What's the best way to design a facilitation plan that meets everyone's needs?

Agree, everything starts with a purpose and if there is no purpose there is no reason to gather in the first place. The most important distinction is that an agenda is not a purpose. There can be purposeful meetings without agenda but not the other way round. If we cannot explain why we ask people to invest their most important resources (time and attention), we cannot expect them to actively engage and contribute value.

There are many clever ways to keep a cohort entertained, and some might even report at the end that they "felt engaged." However, failing to establish a connection to a shared purpose will see them drift back to prior behaviors afterwards, and miss out on more impactful (and often more vulnerable and impassioned) discussions during the event.

It's important to make a distinction between gatherings we facilitate. If it's a training we want to understand the participants' backgrounds, knowledge and context. If it's a strategy or team workshop for well-defined groups we want to understand their expectations and alignment with the workshop 'sponsor'. If it's an open/ public workshop or webinar we have to communicate the audience we have designed our session for and remain flexible to cater for a variety of personalities showing up.

When considering which methods to employ, it is important to take into account if the cohort will be collocated, all remote or a hybrid mix. Some methods require quite a bit of re-thinking if they are moving from a physical space to remote (and vice-versa) - and any hybrid setting will certainly impact how breakouts work, and providing crisp directions for two different experiences will be a challenge.

Guage the audience requirements pre-facilitaiton session. To introduce activities that seperate individual, team based groups. Seperate them according to level of participating, and how much verbal interaction is needed. Then shuffle as needed. Use multimedia tools can help transport participants curiocity and imagination. With breaks and pauses to give room for those Aha! moments to emerge. So that sensitive introverts are comfortable contributing by themselves. Yet can observe or ask questions within teams. I particularly like LEGO Serious Play and improv actities for this reason.

Over-prepare, but be ready to change the agenda based on the audience needs and dynamic in the room. Be very attentive to potential tensions in the room and don’t try to force your plan on your participants. A clear purpose is extremely helpful, but it can also change during the event and it’s your expertise to see it and react to it - and decide if it is necessary to stick to the plan or adapt it.