by Facilitation Expert | Feb 7, 2019 | Communication Skills, Facilitation Skills, Leadership Skills, Managing Conflict, Meeting Support
Using the principles of facilitative leadership, novice facilitators will succeed when they draw a line of sight from the meeting deliverable to the quality of life of the meeting participants.
To understand “facilitative leadership,” begin by understanding the two terms: ‘facilitative’ and ‘leadership’. For example, the root term for ‘facilitative’ means “to make easy.” Therefore, the role of a meeting leader primarily relies on making it easier for their people to succeed. Leadership begins with line of sight and knowing where you are going. Assuredly, a leader needs to know the destination and focus on reaching milestones during the journey. For instance, in meetings and workshops, a leader needs to know what DONE looks like. In other words, they need to know the destination.
Similarly, facilitative leadership demands understanding about . . .
- How to approach group decision-making
- Importance of the holarchy (i.e., organizational goal alignment, dependencies, and reciprocities)
- The role (of the facilitator) is not as a person, but rather as a temporary position (like a referee)
- Skills such as clear speaking, precise questioning, keen observing, and active listening
- The criticality of being content-neutral; passionate about results, yet unbiased toward content
We aspire to develop understanding among our readers about the differences and challenges of becoming a facilitative leader. We seek primarily to shift the thinking of our readers from facilitation (as a noun or a static way of being) to facilitating (as a verb or a dynamic way of doing). Therefore, truly making it easier for meeting participants to make more informed decisions. Facilitating creates value because the method encourages speaking with people rather than at them. For that reason, facilitating is about creating an environment that is conducive to productivity and breakthrough. Above all, the role of the facilitator is about stimulating and inspiring people. In other words, facilitating amplifies the DNA of the modern leader.
Consequently, Learn to Overcome Challenges with Meetings
- Avoiding judgment, both positive and negative.
- Avoiding the first person singular, especially the word “I.” Therefore, putting the focus on the plurality “you” or the integral “us.”
- Being able to clearly articulate the meeting purpose, scope, deliverable, and agenda.
- Building and using an appropriate meeting design called an agenda. The agenda represents the method or how the leader will get the team from the introduction to the wrap in a consensual and expeditious manner.
- Challenging participants to make their thinking visible. Understanding that people think about symptoms, not causes.
- Constantly observing the participants’ body language or using a roll call method to further include online participants.
- Having well-built questions that avoid vagueness and ambiguity. Understanding that the meeting deliverable (call it ‘Y’) is a function of many details (call them ‘X’ for weighty issues and ‘x’ for the minor points). Therefore, Y is a function of many Xxes. Participants do not need answers. However, they need someone who knows the right questions to ask, and the optimal sequence for those questions.
- Removing distractions during the meeting, especially electronic leashes.
- Showing up for meetings prepared and that includes having properly prepared participants so that the meeting can take off running.
- Staying conscious about everything above, while carefully administering and adjusting to a method using appropriate tools to get more done faster.
- Substance over style, speaking with clarity when required (i.e., aspiring toward rhetorical precision). Realizing however that the “facilitator” role is primarily geared toward listening rather than preaching.
- Understanding there is more than one right answer and decision-making quality is sensitive to the conditions under which one solution may or may not be better than an alternative.
Nine Characteristics of the Facilitative Leadership Difference
Facilitative leadership benefits are best realized for projects and teams where the leader is coordinating competent specialists in complex situations. The best leaders are flexible because both command control and facilitative leadership have their place. Task-focused direction is required for the close oversight of tasks. Structure-focused direction works best when leading teams of experts.
| Modern Leaders |
Facilitative Leaders |
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- Communicate and receive feedback
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- Can also structure activities to ensure that participants evaluate themselves and each other
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- More than people savvy, they are group-focused
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- Believe that staff work for them
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- Work to exceed the expectations of all stakeholders, including their staff
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- Have meeting management skills
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- Can also use groups to build complex deliverables and structure any type of conversation with collaboration
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- Involved in directing tasks
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- Strive to build collaborative decisions based on staff input
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- Leads groups whose members are highly skilled and accountable for outcomes
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- Focus on providing structure that supports superior performance
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- Work to meet the expectations of management
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- Operate without status or rank consciousness
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When to Use Facilitative Leadership
We want you to see that facilitative leadership does not apply to all situations but is ideally suited for projects and teams where the leader is coordinating the efforts of subject matter experts. Use facilitative leadership when you have:
- An effort or project requiring breakthrough, creativity, and innovation
- Decisions requiring broad support and commitment from stakeholders
- Diverse team members who get evaluated with different performance measurement systems
- Extremely complex or sensitive decisions
- Group members who need to be self-motivated because they are working independently
- Historically hostile parties or complex bureaucracies
- Leaders operating without direct authority over some of the members
- Projects crossing multiple lines of business or departments
- Projects tied to a critical time frame
- Situations calling for leaders to be seen as neutral by all parties
- Strong subject matter experts need to align around new goals or outcomes
- Teams communicating across time zones, cultures, and organizational boundaries
Organizational Benefits of Facilitative Leadership: Improve Quality, Reduce Costs, and Optimize Timing
Facilitative Leadership Benefits
Benefits ensue both to the organization and participants. Organizations that deploy skilled facilitators have allocated resources to ensure the success of their meetings.
- Ability to test for the quality of the deliverable before the meeting concludes (valuable since the worst deliverable of any meeting is another meeting).
- Agendas, approaches, tools, deliverables, and outputs become more repeatable and consistent.
- Analysts obtain higher quality, more comprehensive information.
- As context is carefully managed, teams focus on higher-quality content.
- As stakeholders’ ideas are included, meetings become more collaborative and innovative.
- Facilitative leadership makes it easier to develop new leaders.
- Faster results: Facilitated sessions accelerate the capture of information, especially if the meeting participants arrive knowing the questions and issues that need to be discussed.
- Fewer omissions—projects accelerate with increased clarity and reduced uncertainty.
- Greater commitment and buy-in from all stakeholders.
- Higher quality results: groups of people make higher quality decisions than the smartest person in the group. Facilitated sessions encourage the exchange of different points of view enabling the group to identify new options, and it is a proven fact that people or groups with more options at their disposal make higher-quality decisions.
- Increased return-on-meeting time and investment.
- Modern leaders who have been successful with their existing style accrue additional benefits from the increased flexibility of adapting a facilitative style.
- More coherent communication among workshop participants, project, steering, and dependent teams.
- Properly facilitated sessions lead to innovation because multiple perspectives generate a richer (360-degree) understanding.
- When staff is treated as collegial, commitment and motivation increase.
- With assertive structure and facilitation, quality dialogue becomes the focus.
- Witness a decline in smart people making dumb decisions.
As you increase your facilitative leadership skills, you and your team participants will become more successful. For example, let us consider six substantial areas of success for improving your facilitative leadership and meeting in more detail:
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Properly facilitated, participants understand both WHAT is decided and WHY. Since groups are capable of generating more options than the aggregate of individuals, they arrive at higher-quality decisions that are capable of reconciling seemingly contrary points of view.
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Flexibility and Breaking through Stalemates and Deadlocks
Structured approaches afford a higher degree of flexibility than approaches without structure. With structure and topical flow, meetings can take the “scenic route” because there is a backup plan to provide a respite from the stream-of-consciousness approach taken by unstructured meetings. By exploring newly created options and challenging working assumptions, teams can break through their stalemates and deadlocks by rediscovering common ground or by creating options during the meeting that did not walk into the room at the start of the meeting.
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Impactful Groups through Improved Working Relationships
Conflict becomes responsibly managed rather than ignored. Complex issues may be addressed face-to-face as they should, rather than through a series of e-mails and innuendo. Proper facilitation will demonstrate the opportunity and method for discovering win-win solutions. Consequently, as stakeholders’ ideas are sought, meeting activity becomes more collaborative and innovative.
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Integral Decision-Making
Defined as better alignment with organizational goals and objectives. Structured decision-making must appeal to organizational goals and objectives supported by the meeting; typically, the project, program, business unit, and enterprise. Alignment with the “holarchy” perspective ensures that proposed actions are appropriate and supports prioritization based on the impact of proposed changes across the entire enterprise. Therefore, effective decision-making reflects the integral perspective.
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Knowledge Transfer and Increased Organizational Effectiveness
Learning organizations understand the need and power behind the transfer of knowledge from those who know to those who do not know, but should. Facilitated environments provide the opportunity for challenge, reflection, and documentation that underlies shared understanding and amplifies organizational effectiveness. Facilitative leadership also makes it easier to develop new leaders.
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Saving Time and Increased Personal Effectiveness
Session leaders (aka facilitators) will get more done faster. As staff is treated as colleagues, commitment, and motivation increase. By becoming an expert on methods and tools rather than content, they can continue to use tools that generate consistent and repeatable results. Meetings only fail because either the participants do not have the talent, do not have the motivation, or do not know how. The role of the facilitative leader shows them how.
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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.
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With Bookmarks no longer a feature in WordPress, we need to append the following for your benefit and reference
Terrence Metz, MBA, CSM, CSPF, PSP01, HTTO1, is the Managing Director of MG RUSH Facilitation Leadership, Training, and Meeting Design, an acknowledged leader in structured facilitation training, and author of “Meetings That Get Results – A Facilitator’s Guide to Building Better Meetings.” His FAST Facilitation Best Practices blog features nearly 300 articles on facilitation skills and tools aimed at helping others lead meetings that produce clear and actionable results. His clients include Agilists, Scrum teams, program and project managers, senior officers, and the business analyst community among numerous private and public companies and global corporations. As an undergraduate of Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and an MBA graduate from NWU’s Kellogg School of Management, his professional experience has focused on process improvement and product development. He continually aspires to make it easier for others to succeed.
by Facilitation Expert | Jan 8, 2019 | Facilitation Skills, Leadership Skills, Managing Conflict, Meeting Support
Staying relevant and compelling when you facilitate multiple generations presents significant challenges.
Problems develop when meetings include different mindsets, communication styles, and personal preferences. Scheduling, work patterns, and technology intensify friction. Teams are ever-changing and often cross time zones and cultural boundaries. A servile attitude provides you with the simple secret when you facilitate multiple generations — all types of people — because one trait, common to all, is that people would rather be asked than be told.
Traditional stereotyping needs to be avoided, but frequently suggests that . . .
- Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) remain competitive,
- GenXers (born between1965 and 1977) exhibit skepticism, and
- Gen Yers (aka ‘millennials’, born since 1978) like technology
Whether you prefer Meyers-Briggs (MBTI), DISC, eColors, or others, most agree that not everyone thinks alike.* Dare to compare:
- Some focus on differences while others focus on similarities.
- Some follow logic while others are guided intuitively.
- A portion looks at the risks while others focus on the benefits.
- Some require structure while others prefer independence.
- Some are influenced by language and others by graphics and visual displays.
(Sensible Humor . . .)
To Facilitate Multiple Generations, Let It Be
By the way, our favorite (only half-seriously) personality typing remains the Beatles’ “Let It Be” album. After all, why else would they be arranged in the clockwise order shown?
While servility will help you facilitate during a meeting, embracing the following preparatory considerations will help solidify your chances of meeting success:
- Anticipate a variety of personality types and learning styles
- Be careful not to stereotype based on appearances and comments
- Don’t overgeneralize groups based on individual character traits
- Prepare as if every stakeholder plans to attend your meeting
As professional facilitators, consider the following suggestions that will improve your ability to facilitate multiple generations, and all types of people, all of the time.
- Appeal to the “Zen” of the experience. Use break timers with music. Provide and build graphical support to complement the narrative world. Remember, we facilitate ‘meaning’, not words. Meaning can be captured with illustrations, icons, and numbers—in addition to words. You can use the Creativity Tool or Coat of Arms anytime you need consensual answers to questions.
- Be flexible and willing to adjust and accommodate participant constraints such as timing and availability. When a participant runs into an unexpected personal “issue”, let’s do what we can as a group to show support and respect for that person, rather than charging ahead. Decision quality demonstrates that a complete answer is better than a quick answer (see Daniel Kahneman).
- Both remain and stress your content neutrality. Stop judging (even cheerleading), making comments about content, and avoid using the first person singular, especially the word “I.”
- Do not let one person or group dominate the contributions. Prevent “Broken Records” by writing down their contributions. Prevent scope creep by asking precise questions. Avoid DUMB questions (Dull, Ubiquitous, Myopic, and Broad).
- Embrace an icebreaker activity to get everyone contributing sooner. Likewise, anticipate and plan for additional team-building activities as appropriate. Make it easier (facilitere) for your participants to enjoy and value one another. Similarly, prepare some quick exercises (eg., Man in the Moon) that prove “nobody is smarter than everybody.”
Keep participants focused on “what DONE looks like” rather than HOW it gets done.
- Nobody wants more meetings. Nobody wants longer meetings. And NOBODY wants more, longer meetings.
- Keep people moving around. Supplement breakouts with ergonomic “stretching” every thirty minutes. Take breaks every 60 to 75 minutes so that people stay off of their electronic leashes, knowing they will have frequent and ample time to reply to their electronic mail and messages, all at once.
- Send your participants and executives to facilitation training so they develop an understanding and appreciation of the challenges faced by meeting leaders. There are ample resources invested in “Diversity” training but where diversity appreciation becomes needed most may be found in situations that involve groups, teams, and meetings. Diversity training encourages the appreciation of individuals but does little to increase heterogenous group performance.
- Spend some personal time with your participants and get to know them better. Meeting participants respond better to leaders they respect, and respect must be earned. Formally or informally interview them. Discern their core competencies, concerns, and unique talents, everyone has one you know. (See below from Howard Gardner).
Stress participant equality regardless of tenure or title.
- Demand that participants leave their egos and titles in the hallway. If they cannot leave their titles behind, do not invite them. If they are “senior” and already have an answer, do not have a meeting. Meetings are an ineffective and very expensive form of persuasion.
- Strive to conduct meetings where either everyone is live (face-to-face); or, everyone dials in, including people in the same building or facility. If not, at least place your virtual participants ‘up front’ and call on them first (not last) when seeking participant input. People dialing in become treated like second-class citizens so enforce a protocol whereby everyone, even those attending live, identifies the face behind the voice before continuing.
- Test the quality of your meeting output before adjourning. The worst deliverable from any meeting is another meeting. If you do not know how to test the quality of your meeting output, take an MGRUSH class on facilitation.
- Use breakout sessions liberally by mixing up your teams frequently. People become more conversational in small groups (two to five people) and develop a stronger appreciation for one another. As you sense dysfunction, intervene and take a mentoring approach. Coach your participants about how to treat one another in a public environment. You will discover that more conflict arises around personality types and toxicity than by different age groups.
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NOTE:
In 1983 an American developmental psychologist Howard Gardener described 9 types of intelligence:
- Naturalist (nature smart)
- Musical (sound smart)
- Logical-mathematical (number/reasoning smart)
- Existential (life smart)
- Interpersonal (people smart)
- Bodily-kinesthetic (body smart)
- Linguistic (word smart)
- Intra-personal (self smart)
- Spatial (picture smart)
Facilitate All Generations — Gardner’s Types
* Please note trademarks associated with Apple Records, Adioma, and personality-typing organizations.
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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.
______
With Bookmarks no longer a feature in WordPress, we need to append the following for your benefit and reference
Terrence Metz, MBA, CSM, CSPF, PSP01, HTTO1, is the Managing Director of MG RUSH Facilitation Leadership, Training, and Meeting Design, an acknowledged leader in structured facilitation training, and author of “Meetings That Get Results – A Facilitator’s Guide to Building Better Meetings.” His FAST Facilitation Best Practices blog features nearly 300 articles on facilitation skills and tools aimed at helping others lead meetings that produce clear and actionable results. His clients include Agilists, Scrum teams, program and project managers, senior officers, and the business analyst community among numerous private and public companies and global corporations. As an undergraduate of Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and an MBA graduate from NWU’s Kellogg School of Management, his professional experience has focused on process improvement and product development. He continually aspires to make it easier for others to succeed.
by Facilitation Expert | Dec 4, 2018 | Meeting Structure, Meeting Tools, Scrum Events
“Creating Products that Customers Love” strikes us as highly poignant, as much of the world heads toward a holiday season with much gift-giving.
Roman Pickler’s book, “Agile Product Management with Scrum” provides the single best book, barely over 100 pages, to understand the role of a Product Owner. Some even claim it remains one of the seven must-read books about the Agile mindset. Therefore, with a foreword by Jeff Sutherland, and included within the set of Mike Cohn’s signature books, take two to three hours and give it a quick read. However, it does presume some previous familiarity with the Agile Scrum framework.
Product Owner Role
Beginning with an understanding of the role of Product Owner the old-school versus new-school comparison of product management certainly reads like MGRUSH’s explanation of traditional leadership versus servant leadership. Stressing the importance of self-organizing teams, our “Nobody is Smarter than Everybody” gets duplicated with Pickler’s:
“The wisdom of many is preferred to the brilliance of one.”[1]
Naturally, the Product Owner role stresses collaboration, particularly with the Scrum Master and product stakeholders. Because, as Product Owner, they . . .
- Represent the customers and the product users
- Identify and describe customer needs and product functionality
- Lead the visioning activities that bring the vision to life
- Stress teamwork and collaborative decision-making to ensure shared ownership
Envisioning the Product
Therefore the Product Owner, through the Product Backlog, converts the product vision[2] to attributes by securing answers to solid questions such as:
- Who is going to purchase the product?
- Who is going to use the product?
- What needs does the product address?
- How much value does the product add?
- What attributes are critical for the product’s success?
- Where will the product excel?
- Compared to competitive alternatives, what are the unique selling points?
- Where and how much revenue will be derived?
- What do we need to do to win?
Pickler leans on Cockburn’s logic of prioritization, namely:
- Sacrifice others for this
- Try to keep
- Sacrifice this for others
After that, they are combined into a product roadmap. MG RUSH covers numerous methods in other articles, such as:
Working with the Product Backlog
Pickler follows with evidence-based support for managing the Product Backlog. He begins by applying DEEP that he attributes to Mike Cohn:
He further suggests that Product Backlog descriptions can be detailed, or course-graining (called epics). The Product Owner is responsible for structuring and refining the Product Backlog. Items may be grouped by functionality to create themes. For instance, the calendar function is a theme of a smartphone. Each theme generally represents “between two and five-course requirements. (epics)”
Next, he discusses methods of valuing or prioritizing backlog items that help the Product Owner prepare for Sprint Planning. Therefore, the Product Owner is encouraged to decompose and refine product backlog items breaking down epics into detailed user stories. This technique is referred to as “slicing the cake” (Cohn, 2004, pg 76). He also references, but does not discuss in detail, Bill Wake’s INVEST criteria (stories need to be independent, negotiable, valuable, estimable, small, and testable).
For sizing stories Pickler offers up t-Shirt sizing (XS through XXXL) and Planning Poker, using a Fibonacci scale through 13 and then substitutes 20 for 21 as Huge (or, XXXL). Today there are apps abounding for smartphones. Therefore, simply search “planning poker app” to generate numerous options for Android and iOS. Ours includes a coffee break symbol and a questions mark and includes pure Fibonacci and t-shirt sizing options as well.
In addition, his discussion of nonfunctional requirements and scaling the product backlog demand careful reading. Similarly, slow down to review his along descriptions of common mistakes when refining the product backlog such as:
- Disguised Requirements Specification
- Wish List for Santa
- Requirements Push
- Grooming Neglect
- Competing Backlogs
Other Product Owner Considerations
Finally, his book ends with commentary focused on large projects, discussing items like velocity and burndown. Prior to his final discussion of transitioning into the role of Product Owner, he stresses additional collaboration and makes comments covered by many other posts such as:
- Sprint Planning
- Definition of Done
- Daily Scrum
- Sprint Backlog
- Burn down and Velocity
- Sprint Review
- Sprint Retrospective
Therefore, every Product Owner should review this valuable book, and other Sprint Team members could learn as well. After all, “Nobody is Smarter than Everybody.”
[1] Likewise, according to Google’s 10 Golden Rules:
7. Strive to reach consensus. Modern corporate mythology has the unique decision-maker as a hero. We adhere to the view that the “many are smarter than the few,” and solicit a broad base of views before reaching any decision. At Google, the role of the manager is that of an aggregator of viewpoints, not the dictator of decisions. Building a consensus sometimes takes longer, but always produces a more committed team and better decisions.” — by Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google
[2] Defined by Ken Schwaber as: “The vision describes why the project is being undertaken and what the desired end state is.” — Agile and Project Management with Scrum (2004, pg 68)
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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.
______
With Bookmarks no longer a feature in WordPress, we need to append the following for your benefit and reference
Terrence Metz, MBA, CSM, CSPF, PSP01, HTTO1, is the Managing Director of MG RUSH Facilitation Leadership, Training, and Meeting Design, an acknowledged leader in structured facilitation training, and author of “Meetings That Get Results – A Facilitator’s Guide to Building Better Meetings.” His FAST Facilitation Best Practices blog features nearly 300 articles on facilitation skills and tools aimed at helping others lead meetings that produce clear and actionable results. His clients include Agilists, Scrum teams, program and project managers, senior officers, and the business analyst community among numerous private and public companies and global corporations. As an undergraduate of Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and an MBA graduate from NWU’s Kellogg School of Management, his professional experience has focused on process improvement and product development. He continually aspires to make it easier for others to succeed.
by Facilitation Expert | Nov 6, 2018 | Communication Skills, Facilitation Skills, Leadership Skills, Managing Conflict, Meeting Support, Meeting Tools
Our readers and students have clamored for a quick-reference checklist of the most important facilitation Do’s and Don’ts. Therefore, we bring you this brief, yet powerful, set of reminders below (alpha-sorted by the highlighted term or phrase).
Please note that the highlighted facilitation do’s and don’ts are linked to best practices articles that provide additional examples and evidence-based rationale.
Facilitation Do’s and Don’ts
Facilitation Do’s and Don’ts
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Facilitation Don’ts
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Make contact, absorb, reflect, and confirm; confirming WHY somebody said something or WHY the facilitator is doing something. |
Don’t allow arguments and discussions to go around you, as facilitator. Make them go through you and provide frequent and thorough reflection so that everyone is driven to understand the same rationale or evidence. |
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Visualizing and documenting what needs to be done and said in advance, especially instructions for the methodology and tools you plan to use. |
Don’t assume that everyone shares an understanding of the terms being used because filters and biases cause misunderstanding. It’s better to assume that it’s unlikely you have a consensual understanding, even when participants claim to agree. |
Decision-making:
Teach your participants the components of high-quality decision-making and illustrate using a decision matrix:
- Verify the purpose of your objective
- Detail your options
- Delineate criteria
- Prioritize the criteria
- Apply prioritized criteria against the most qualified options
- Test the decision quality to see how well it supports the original purpose
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Stop cheerleading with positive remarks such as “great idea” or “I like that.” Dr. Thomas Gordon (Harvard) proved that judgments or affirmations of the positive can be more injurious to group participation than negative comments. |
Definition Tool:
Put the MGRUSH Definition Tool in your hip pocket and use it regularly, recalling the five activities a robust definition demands, namely:
- What is it NOT
- Describe it
- Detail the attributes, characteristics, requirements, or specifications
- Illustrate it
- Get two examples from the business
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Don’t forget the MGRUSH 3-step method for resolving conflict:
- Active listening to prevent ‘violent agreement’
- Appeal to objectives, from project through enterprise (see Holarchy)
- Thoroughly document, then take off-line, typically to the executive sponsor
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Deliverable:
Know what DONE looks like; nothing can save a leader when they don’t know where they are going. Hence, codify your deliverable and share it, before the meeting begins. While others call it “right-to-left thinking” some say “start with the end in mind.” |
Don’t rely on “one size fits all” and overuse the same tool (e.g., PowerBalls). Decision-making ranges from the simple to the complicated through the complex, and extends from the qualitative through the quantitative—so use the most appropriate tool in your specific situation. |
Focus:
Value the importance of focus and perspective. The hardest thing to do with a group of smart people is to get them to focus on the same thing at the same time. Consequently, remove distractions so that focus is all that remains. |
Avoid using the first person singular, specifically the terms “I” and “me.” Additionally, avoid too many thank-you’s and self-references such as “I think”, “I want”, and “I believe.” |
Holarchy:
Connect the dots; provide a holarchy explanation that quantifies the importance and impact of your meeting, typically measured in terms of investment at risk (e.g., $$$) and/ or FTP (full-time person). |
Don’t permit groupthink and reliance on habits and patterns of the past. “We’ve always done it this way” will not persist forever. Hence, incites participants to understand that change can be proactive or reactive. |
Preparation:
7:59 AM preparation and interviews. No facilitation class in the world will make you successful when you show up unprepared. |
Don’t forget or skip the MGRUSH professional 7-activity Introduction and 4-activity Review and Wrap. Consider rehearsing the introduction so that the meeting begins smoothly, thus giving participants confidence. Participants remember the last five minutes so close with clear action steps. |
Precision:
Rhetorical precision or clarity of word choice increases its importance the more complicated the topic or scope of discussion. Hence, closely monitor and remain vigilant about your rhetoric. |
Don’t permit discussion and comments when you are in a listing mode. Brainstorming demands that during ideation, there should be no discussion. The facilitator is normally the first person to violate this principle. |
Roles:
Stress roles in the meeting emphasized that all participants are equals, regardless of title or tenure in the hallway. Then treat everyone the same, and don’t be deferential to “executives.” |
Don’t lead a meeting without first sharing the purpose, scope, deliverables, and simple agenda, preferably in writing and preferably shared with participants before the meeting or workshop begins. |
Structure:
Structure your discussion to avoid asking for the deliverable; rather ask for parts of the deliverable that aggregate to the final deliverable. Remember the mathematical expression: Y = f(X) +(x) + (x) and ask about the little “x’s”, not the “Y” or even the large “X’s”. |
Don’t string on virtual participants at the end. Put them in a virtual seating arrangement up front, and call on them first, not last. Next, enforce a protocol even among the live people so that virtual participants know who is speaking. |
WHY First:
WHY before WHAT before HOW; Always build consensus around the purpose of something before beginning your analysis and solution development. |
Don’t discount the value of visual feedback. Remember that more is better and it is easier to edit stuff ‘out’ of your final documentation than it is to fully remember what was said. Therefore, capture verbatims and edit later. |
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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.
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With Bookmarks no longer a feature in WordPress, we need to append the following for your benefit and reference
Terrence Metz, MBA, CSM, CSPF, PSP01, HTTO1, is the Managing Director of MG RUSH Facilitation Leadership, Training, and Meeting Design, an acknowledged leader in structured facilitation training, and author of “Meetings That Get Results – A Facilitator’s Guide to Building Better Meetings.” His FAST Facilitation Best Practices blog features nearly 300 articles on facilitation skills and tools aimed at helping others lead meetings that produce clear and actionable results. His clients include Agilists, Scrum teams, program and project managers, senior officers, and the business analyst community among numerous private and public companies and global corporations. As an undergraduate of Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and an MBA graduate from NWU’s Kellogg School of Management, his professional experience has focused on process improvement and product development. He continually aspires to make it easier for others to succeed.
by Facilitation Expert | Oct 2, 2018 | Communication Skills, Leadership Skills, Meeting Support, Meeting Tools
The Business Model Canvas was created by Alexander Osterwalder, of Strategyzer®. The canvas provides a one-page primer and template for analysis. Questions and points of view are detailed below.[1] We offer it to support the MGRUSH Business Analyst community. Please modify each and all of the following to help your situation.
UPDATE: MGRUSH has released its Meeting Pathway (infographic guideline) and Workshop Canvas (37 open-ended preparatory questions). Consequently, the Meeting Pathway details a comprehensive meeting and workshop preparation approach that you can now download.
Business Model Canvas — Agenda Steps and Questions to be Addressed
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Business Model Canvas: Partners
- Who are our significant partners?
- Who are our significant suppliers?
- What critical activities do our partners perform?
- What necessary resources are we acquiring from our suppliers?
- Value-add from partnerships
- Acquisition of specialized resources and activities
- Optimization and economy
- Reduction of risk and uncertainty
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Business Model Canvas: Activities
- What significant activities do our value propositions require?
- Which activities are the primary drivers of customer relationships?
- Where does our distribution channel provide value-add?
- What are the revenue streams for each channel?
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Business Model Canvas: Resources
- What significant resources do our value propositions require?
- Which significant resources do our distribution channels require?
- What significant resources do our customer relationships require?
- Which significant resources do our revenue streams require?
- Types of resources
- Financial
- Human
- Intellectual (patents, copyrights, data, etc.)
- Physical
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Business Model Canvas: Value Propositions
- What value do we deliver to our customers?
- Which customer needs are we satisfying?
- Which customer problems are we helping to solve?
- What bundles of products and services are we offering to each customer segment?
- Characteristics
- Brand/ status
- Customization
- Design
- “Getting the Job Done”
- Newness
- Performance
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Business Model Canvas: Customer Relationships
- What type of relationships do each of our primary customer segments expect us to build and maintain with them?
- Which ones have we established?
- How are they integrated with the rest of our business model?
- How costly are they?
- Examples
- Automated services
- Co-creation
- Communities
- Dedicated personal assistance
- Personal assistance
- Self-service
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Business Model Canvas: Channels
- Through which channels do our primary customer segments want to be reached?
- How are we reaching them now?
- How are our channels integrated?
- Which channels work best?
- Which channels are most cost-efficient?
- How are we integrating them with customer routines?
- Channel phases
- Awareness
- How do we raise awareness about our company’s products and services?
- Evaluation
- How do we help customers evaluate our organization’s value propositions?
- Purchase
- How do we allow customers to purchase specific products and services?
- Delivery
- How do we deliver a value proposition to our primary customer segments?
- After-sales
- How do we provide post-purchase customer support?
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Business Model Canvas: Customer Segments
- For whom are we creating value?
- Who are our most important customers?
- Diversified
- Mass market
- Multi-sided platform
- Niche market
- Segmented
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Business Model Canvas: Cost Structure
- Which costs are most critical to our business structure?
- What primary resources are the most expensive?
- What primary activities are the most expensive?
- Is your business more…
- Cost-driven (leanest cost structure, low price value proposition, maximum automation, extensive outsourcing)
- Value-driven (focused on value creation, premium value proposition)
- Sample characteristics
- Economies of scale
- Economies of scope
- Fixed costs (salaries, rents, utilities)
- Variable costs
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Business Model Canvas: Revenue Streams
- For what value are our customers willing to pay?
- For what value do they currently pay?
- How are they currently paying?
- What method would they prefer for paying?
- How much does each revenue stream contribute to overall revenues?
- Types
- Advertising
- Asset sale
- Brokerage fees
- Lending/ renting/ leasing
- Licensing
- Subscription fees
- Usage fee
- Fixed pricing
- Customer segment dependent
- List price
- Product feature dependent
- Volume dependent
- Dynamic pricing
- Negotiating (bargaining)
- Real-time market
- Yield management
For a more thorough discussion around business ideas and additional context around the Canvas, turn to “The Entrepreneur’s Foolproof 5-Step Guide to Finding and Validating Business Ideas”.
[1] The Business Model Canvas and Meeting Pathway and Meeting Canvas are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 1.0 Generic license and thus available for restricted distribution
RenDanHeYi Adoption Canvas
ALTERNATIVELY — CONSIDER THE QUANTUM MANAGEMENT APPROACH THAT FOLLOWS:
RenDanHeYi Adoption Canvas Intended to Support Zero-distance with Customers
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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.
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With Bookmarks no longer a feature in WordPress, we need to append the following for your benefit and reference
Terrence Metz, MBA, CSM, CSPF, PSP01, HTTO1, is the Managing Director of MG RUSH Facilitation Leadership, Training, and Meeting Design, an acknowledged leader in structured facilitation training, and author of “Meetings That Get Results – A Facilitator’s Guide to Building Better Meetings.” His FAST Facilitation Best Practices blog features nearly 300 articles on facilitation skills and tools aimed at helping others lead meetings that produce clear and actionable results. His clients include Agilists, Scrum teams, program and project managers, senior officers, and the business analyst community among numerous private and public companies and global corporations. As an undergraduate of Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and an MBA graduate from NWU’s Kellogg School of Management, his professional experience has focused on process improvement and product development. He continually aspires to make it easier for others to succeed.
