The biggest mistake I made when switching from meetings to workshops was thinking that a workshop for accessibility training and discovery is just a structured meeting. I still ran those workshops with lots of discussions and debate. It didn't take long for them to spiral out of control and for everyone to go off on tangents. Before I knew it, the time had run out and we had accomplished exactly nothing. Everyone thought a workshop was a meeting by another name.
But it's not.
I had issues with keeping the workshop on track and everyone on point. Here are four techniques that worked for me to solve that.
1. Working together, alone
If you can, run workshop exercises where you force people to work on their own and reconvene later. This all but eliminates the unnecessary discussion and back and forth, so there's little chance of going on tangents.
But eliminating discussions altogether is not always possible. Or desired.
2. One at a time
Discussions are healthy. One-on-one debates where people talk over each other endlessly are the problem. What I found works is to designate an object as the microphone. Only one person can hold the "microphone" at a time and only the person holding it can talk. No interruptions allowed. When they're done with their point, another person can pick up the mic. I found that few people like to hold long monologues.
You can combine this with time-boxing for extra safety.
3. Keep strict time
When you time-box your workshop exercises, people tend to stay on point most of the time. I say "strict time" - what I actually mean is always know how much time you have left on the clock and how many exercises you still have to go through. Cut an exercise short when it doesn't make sense for it to continue and extend the time when there's still value on the table.
4. Idea parking lot
Occasionally, you will get people trying to pull the discussion in a different direction that what's needed. You could cut them off abruptly, but that will just make them feel like you don't want to hear them out. And they'll just keep quiet for the rest of the workshop.
Instead, what I found works was to acknowledge the value of their idea and simply say something along the lines of:
This is great! I'd like us to continue this discussion another time, because I think we'll get a lot of value from it. For the time being, we'll just park this idea so that we can continue on today's topic.
And write down the idea on a post-it note and stick it on a special area of the whiteboard or wall. Call that area what you want. Parking Lot made sense to me. This way, you make sure you show that you've heard the idea, appreciate the input, but because it's not on topic, you'll pick it up later.
And actually return to these ideas - don't just throw away the notes!