Module 7
To the self-facilitated team admin: Welcome to your next workshop! Your special role in your company workshops continues; you are the leader! In each section of each session, play the videos at the right time, read out and share the text and instructions on screen, lead the activities, and record the outcomes from each. Don’t forget to allocate another team member as timekeeper to stay on track!
What you need
A whiteboard, 3 flip charts, paper, post-its, break out spaces. For online teams, zoom breakouts and chat can be used in place of rooms and post-its.
How much time it takes
This workshop is designed to be undertaken as 3 separate intensive yet fun sessions, with a min. 20-minute break between each to mentally reset.
Change it up
Know how your team works best and customise the workshop for them. Longer breaks? More discussion? More breakouts. Do it!
Activity: Existing gains
Welcome to Workshop 2! We hope you’re ready for some fun, yet heavy lifting as we work through some more key foundations activities today. Here’s a great story to kick us off:
At 95, Catherine Kuehn was a world-record-holding powerlifter. But what’s maybe most remarkable about her is she didn’t start lifting until her 80s, after being diagnosed with osteopenia.
What started as a way to build bone strength became something much bigger: competition, community, confidence.
But she didn’t begin by chasing records. The first thing her coach did was help her take stock: how her body moved, what strength she already had, what habits had built up over decades. Because no matter how long you’ve done something one way, that doesn’t mean it’s the only way — or the best way — moving forward.
That’s exactly what we’re here to do in this session and in fact, in this entire workshop: take stock. No matter how long this business has operated a certain way; 6 months, a few years, a decade, we’re here to identify everything that’s already happening — big or small — across People, Place, and Profit. Because once you see clearly where you are today, you can build for what comes next.
60 minutes
20 minutes: Get ready to brainstorm!
In the first step of this activity, we aim to surface all current 3P (People, Place, Profit) initiatives happening in the business right now, big or super small, formal or informal.
Instructions:
As a group, brainstorm all current 3P initiatives across the business, and write them up on the whiteboard for all to see and think about. Challenge yourselves, challenge each other, let’s unearth everything.
Capture anything that contributes to People, Place, or Profit outcomes, no matter how small, whether or not it’s an official program.
Write each initiative on a post-it or flipchart.
Tips: Think about:
What programs, policies, activities or initiatives do we have in place across our business? Do any of them relate to better outcomes for people, place or profit? For example, employment policies.
Are there informal habits, cultural practices, or ways of working here that positively contribute to people, place, or profit outcomes? For example, do you have a trained mental health first aid officer?
What do we do — intentionally or unintentionally — that helps improve wellbeing, learning, development, diversity, belonging, or engagement for our people as managers and leaders?
What actions do we take that reduce waste, conserve resources, or have a positive environmental impact?
Are there ways we contribute to local communities, charities, or industry networks that support broader outcomes?
20 minutes
In the second step of this activity, we will clearly articulate the benefit each initiative brings, no matter how small (hint: we may be able to build on this later), and which 3P category it supports.
Instructions:
For each initiative, agree on:
Which category it sits under (People, Place, or Profit). If none, could it be tweaked or evolved to support 3P? If so, let’s save it for later as an idea
A simple, clear description of the benefit it delivers
Why it matters (impact on staff, customers, community, environment, business performance, etc.)
20 minutes
In the final step of this activity, we’ll start thinking about how progress and outcomes might be measured.
Instructions:
For each initiative, agree on one or more potential ways it could be measured, ideally including at least one number measure
As examples, this could be:
Participation rates
Satisfaction scores
Environmental impact measures
Financial metrics
Productivity impacts
Other meaningful data points
Don’t worry about making it perfect, the aim is to create a first view of how each initiative can be tracked, and to get ourselves in the right mindset. Just like profit, if place and people can’t be tracked, we can’t know if they are truly benefitting us, only that we hope they do. That’s not good business!
Activity: Finding hidden strengths
“My hairdresser doesn’t just do a flawless toner, she is also a competitive weightlifter, and once told me something really interesting and very relevant to this session in our workshop.
She said the strongest athletes, the ones who win on the day, aren’t always the ones who lift the heaviest in training. They’re the ones who know which muscles to flex when it matters. They know where they’re already strong. They know what needs building. And they’re honest about their weak spots because that’s what keeps them from failing on the platform.
It’s the same in business. To compete and perform well — especially when you’re taking on a broader triple bottom line — you need to know where your strengths lie, where you’re exposed, and where there’s untapped opportunity.
That’s what this workout is about: getting under the skin of your People, Place, and Profit performance, so you know exactly which muscles to flex and which ones to strengthen as you move forward.”
-Write Way Up founder
60 minutes
Purpose: To surface your internal strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in relation to People, Place, and Profit — informed by practical experience, our last activity and your pre-work stories.
Instructions:
On a whiteboard or flipchart set up a 4-quadrant matrix like the one in our fill-in section below:
Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats
For each of the 3 Ps — People, Place, Profit — work as a group to identify:
What are we strong at (internally)?
Where are we weak or lacking?
What new opportunities could we pursue?
What emerging risks or threats do we need to watch?
Tips:
Push for honesty — this is where blind spots are often uncovered
Keep the conversation moving — don’t get stuck trying to wordsmith, just get the idea down then tease it out in discussion, not for the right words but for the real meaning and issues
If you’re unsure where something fits (is it a threat or a weakness? A strength or an opportunity?), capture it — you can refine later
Remember, strengths and weaknesses are internal, they come from inside your business, opportunities and threats come from outside the business and are external.
This is not your regular SWOT, for this activity, let’s focus on the 3Ps and see what you can learn about your business.
Activity: Lifting the bar
“You can’t train every muscle equally — you have to choose what you’re building for.” Whether it’s power, speed, endurance, or balance, great athletes focus their effort where it will make the biggest difference to their performance.
The same is true here. You’ve now taken stock of your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats across People, Place and Profit. You know where your muscles are strong, where they need more work, and where the gaps lie.
Now it’s time to set your sights: what opportunities can this business lean into for the greatest positive impact and momentum?
30 minutes
The opportunities
Let’s identify and agree on a list of 5 opportunities we can take advantage of to grow the business, based on everything surfaced through this program so far. These are not strategies or actions yet, we are not making the plan for each, they are just clear opportunities that at this stage, without diving in further, we feel might be worthy of pursuing.
Instructions:
As a group, reflect on:
The 3P SWOT you just completed
The success/failure stories
The current initiatives and their benefits
Any insights from earlier workshops or pre-work
Discuss and agree on:
5 opportunities that could help us grow
Tips:
Opportunities can be about capitalising on strengths, closing gaps, turning around threats, building on momentum, or responding to emerging needs
Keep the language clear and simple, you’ll shape actions later
Stay focused on opportunities, not tactics or actions (yet!)
Activity: Power drains
Not too long ago, we were working with a client with a fantastic skincare brand, doing this exact activity.
The brand uses very high quality ingredients, very stable vitamin c and retinol and other ingredients, so they are at a high price point.
They couldn’t think of any major risks in the workshop so we dived heavily into discussion, digging, probing, poking, and the talk turned to sustainability and cruelty.
They have very strong claims around both of these and certainly at the coalface, in their formulation lab, in their packaging and marketing, they meet them.
But where they fall down, is they know nothing about their supply chain even one step back. They don’t use any independently audited suppliers and those suppliers they do use are often in high risk countries.
How are the ingredients sourced? What is the process? How is that business run? Who does it employ and are they treated fairly? Does it in fact try the ingredients on animals to test for quality?
All they have is the suppliers’ reassurances, but that could get proven wrong very easily, quickly and to their detriment.
In their space, customers can be won and lost of claims like vegan and cruelty free. So, what happens if their supplier, and in turn this business, are outed for making false claims? For cruelty? For human rights issues?
As a skincare brand it could be the end.
20 minutes
Identifying risk
To finish off our Workshop, we will do one last little activity so you are really thinking strategically and you don’t fall into the trap of the skincare brand we mentioned above… We will identify the risks already existing in our business, so we can have them in mind and hopefully mitigate them. Chances are, using 3P thinking, there’s a solution ready and waiting for us!
As one team, appoint a scribe, and for 20 minutes, call out, discuss, record and even decide early mitigation for any risks you know exist within your business.
10 minutes
And that’s it for session 3! You have finished Workshop 2 and done an incredible job! To close out, go around the room and share the one thing you learned today that really surprised you.
