurance masters corporate innovation by running workshops. LEGO run workshops at scale, across their entire organisation! We could go on, and on, and on…. We’ve run workshops for hundreds of companies all across the world, including Silicon Valley giants like Google, Uber, and Slack. We speak from experience when we say–there’s a huge demand for Workshoppers in the organisations.

Here’s a list of things companies are ALWAYS after, especially in times of uncertainty or downturn. Coincidentally, it’s the list of skills you get once you become a Workshopper as well:

  • Help teams work better together and enable them to do their best work
  • Gaining the ability to implement tools that help companies be quicker, leaner, and more effective than their competitors
  • ​Understand frameworks for prioritising the right projects and reaching actionable outcomes
  • ​Learn to make bulletproof decisions on a product feature or test that no one can agree on
  • Define your company vision and values in an inclusive way
  • ​Easily align your team with a common goal and solution
  • Move your team faster, getting results and seeing the positive impact this has on your experiences of work everyday

Sounds like a nice skillset to have, right? Best part is, you can learn how to run your own show-stopping workshops in no time, and we’re here to help guide you through the process.

Learn how to start running your own workshops today! The first edition of The Workshopper Playbook is out NOW, and you can get it here, first 1,500 copies go out for FREE (just cover shipping), only while stocks last.

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Do workshops work for every challenge?

We’ve run decision-making workshops, innovation workshops, strategy workshops, problem-solving workshops, marketing workshops….you name it. So we’re pretty confident when we say you can whip up a workshop for EVERY challenge. There’s one thing you have to keep in mind though…

It’s not one size fits all.

You have to adapt the framework to your current challenge, number of participants, industry you’re working in, etc. It’s not rocket science, but you need to follow a set of ground rules. Otherwise you’ll be running the risk of wasting everyone’s time, flopping it, and never coming back to run workshops again (which would be a real shame).

Without a set of tools and processes in place, teams are just doing busy work. Workshops are an antidote to that.

JONATHAN COURTNEY

It’s not easy to find this sort of information online, or offline (trust us, we’ve tried!) Which is why we’re paying it forward and laying out all the knowledge we have in The Workshopper Playbook. And we’ll give the first 1500 copies out for FREE (you just have to cover shipping). We can’t guarantee that stocks will be full by the time you’re reading this though, so we’d advise you to get it ASAP.

Here’s what’s inside the book

  • ​Step-by-step workshops explained so that you can run them with any team to effectively solve problems you often face
  • Facilitation hacks we have developed over 8+ years working with huge companies that are proven to align any team
  • The ultimate framework for designing and running any type of workshop ​to make creative solutions and important decisions with your team by implementing the Workshopper Mindset

So if you’re ready to transform your career, and become a workshopper TODAY – claim your free* book here. There is no guarantee when you click the link there will be any books left – so get a move on!

*you just have to cover the shipping costs

AJ&Smart Team

A team of pro workshop facilitators with 9+ years of experience.