Marian Kaufmann
Strategy & Leadership
Marian works at the intersection of leadership and deliberate design. He advises executives on high-stakes workshops — from strategy offsites to organizational change sessions — where the facilitation itself shapes the outcome.
23 articles by Marian Kaufmann
Remote Workshop Facilitation: The Complete Guide
A practitioner's guide to remote workshop facilitation: tool setup, adapting in-person methods, engagement techniques, managing time zones, and contingency planning that actually works.
Team Building Workshop: Activities and Facilitation Guide
A practical guide to designing team building workshops that create lasting change — covering trust exercises, conflict tools, values alignment, and how to measure team health before and after.
Sprint Retrospective: A Complete Facilitator's Guide
A practical, opinionated guide to running Sprint Retrospectives that actually improve how teams work — covering formats, dysfunctions, remote facilitation, and how to make action items stick.
The Retrospective That Actually Changes Behaviour
Most retrospectives produce action items that quietly disappear. Learn the structural design failures behind this — and the specific fixes that make retrospective outcomes stick.
Conflict in the Workshop Room: When to Surface It and When to Contain It
Not all workshop conflict is equal. Learn to distinguish productive tension from destructive conflict, read early warning signals, and know exactly when to pause a session entirely.
The Liberating Structures Every Facilitator Should Have in Their Toolkit
A practitioner's guide to the eight most versatile Liberating Structures — with timing, group size guidance, and the facilitation mistakes that undermine each one.
Building Your Own AI Facilitation Playbook: From Generic Outputs to a Personal Method Library
Learn how to build a personal AI method library that reflects your facilitation philosophy — from prompt architecture and reference materials to templates that encode your design logic.
Why Meetings Fail: The Structural Problems No Amount of Facilitation Can Fix
Meetings aren't failing because of bad facilitation — they're failing because of four structural problems no agenda can fix. Here's how to diagnose them and what to do instead.
How to Run a Strategy Workshop
A comprehensive guide to planning, structuring, and facilitating a strategy workshop — from choosing the right methods to common facilitation mistakes to avoid.
The Post-Workshop Void: Why Most Sessions Die in the 48 Hours After
Most workshop outcomes die within 48 hours. Learn how to design closing sequences that transform insights into lasting action through ownership clarity, documentation rituals, and accountability systems.
How to Design a Workshop That People Actually Want to Attend
Learn how to design workshops that drive attendance and engagement through clear objectives, interactive elements, and strategic follow-up.
Teaching Managers to Facilitate With AI as a Safety Net
Most managers lack facilitation training but must run workshops anyway. AI-generated agendas provide the structure beginners need, freeing them to focus on the human skills that actually matter.
What AI Gets Wrong About Group Dynamics
AI can design workshop agendas but misses status dynamics, organizational history, and physical energy. Learn what facilitators see that algorithms cannot.
Workshops in the Age of Async: When AI Makes Not Meeting a Real Option
AI-powered async collaboration challenges the necessity of most workshops. Learn which workshops survive when AI handles ideation and analysis — and what that reveals about their true purpose.
The Prompt Is the Brief: What Writing for AI Teaches You About Writing for Humans
Learn how writing effective AI prompts reveals clarity gaps in workshop briefs. Practical framework for better client communication and workshop design.
Building a Workshop Culture When You're the Only One Who Wants One
The long game: modelling better meetings, training willing managers, documenting outcomes, and creating enough small wins that the organisation starts asking for workshops.
One Coach, Twelve Teams: The Scaling Problem Nobody Talks About
The internal coach's scaling dilemma: what to facilitate yourself, what to template, what to train others to run, and where tooling can absorb the prep burden.
The Org Chart Is in the Room Whether You Invite It Or Not
Designing for invisible power dynamics — seating, sequencing, anonymous inputs, and small structural choices that redistribute voice when hierarchy shapes who speaks.
When the Real Workshop Happens in the Corridor Afterwards
Why actual decisions get made in Slack threads and coffee chats instead of the session you designed, what it signals about psychological safety, and how to make the room safer than the corridor.
Facilitating When You Have a Stake in the Outcome
The tension of holding space fairly when you're not a disinterested party. When to acknowledge your position rather than pretend neutrality you don't have.
Measuring What You Do When the Organisation Measures Outputs
The measurement problem for internal coaches: what's trackable, what requires proxy metrics, and when to stop apologising for work that resists quantification.
When Your Sponsor Undermines the Workshop
Preparing for and recovering from the moment the person who commissioned the session becomes the obstacle — the hijacking VP, the disengaged director, the agenda overrider.
Your Agenda Is a Promise: Why Time-Blocking Is a Trust Exercise
Time-blocking as both a design discipline and a client-facing communication tool. The agenda as your first deliverable and a signal of professional structure.