#MONTHLYMYTH: You can’t achieve results in a day.

It’s often assumed that to achieve meaningful engagement, useful outcomes and a good return on investment, you need a lot of resources and a long, complex engagement process.

In reality, well-structured and focused facilitated sessions can deliver valuable insights and real impact - even in a limited timeframe.

COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS & CONCERNS

Here’s a few of the most common misconceptions we often hear from clients. Do any of these worries sound familiar to you or your organisation?

“We need to hear from a large group of people, and that can’t be achieved in a short process.”

“Our content is complex, and we can’t achieve results in a short amount of time.”

“We already know what our stakeholders are thinking, so engagement is a waste of time.”

“Our team isn’t ready to engage, and we don’t have time to prepare.”

“It’s easier for us to just do a survey than interact with people.”

“It’s a big problem, so a short process won’t be valuable.”

“We’re a small team - a workshop will result in too many ideas and be too complicated for us.”

“We don’t really know what we need, so how can a short process be effective?”

“We can only afford to do a pop-up or a survey - at least we’ll get some stats on what the community thinks.”

This type of thinking is limiting and risky!

9 RISKS OF SKIPPING THE CONVERSATION

Avoiding collective, facilitated sessions - whether due to time, budget, or perceived complexity - might seem like the easier option, but it often leads to poorer outcomes, missed insights, and bigger problems down the track.

While many risks stem from the process itself and can be easily managed with the right design, there are also broader risks to the organisation and community - often less controllable - that can be significantly reduced by getting the process right from the start.

PROCESS RISKS

Planning for engagement in isolation means missing the chance to co-design a stronger approach. Without input from key team members and decision-makers, you risk asking the wrong questions, reducing ownership, and ultimately wasting time and resources.
Gathering feedback via engagement methods where people participate individually can result in gathering one-sided feedback and skewed data. You miss out on deeper insights, perspective sharing and outputs that consider collective views.
Without access to information or time to grasp complexities, people may respond reactively and miss the bigger picture, or the trade-offs involved. Engagement that prioritises immediate, individualised responses (such as surveys) over informed conversation limits the quality of outputs.
Asynchronous engagement activities (i.e. lots of people providing individual feedback through a survey) results in lots of data and wishlists that you need to make sense of, wasting time and resources and increasing the risk of misinterpretation of the data.

RISKS TO THE ORGANISATION & COMMUNITY

Skipping internal engagement sessions can leave your team members feeling unheard, result in isolated conversations with staff who don’t have access to all the information and provide views that focus solely on their own role or department.
Failing to engage diverse voices - especially those who rarely participate - risks missing key perspectives and alienating parts of your internal staff or external community.
Processing feedback behind closed doors (instead of in a facilitated group sensemaking forum) can seem secretive, further undermining credibility and trust.
Scared of what people might say or how they might react to a change, idea or plan? It’s better to engage early rather than waiting to see what people think when your project, strategy or plan is in the final stages – leaving it too late leads to less-supported decisions. Internally, this can look like lack of buy-in and externally it can lead to low-trust and outrage.
Tricky issues and challenging conversations (for example where conflict or polarisation is involved) never get easier by keeping people apart and letting problems fester. If a group struggles to work together effectively or find common ground, one of the best ways to get traction is a facilitated conversation – not sweeping it all under the rug (which almost always makes things worse).

THE POWER OF SHORT ENGAGEMENT: ACHIEVING IMPACT FASTER

Short processes are not about cutting corners - they are about being strategic, intentional, and focused. Engagement, even in a short timeframe, is about building confidence in the direction you’re heading.

Making the Most of YOUR TIME

The structure of engagement is scalable - whether short or long - when time is allocated effectively. A short but meaningful process can deliver far more than scattered feedback from pop-ups, open houses, or surveys.

To make this work, it’s essential to think about your time collectively and break it down with intention. This means allowing time for participants to absorb information, explore different perspectives, share opinions, and have genuine conversations before moving into data capture.

Rather than trying to cover everything, focus on a meaningful component that helps move the situation forward, and design your session around that core issue.

Short timeframes don’t have to mean small events. Large-scale one- or two-day gatherings - such as whole-of-staff forums, hybrid meetings, or stakeholder summits - can be highly effective, delivering valuable insights in just a single day.

The value of inclusive engagement with influence

Allowing people to have a say in decisions that affect them gives them ownership of the issue and can even turn them into advocates.

Deliberative elements are possible for every process.

Applying deliberative principles - such as structured discussions, diverse perspectives, and informed decision-making - can significantly improve outcomes, even in shorter processes. These principles don’t need to be applied in full to be effective; even using some of them can lead to more meaningful engagement and better results.

Creating space to recognise and listen to diverse voices encourages participants to look beyond their own needs and agendas. This shift deepens understanding and helps build more inclusive, thoughtful, and widely supported decisions.

Internal work is important

Investing in internal conversations - such as facilitated team workshops - helps define the problem clearly, align your team, and bring in diverse perspectives from across impacted teams or departments. This broadens understanding, ensures readiness when the organisation prioritises the activity, and ultimately saves time in the long run.

To make this work, it’s important to take the time to confirm the context of the engagement, test the promise and level of commitment, and ensure clarity with decision-makers from the outset. Thoughtful planning at this stage pays enormous dividends - reducing risk, building shared ownership, and setting your engagement up for success.

>> want to find out how you can achieve results?

If you’re ready to explore how you can engage people in a short timeframe, get in touch. We love a good chat, whether over a real or virtual coffee, and are able to offer complimentary ideas and advice or a good sounding board.

LEARN MORE WITH OUR #MONTHLYMYTH SERIES

Ok, so they aren’t quite monthly, but they are chock full of engagement goodness!

Here’s another #MONTHLYMYTH that ties into this conversation: strategic planning doesn’t have to be a behind-the-scenes process. Just like engagement, when planning happens in isolation, it leads to blind spots, lack of buy-in, and missed opportunities:

#MONTHLYMYTH: Strategic planning is an undercover operation