Thanks for asking, great question. Here are some things I usually suggest:

1. What are the success criteria for the workshop? These are often emotional like “we’ll have great teamwork” or “we’ll come up with ideas.” I would like to see teams set measurable goals like “we will come up with an idea that will be released to the public within X months and generate Y in [North Star or important metric].” Then you can really know later if these workshops are worth it!
2. Calculate the costs of workshops. I have a video about that here. https://youtu.be/u6pGxpU133w?t=4499 Note that I lump design thinking, design sprints, Lean UX, and other workshop and work-by-committee models into my own term, “Aspirologies.” :)

That’s really it. We can do the math! We can come up with how we will measure if these workshops are paying off a little, a lot, or not at all.