Category management workshops – We’re having a chocolate moment

There’s an exercise I use on category management workshops that invites people to list the first 8 words they think about when they think about the word ‘chocolate’.

The outcome of the exercise is the realisation that often even the most popular word is only shared with about half of the group.

That is, even for such a simple word such as chocolate we’ve got different interpretations. Yet when speaking to others we assume we’re talking from the same page – and get frustrated when people react differently than we would about the subject.

On the workshop we often explore what the different interpretations might be to words we use often – for example, procurement, internal stakeholders and suppliers will have very different interpretations about what the following words mean:

• Procurement
• Supplier management
• Category Management

After the workshop when misunderstandings arise they’re often labelled as “We’re having a chocolate moment” which allows any judgement to be released and an exploration to take place of to find common ground.

Do get in touch if you’d like to develop the behavioural, communication and language skills of your team further [[email protected]] or connect with me on LinkedIn.

I explore the chocolate moments we have with clients around use of ‘process’ and ‘toolkit’ in my post What do The Great British Bake Off and Category Management have in common?