Cabinet workshops support a Head of State or Head of Government to align all key senior team members around their administration’s top priorities and to develop roadmaps for delivering on them.
Cabinet workshops begin with the Head of State or Head of Government articulating the 4-6 areas where he or she is determined to undertake a dramatic course of action during their tenure that will have a profound impact on the future of the country’s citizens. For each of these priority areas, an intersectoral senior-level team of 10-15 participants is convened. These individuals are most often ministers, key advisors, sector leads, regional leaders and parliamentarians—those who will ultimately be tasked with leading and coordinating to achieve the intended impact. Importantly, participants are not technical staff. Each group is then paired with an expert who has global experience of best practices in that area and who serves as a guide and reference point during preparations for and at the workshop.
During the workshop itself, which generally runs over two full days, each team begins by explicitly defining success in its priority area over the administration’s remaining term in office and articulating it in a way that can be understood by the citizenry. Once the Head of State or Head of Government is satisfied with the level of ambition and the direction articulated, each team works through an implementation framework that includes identifying and sequencing the key programmatic interventions, determining key tracking metrics, figuring out resourcing needs and potential solutions, understanding the stakeholder landscape, and mitigating the risks of implementation. Throughout, the senior leader provides direction and feedback to the team. Ultimately each team emerges with a program of work endorsed by their Head of State or Head of Government that can be succinctly and compellingly conveyed to the public.
In addition to Heads of State and Heads of Government, Big Win also facilitates Cabinet workshops for Regional Presidents, Governors and Mayors of large cities. While each administration’s priorities vary widely, examples of areas where quality plans and subsequent progress have materialized from Cabinet workshops include: the development of hundreds of thousands of housing units; strategies to create millions of jobs; early childhood development programming designed to reach millions of children; and plans to dramatically expand revenue.
