I’m Ben, and this is the first episode of DesignProductMarketing, the show that brings you insights from experts, agency secrets, and actionable advice for marketers, product leaders, and designers. These fields are grouped because the highest-performing teams are merging the roles that do the work more and more every day.

For those who are new here, I’m Ben Allgood. I began my career in full-stack digital work for films and music. Twenty years ago, which seems like a long time, the best agencies were typically small—often less than 15 people. We did everything, from conceptualizing marketing campaigns to designing the creative and engineering the experiences. It was an incredible time to learn how teams, projects, and companies go to market.

But things changed, and so did I. Labels like Warner Records were migrating to CMS platforms. DreamWorks was consolidating films into single platforms, and developing ads became more lucrative than building websites. The way people and fans engaged with digital campaigns and experiences shifted. That’s when I transitioned to a SaaS company, diving into what it takes to bring a series of products to market while executing digital experiences for marketing, design, and product teams at companies like Panasonic and Pinterest.

Recently, though, I’ve noticed another shift. Job roles, as have the products and channels they support, have become highly segmented. The lines between what a design team should do versus what a product manager is responsible for have blurred. Even the roles of Sales versus Marketing have become more complicated, with increasingly complex expectations and metrics. The best teams are now small groups of individuals with ‘unicorn’ skills—the combined expertise of a product leader, a marketing guru, and someone who deeply understands design.

These teams and individuals excel at things most others lack: They can build a real, robust strategy for their departments, projects, and products. They know how to get the most out of a scrappy and lean team. They’re incredibly efficient, speaking the same language across disciplines—which also means they’re great at telling compelling stories and making others care about what they’re doing. And they can repeat that magical formula on demand.

This show is about identifying what greatness looks like in these individuals and teams and teaching you how they do it. Because if there’s one thing they don’t do incredibly well, it’s sharing their secrets.

This week’s episode focuses on how to start leading teams now with specific workshops. The workshop templates for Miro can be downloaded at designproductmarketing.com.

Workshopping is an exciting concept because many people and companies talk about it. Agencies, in particular, often waste their time with it. I’ve always been amazed at how workshops almost always waste time because people and teams need to prepare and be more skilled at delivering them.

However, it can be a superpower. If you can control the whiteboard or the screen share, you can control the meeting. Learning to turn that part of your brain into a laser-precise tool to cut through noise and gain clarity is something you don’t see often, but I’m going to show you how to do that.

Alright, this might sound pretty tactical—just a few workshops to lead teams, right? Well, kind of. The critical part is understanding the fundamentals: Storytelling, Scenario Planning, and Skill Induction.

We’ve talked a lot, so let’s move on to the first workshop, which is about where to focus your energy and focus.

This workshop provides a lot of valuable data. If you and your team think you know where to focus, you’ve likely defined where you’re trying to go and maybe have some ideas on what could stop you. That’s early KPIs; that’s the beginning of a diagnosis in a strategy. More importantly, it can show teams that they may need to go back and actually think about the situation more. It’s critical to know that the best people and teams think deeply about their situation so they can talk about and understand what’s happening. If you or your team can’t do that, you’ve got some work to do. But let’s assume you’re good there.

This first workshop has several names and can be done in several ways, but the most successful way I’ve seen it organized is something I call the ‘Focus Workshop’ or the ‘4 C’s.’ When I describe it to people, I tell them it helps teams align on where to place their bets.

So, let’s zoom out and talk about the Focus Workshop. Let’s say you’re a designer, a marketing person, or a product leader. What do you do when it’s the beginning of the year or quarter, or sales are down, and you need to figure out what to do? This is the perfect workshop to help get things going.

First, you’ll gather your top people and start collecting information. This can be broad or specific, but you’re trying to gather challenges, goals, problems, and big topics that seem to be issues around the company or product. The goal of this collection phase is to give each project or challenge some scope so people can understand it.

Next, once the team has enough content and context and understands the ideas and challenges that have been identified, it’s time to choose what to focus on. The team selects which issue makes the most sense to focus on and develops a solution. It’s critical that everyone really understands what has been chosen.

Now that the team has collected and discussed the situation and chosen where to focus their energy, they can create multiple solutions to achieve their goals and solve the selected challenge. At this point, you don’t need a requirements document; you just need something actionable that addresses the chosen challenge or idea.

Lastly, it’s time to devise a few solutions and decide which to de-prioritize. If you’ve made it here, you know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, why you aren’t doing other things, and you have a platform for success in starting a new project, campaign, or feature.

I used this at an agency to help them agree that their account management capability was suffering from a lack of structure and intent. This allowed them to effectively create better account plans and hit growth targets. I’ve used this workshop framework for a top-three defense contractor redoing their .com, creative departments trying to deliver better work, and even medical companies trying to generate more effective marketing campaigns. This Focus Workshop WORKS.

Let’s move to the next workshop—probably my favorite to do solo or as a team—the Strategy Workshop. This was developed from one of my all-time favorite books, Good Strategy Bad Strategy.

We’re going to workshop a strategy, so it’s essential to understand what a legitimate strategy actually consists of. That includes understanding the situation, a guiding policy, coherent actions, and the ability to communicate the strategy effectively.

The first part of the workshop is all about problem diagnosis. The workshop begins with a thorough analysis of the organization’s or team’s problem or challenge. This phase is critical because a clear understanding of the problem is essential for developing an effective strategy. The team engages in discussions and exercises to uncover the root cause of the problem rather than just addressing symptoms.

Once the problem is clearly defined, the next step is to create a guiding policy. This overarching approach or philosophy will guide the team’s actions. It provides a framework for decision-making and helps align the team on a joint approach. The guiding policy should be realistic and actionable, setting the direction for the strategy.

The final step involves identifying specific actions to implement the strategy. These actions must be coherent, meaning they should work together synergistically to solve the problem and achieve the objective. The workshop emphasizes the importance of focus and prioritization, ensuring that the team commits to actions that will have the most impact.

To make this workshop as effective as possible, a few things need to be true: First, the problem must be significant enough to require a strategy. Second, you must know enough about what’s happening to clearly define and understand the situation or problem. The problem must stand up to scrutiny—it should be a genuine issue that can be explained with concrete examples.

Many people think strategy and tactics are opposites, but they’re not. A good strategy includes the tactics needed to solve the problem. However, a problem that’s complicated enough can’t usually be solved with just any tactic without the right policy, team alignment, and resources in place.

I’ve created what I believe to be the most helpful workshop template for creating complete—and even rapid—strategies when appropriate. For the first time, I’m sharing this for free on Miro. Head to designproductmarketing.com to grab it.

Maybe I lied—this might actually be my favorite workshop. It’s also an incredible way to interview companies during the job selection. This workshop is one of the best ways to build trust, collaboration, and a shared sense of purpose within a team. I call it the ‘Where Are We in a Year?‘

Start the workshop by asking team members: Imagine it’s been a year, and we accomplished everything we set out to do. We were wildly successful. How would we describe what we did? How would we hope others describe what we did? What went so well, and how did we provide so much value? What change did we bring that was super successful?

Capture all of the notes. This is also a good point to unveil your pre-written vision statement, if you have one, to see how it aligns with what others have written. In some cases, their input can serve as significant amendments; in others, you may want to acknowledge their ideas but set them aside to maintain focus. It’s important to remind everyone that this is a challenging exercise. Suppose someone has a vision that’s far out. In that case, it can be okay if the feeling behind it can be interpreted—things like being seen as innovative, risk-takers, optimistic, challenging the status quo, or data-driven. You want to keep this meeting constructive and avoid letting it turn negative.

Next, ask the team: How can we ensure that vision becomes a reality?

This workshop is simple but effective. You can take your time with it. It’s always revisitable during 1:1s, team meetings, or when developing the team or hiring to fill gaps.

Thanks for joining me on the first episode of DesignProductMarketing every Sunday. Head over to designproductmarketing.com to read the transcript and download the workshop assets from this episode. Join us next week as we dive into the current strategies of the presidential race in America—what’s working, what’s not, and some of the technology being used.

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