by Facilitation Expert | Dec 5, 2017 | Analysis Methods, Decision Making, Meeting Agendas, Meeting Structure, Meeting Tools
Previously, we defined ‘best’ as projects that performed well in an innovation test, focusing on the relative technology and market risks associated with new ideas (e.g., processes, products, etc.). With the Real-Win-Worth framework—designed for experienced facilitators and meeting designers, but equally valuable for beginners—we take this a step further by isolating the most promising candidates for success.
The Real-Win-Worth Three-step Screening Approach:
- How Real is the opportunity,
- To what extent we can Win compared to competitive options, and
- To what extent the opportunity is Worth doing?
MGRUSH has been a long-term supporter of decision matrices. With some leaning on George Day[1], the following questions provide the framework you can modify for your situation.
“The R-W-W (Real-Win-Worth) screen(ing) is a simple but powerful tool built on a series of questions about the innovation concept or product, its potential market, and the company’s capabilities and competition.” – George Day
The Real-Win-Worth approach provides objective scores but requires expert reviews at each stage. If the idea is ‘great’, but we cannot win—there is no need to go further. Even if we have the capacity to win, if the concept is not worth much, there is no need to go further. As a consensus-building tool, the Real-Win-Worth approach provides a disciplined method for exposing assumptions while identifying knowledge gaps (and areas of superiority).
Successful screening depends upon the quality of the questions you use. Therefore, to arrive at a consensual understanding of answers to the final question about each of Real-Win-Worth, develop a robust set of detailed questions. Because neither Mr. Day nor MGRUSH can tell you how to modify the basic questions for your situation, first understand the intent and then determine what you need to make an informed decision during each of the three stages.
To what extent the opportunity is Real
Consider two critical vectors. Value the feasibility of the product, service, or solution and the extent to which it is attractive (e.g., internal or external customers). Answer these factors by exploring the questions they contain. Eight representative questions are provided below. Rarely should the questions be posed as close-ended. Rather, by exploring the “extent” or amount, you develop varying degrees across the vector.
Typically, your best (perhaps most innovative) solutions will score higher relative to each other. For example, with question 2.2. (To what extent do we have the technology and expertise to make it?) Your range could be . . . Note the non-linear weighting suggested below, ranging from zero through nine. Ultimately the ideas that score best will pass on to the next phase or stage.
To what extent we can Win compared to competitive options
After determining the extent to which your customer demand and solution are both real, assess your ability to succeed against competitive options. According to Day,
“Two of the top three reasons for new-product failures, as revealed by audits, would have been exposed by the Can we win? analysis: Either the new product didn’t achieve its market-share goals, or prices dropped much faster than expected. (The third reason is that the market was smaller, or grew more slowly, than expected.)”
Begin by reviewing the additional six questions that explain the two factors of synergies and advantages. Then, consider pulling in the results from any research efforts to help answer the questions. Focus on an open-ended answer of likely outcomes or projections. For example,
To what extent the opportunity is Worth doing
Finally, the last stage addresses predictive factors including financial risk/ reward and strategic fit. Financial projections can be general or refined, but apply consistent rigor to everything you evaluate. Additionally, keep in mind that forecasts of financial returns from innovative solutions are notoriously unreliable. Day notes from his research that . . .
“Given the susceptibility of financial forecasts to manipulation, overconfidence, and bias, executives should depend on rigorous answers to the prior questions in the screen for their conclusions about profitability.”
The ranges you need to use should be modified for your scale. Remember that risk/ reward factors while specific, are nevertheless projections. Therefore, aggregate the group input for evaluation since the Wisdom of the Crowd suggests that nobody is smarter than everybody. Here are some illustrative placeholders for one of the nine questions suggested below.
Facilitator Considerations
Consider holding a facilitated session to collaboratively develop your evaluation criteria and key questions. You may find that having individuals score candidates privately, followed by aggregating the results, creates a strong foundation for decision-making. This approach ensures the session is grounded in collective understanding and diverse perspectives. Remember, the highest-scoring idea(s) may not automatically win, but it’s essential to avoid overanalyzing suboptimal options. Instead, guide the group’s focus toward the most promising candidates to make informed, effective final decisions.
Please consider the following Real-Win-Worth questions as guidelines, meant to be freely adapted and customized to fit your specific context. Additionally, toward the end of this article, you will find illustrative examples of questions along with a potential range of responses for each.
Real-Win-Worth Nodes
Real-Win-Worth Illustration
[1] See “Is It Real? Can We Win? Is It Worth Doing? Managing Risk and Reward in an Innovation Portfolio” which appeared in the December 2007 edition of the Harvard Business Review
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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 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 7, 2017 | Communication Skills, Facilitation Skills, Leadership Skills, Meeting Support
Successful leaders have one thing in common: Strong facilitation skills. What are the core facilitation skills (or, facilitator skills)? Which skills do you need to lead a successful meeting? Depending on who you ask, there may be:
- 6 Essential Facilitator Skills
- 9 Meeting Facilitation Skills
- 9 Facilitation Skill Competencies
- Top 11 Facilitator Skills
- and of course, many, many others
20,000+ hours of experience as facilitators and trainers of professional facilitators have taught us about one indispensable facilitation skill: the ability to remove distractions. Meeting leadership behavior can be guided by the simple question, “Is it a distraction, or not?” Subject matter experts will actively contribute when they all focus on the same thing, at the same time. Getting a group to focus provides a common challenge for any meeting leader.
We break down meeting effectiveness into three domain-general areas of skills. Each contains other, domain-specific skills. The three general areas include meeting leadership, facilitation, and meeting design—in that order. The mandala shows these primary skills. You provide other skills while confirming the group goal. Also, ensure that your people find the agenda acceptable.
Facilitation Skills
Core Facilitation Skills
-
- Contacting and absorbing—noting both verbal and nonverbal behaviors
- Feedback—responding to participant’s contribution
- Clarifying—both expanding and focusing discussion
- Confirming—the validity of the content
- Challenging—meaning and assumptions
-
- Assessing the current behavior—what are the risks, why they persist, what are environmental factors that may hinder progress
- Agreeing on goals for new behavior—what the new behavior will look like
- Forming a strategy for change—finding sources of support for speeding up the change
- Monitoring the success of new behaviors
- Feeding back to continuously improve the process
-
Challenging
- Noting emotions, logic, and intuition in participants—being aware of their experience
- Describing and sharing beliefs
- Challenging opinions
- Managing—conflict
-
Crisis intervention
- Appraising the nature and severity of the crisis
- Serving in a helpful way—helping to expand each participant’s vision of options, to mobilize each person’s sense of strength and coping
- Reinforcing actions—that which has been determined to be the answer to the crisis
-
Leading
- Indirect—getting started (e.g., logistics)
- Direct—encouraging dialogue
- Focusing—limiting confusion and vagueness
- Questioning—guiding inquiries
-
- Stating the problem/ issue and turning it into a goal statement
- Helping people express doubts or fears about why an idea “won’t work”
- Documenting options/ action plans
- Gathering information about resources, constraints, related goals or issues, etc.
- Helping them develop decision criteria
- Selecting a backup
- Archiving learning
-
Reflecting
- Opinions and beliefs
- Experience and evidence
- Using content—repeating the main message for clarity
-
Rhetoric (word choice)
- Parsimony—i.e., expressing the most with the least
- Language command—properly applying the parts of speech
- Capturing meaning in terms used and understood by the participants
-
Summarizing
- Pulling themes together
- Reinforcing the big picture
-
Supporting
- Creating a climate of trust and respect
- Aiding in a healing method that helps to counter any attacking forces
We break down each domain-general skill into domain-specific skills. Most of our blogs further explain each. Here we provide a simple listing.
Domain-specific Facilitation Skills
The domain-specific skills below have been sorted alphabetically, as opposed to frequency, importance, etc.
1. Meeting Leadership
1.1. Awareness of local culture, life cycle, and terminology
1.2. Consciousness of roles in meeting
1.3. Understanding the holarchy and reason for meeting
2. Group Facilitation
2.1. Active listening and reflecting rationale
2.2. Biases: challenging participants and questioning
2.3. Communications and rhetorical precision
2.4. Consensus building and shared ownership
2.5. Context versus content
2.6. Environmental control and real estate management
2.7. Ground rules and participant behavior
2.8. Group development and performance
2.9. Interventions: Managing conflict and distractions
2.10. Neutrality, non-verbal, and observation
2.11. Output capture and visual stimulation
2.12. Thinking styles and heuristics
3. Meeting Approach, Design, and Methodology
-
- Agenda building and tool identification
- Constraints: ease, resources, and timing
- Continuous improvement and participant feedback
- Creativity and innovation
- Daily Scrum and Retrospectives
- Decision-making continuum
- Decision-matrix and decision quality testing
- Definitions, glossaries, and lexicons
- Distributed teams and virtual participation (e.g., video presence)
- Documenting
- Experience adapting and backup planning
- External resources
- Focus: Avoiding many to many
- Interviewing and participant preparation
- Introductory activities (e.g., icebreakers)
- Managing content while maintaining neutrality
- Meeting purpose, scope, deliverable
- Planning, analysis, and design approaches
- Preparation using an annotated agenda
- Prioritization options
- Problem-solving prototypes
- Risk assessment and measurement
- Scoping
- Scrubbing nouns and verbs and mitigating modifiers
- Tools selection and use (repeatability, scalability, and versatility) especially:
- Work breakdown structure and team charters
- Wrap or review activities (e.g., Parking Lot)
Why Do Facilitators with Skills Fail?
There remain a lot of talented facilitators who fail in their sessions. Poor meeting design explains the primary reason for meeting failures. Most groups want to show up, want to contribute, and want to do a good job—yet meetings frequently fail. Why? They don’t know how. Meeting design remains the secret to structured meetings.
A good facilitator could operate successfully in various environments and cultures. To be successful, they need the right agenda, method, and tools. Unfortunately, most organizations do not teach meeting design and the facilitator is forced to take on a role they are not trained to handle.
Our alumni know that we frequently compare facilitation skills and attributes to those of a Navy SEAL. We stress the importance of remaining invisible (ie, neutral), focusing externally (ie, NOT on one’s self), and embracing a strong sense of service to help others—to make it easy.
This is the first time we have recommended a hit in the face.
This extract derives from an article written by Chris Sajnog, a retired U.S. Navy SEAL Master Firearms Instructor and a Neural-Pathway Training Expert. For the entire article, turn your browser to Twelve Ways to Live Like a Navy SEAL.
Mr. Sajnog stresses freedom and independence to help others through collaboration and focus. Thank you Mr. Sajnog for your service, inspiring thoughts, and articulate words. Special thanks to Gr8fullsoul for his inspiring blogs, and pointing out Mr. Sajnog’s article.
Hit in the Face Traits
Use this list of traits found in a competent facilitator. Continue to the list of actions you can take to improve yourself.
- Active — You need to be moving, doing, or functioning at all times. Ideas and theories are great, but action gets things done.
- Brave — Brave doesn’t mean you aren’t afraid. It means YOU ARE, but you continue despite your fears.
- Confident — A warrior is sure of himself and has no uncertainty about his abilities.
- Decisive — Displaying no hesitation in battle is vital to survival.
- Disciplined — Once you have a plan and confidence you can fulfill it, and have the discipline required to stick with it.
- Loving — A warrior has confronted death and understands the value of life. Warriors whose lives are in balance are peaceful, unselfish, and compassionate of others. The love of others gives the warrior the energy to constantly train for battle and the strength to survive once he’s there.
- Loyal — A warrior needs direction, and that comes from being faithful to a cause, ideal, or group. Loyalty keeps you guided along your path.
- Patient — Having patience means bearing pains or trials calmly and without complaint.
- Skillful — Having the right mindset is vital, but learn a skill set to match.
- Strong — Have a determined will in all that you do. A strong mind can make up for a weak body, but not the other way around.
- Vigilant — You never know when danger is going to come knocking, and you need to be prepared to react appropriately.
Facilitator Actions
Thus, actions you can take to become a better facilitator include:
- Become a master at what you do. Everything in life is either worth doing well or it’s not worth doing at all.
- Embrace competition. Sign up for a race, a fight, or just challenge someone to arm wrestle. Prove that you’re better than someone else at something or work until you are.
- Find something you’re afraid of and go do it. Everyone has fears — warriors (facilitators) overcome them.
- Have a set of NUTs (Non-negotiable, Unalterable Terms) and live by them! Things you’re not willing to compromise in life, period.
- Start establishing routines and habits in everything you do. We are what we repeatedly do.
- Start practicing some form of martial arts — if you’ve never been hit in the face, go find out what it’s like.
- Work out. It doesn’t matter what you do. Breathe hard and sweat.
- Write down your goals and core values. If you don’t have a map for your life, how will you get where you want to go?
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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 | Oct 11, 2017 | Analysis Methods, Communication Skills, Facilitation Skills, Meeting Support
Alex Osborn, the driving force behind the concept of ‘brainstorming,’ shared a timeless message with public relations professionals in 1948 that remains just as relevant today. His message is especially pertinent now: while facts and scientific research can clarify public issues, evidence alone ‘cannot find solutions unless populated by new ideas.’[1] These ideas often emerge through public relations innovation.
Now, consider the democratic virtues of service, learning, and community building,[2] as outlined by Brian Aull, Ph.D., a professor at MIT. Public relations professionals have a unique opportunity to add significant value to these virtues, particularly in strengthening service and fostering community building within a democratic framework. narrow your scope of understanding to democratic virtues.
Innovating Public Relations to Enhance the Service of Others
Public Relations Innovation
Emotional understanding often holds more weight than intellectual understanding in typical community decision-making processes. As President Lincoln once observed,
“If you would win a man to your cause, first you convince him that you are his friend.”[3]
People don’t change their behavior based purely on facts, but on how those facts resonate with their personal experiences. For instance, most individuals aren’t truly afraid of heights—they’re afraid of falling, or more specifically, the impact of landing.
The greatest barrier to social progress is complacency. People resist change because they fear losing the things they’re attached to. Public relations professionals and other change agents can address this by emphasizing how old attachments can coexist with new ones, rather than framing the past and future as mutually exclusive. Integral thought, not separatism, becomes critical.
PR professionals should aim to simplify complex concepts for the public. Economic information often fails to resonate with the average person due to its complexity. Infusing more creativity and imagination into communication strategies could prevent the use of ineffective, uninspiring techniques. For instance, many organizational mission statements sound alike and fail to captivate or engage their audience. Seek the passion when you want to make an impact. Elmer Wheeler, a friend of Osborn’s developed the expression, “Sell the sizzle, not the steak.”
Community Building Requires Public Relations Innovation
Locally, many municipal challenges demand better solutions, including waste disposal, water access, and traffic safety. What often captivates the public, however, is unusual and unexpected behavior:
“. . . Buffalo safety authorities have dramatized the virtue of good driving. Instead of handing out summons, the police have been handing out flowers. On one evening, patrolmen William Collins and James Kelly ordered 25 drivers to the curb, then complimented them on their careful driving and handed them fresh orchids.”[4]
Internationally, how would one ‘sell’ America to the rest of the world? An overabundance of caution often stifles new ideas, yet innovation is desperately in need of a sponsor—particularly in regions like the Middle East. It is more ideas, not fewer, that will drive real impact. While this article does not explore ‘ideological weapons,’ it’s safe to say that greater imagination could hardly be less effective than many past efforts.
Since it’s unlikely that the federal government will establish a team of creative thinkers within the State Department, perhaps the professional PR community can step in as a transparent and effective surrogate. With Osborn’s encouragement:
“Maybe such a brainstorming group is a bit far-fetched; but, surely, we need somehow to put more creative power into our international salesmanship. We need more boldness. We need to look up to, not down on, audacity in ideas—just as we look up to audacity in armed conflict . . . If the armed forces need a General Staff to create our military strategies, don’t we need a creative group to pan our peace strategies?”[5] (italics are from the original author and source)
Who is better suited to think creatively about international strategies than the professional PR community?
Greater Public Relations Innovation Leads to Higher Quality Decisions
Recall the principles of The Wisdom of Crowds[6] and the logic behind it: groups are capable of generating more ideas collectively than the sum of their individual contributions. One person’s thought can spark an idea in someone else, leading to insights that might not have surfaced independently. This dynamic, often referred to as a ‘chain reaction,’ shows that both groups and individuals make higher-quality decisions when presented with a wider range of options.
When addressing national problems, it’s not necessarily the smartest individuals we need, but the most creative minds. So, what are some simple strategies to fuel the funnel of imagination and foster consensual ownership and shared responsibility for actions and next steps?
Use Specific, Detailed Questions to Spark Greater Idea Generation
More ideas foster solutions, especially when fighting problems proves ineffective—as it often does. Viable options emerge when they offer more attractive alternatives.
Asking the right questions accelerates the development of the best ideas. Broad, unanswerable questions like ‘How do you solve global hunger?’ won’t lead to actionable solutions. In contrast, more focused questions, such as ‘How can we improve food storage capacity in Somalia?’ can spark ideas that contribute to a larger solution.
In the world of processes, we might think of a simple equation like Y = f(X + X + x + x), where ‘Y’ is the outcome and ‘X’ and ‘x’ represent variables that contribute to it. To generate more ideas, it’s essential to focus on asking questions about the large ‘X’ or small ‘x’—the components of the process—rather than directly asking about the ‘Y,’ or the outcome itself. For example, instead of asking, ‘What is the marketing plan?’ it’s more productive to explore specific areas like segmentation, targeting, or positioning.
Some types of questions that inspire more detailed thinking—and that PR professionals might consider—include:
- Any unsuspected facts that can be brought to light? (Look at the opposite, reversal, and vice versa)
- How can the message or delivery be modified? (altered, changed, motion, sound)
- How can the seemingly disparate be combined? (combination, correlation, or synthesis)
- Laws of association that might include questions about:
- Contiguity or nearness,
- Contrast
- Similarity
- The query method suggests primary elementary school learning; namely:
- Why (important, necessary, or beneficial)
- Where (could, should, does) it occurs
- When should it occur
- Who (could, should, does) it
- What (could, should, does) need to occur
- How (could, should, does) it get accomplished or completed
- What can be borrowed or adapted to our needs? (illumination, inspiration, parallels)
- Where can we substitute? Or, rearrange? (interoperability, placement, sequence, surrogates, timing, transposition)
- What should be added, multiplied, or magnified? (dimensions, exaggeration, frequency)
- What should be subtracted, divided, or minified? (dimensions, exaggeration, frequency, understatement)
More Ideas, Less Judgment: Fueling Public Relations Innovation
More ideas are always better, so focus on capturing them without judgment or immediate discussion. This article isn’t about how to analyze ideas, but rather about the importance of capturing them first and analyzing them later.
Historically, early American settlers exhibited tremendous ingenuity—or faced the risk of starvation. Similarly, cultures that foster and inspire the most imagination will be the ones that thrive. The PR community can play a key role in driving that ingenuity by showcasing creativity and imagination, setting an example for the rest of the world. Encouraging creativity may not always be easy or natural, but remember: ‘only hard religions succeed.’[7] Similarly, generating imaginative ideas also requires perseverance and dedication.
[1] Osborn, Alex, “Your Creative Power—How to Use Imagination”, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1948, pg 308.
[2] Aull, Brian, “The Triad—Three Civic Virtues That Could Save American Democracy”, Amazon Digital Services LLC, 4th ed 2017, Preface.
[3] Osborn, pg 295.
[4] Ibid, pg 311.
[5] Ibid, pg 317.
[6] Surowiecki, James, “The Wisdom of Crowds”, Doubleday, New York, 2004.
[7] Dawson, W.J., “The Autobiography of a Mind”, Century Company, New York, 1925, pg 41.
______
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 | Oct 10, 2017 | Analysis Methods, Meeting Tools, Prioritizing, Prioritizing
Project portfolios focused on the best opportunities, and accelerate innovation. So how do you build consensus around the term “best”? George Day’s article[1] provides excellent logic to help you drive a consensual view of risk analysis.
“The risk analysis matrix employs a unique scoring system and calibration of risk. It helps estimate the probability of success or failure for each project based on how big a stretch it is for the firm.”
Risk analysis tells us that “best” is a function of something. The two main vectors identified by Day include the intended market (x-axis) and the product or technology (y-axis). The charts below show the ranges. Both axis range from “Same” to “New” to the company. Since each question to be asked (below) yields five points, the x-axis extends 30 points with six questions and the y-axis extends 35 points with seven questions.
We modified Day’s original questions that were biased toward product development. Therefore, while product development represents one type of project, we have expanded the rhetoric to embrace various project types. Modify the questions further and adapt them to your own situation.
The Risk Analysis Matrix
A project’s position on the matrix is determined by its score on a range of factors, such as how closely the behavior of intended customers will match existing customers (internal or external). Thus, consider how relevant the company’s brand or reputation may affect the intended market and how applicable its technology capabilities are to develop and provide life-cycle services.
Assessing Risk Analysis Across an Innovation Portfolio
Risk Analysis – Failure or Innovation?
Internal Positioning
Product/ Technology
Take Time To MODIFY
Providing a set of questions relevant to every reader requires broad and less meaningful phrasing. Therefore, take time to modify the questions above to reflect your personal environment, market conditions, and constraints. You might even expand or contract the number of questions to more fully embrace your project parameters and culture. Remember that the key to building consensus is getting a group of people to focus on the same thing at the same time. Additionally, never underestimate the value of sharp and appropriate questions to drive consensus.
Begin to interpret
A portfolio review team—typically consisting of senior managers with strategic oversight and authority over development budgets and allocations—conducts the evaluation, with input from each project’s development team. Team members may rate each project independently and then explain their rationale. Or, time permitting, conduct a facilitated workshop to build consensus around each factor and score.
Drive consensus by isolating reasons for any differences of opinion and appealing to evidence and your organizational holarchy. The determination of each score requires deep insights. The resulting scores serve as a project’s coordinates on the risk matrix. According to Day:
“When McDonald’s attempted to offer pizza, for example, it assumed that the new offering was closely adjacent to its existing ones, and thus targeted its usual customers. Under that assumption, pizza would be a familiar product for the present market and would appear in the bottom left of the risk matrix. But the project failed, and a postmortem showed that the launch had been fraught with risk: Because no one could figure out how to make and serve a pizza in 30 seconds or less, orders caused long backups, violating the McDonald’s service-delivery model. The postmortem also revealed that the company’s brand didn’t give “permission” to offer pizza. Even though its core fast-food customers were demographically similar to pizza lovers, their expectations about the McDonald’s experience didn’t include pizza.”
Once completed. . .
. . . the risk matrix typically reveals that:
- Organizations have more projects than they can manage well, and
- A majority of projects cluster in the bottom left quadrant of the matrix, and a minority skew toward the upper right, where impactful innovation occurs.
Expect an imbalance between incremental improvements and breakthrough innovation. Discounted cash flow analysis and other financial yardsticks for evaluating development projects are usually biased against the delayed payoffs and uncertainty inherent in massively innovative projects. Again from Day:
“What’s more, minor projects tend to drain R&D budgets as companies struggle to keep up with customers’ and salespeople’s demands for a continuous flow of incrementally improved products.”
The risk matrix provides a compelling and structured visual display to stimulate facilitated discussion. Professionally facilitate discussions and dialogue about the mix of projects and fit with strategy and risk tolerance. Next take a deeper dive into what we cover in our next article, on Real-Win-Worth (R-W-W). R-W-W develops a closer look at each project’s prospects and according to Day represents:
“ . . . a disciplined process that can be employed at multiple stages of product development to expose faulty assumptions, gaps in knowledge, and potential sources of risk, and to ensure that every avenue for improvement has been explored.”
______
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 | Sep 29, 2017 | Leadership Skills, Meeting Agendas, Meeting Support, Meeting Tools, Planning Approach
To build an action plan (or, a strategic plan) that transfers ownership and accountability to your meeting participants, begin with the right questions, in the right sequence.
Be one of the few facilitators who understand that ownership transfers instantly because participants offer their own “WHO does WHAT by WHEN,” the primary components of any action plan. Consequently, whether you’re planning includes strategies, initiatives, projects, activities, or tasks, when thoroughly completed, an action plan answers the following ten questions:
(Please note in the sections that follow, the highlighted terms link to tools that facilitators may use to build the activities that comprise an action plan or a strategic plan).
Action Plan (or, Strategic Plan) = Assignments
1. Why are we here?
First of all, find the passion. While many MBA textbooks refer to this first step as a Mission, much of the military-industrial complex refers to it as Vision. Yet both answer the same question first, which is why we show up. Therefore, responses to this question fill in the blank landscape and provide a rationale for subsequent team actions. For example, why are Marriott employees in the hospitality industry? They could be in financial services, energy, etc. Capture the passion for showing up here and now.
2. Who are we?
Frequently referred to as Values or Guiding Principles, answers to this question describe the accouterments that describe or weigh down the participants. What do they carry with them? What do they wear? How will they treat each other? Different types of people may share similar passions, such as mountain climbers, yet are very distinctive in their personalities (e.g., climbers using ropes versus trail walkers).
3. Where are we going?
People sticking together amplify their chances of success. Many teams prudently select a common view that guides their direction. While most MBA textbooks refer to this step as Vision, some refer to this as Mission. And yet both approaches answer the same question of direction by agreeing on where the group will go.
4. What will measure our progress?
No proactive endeavor succeeds in a complex marketplace without measurements. While some consulting firms define Objectives as SMART and Goals as fuzzy, other firms use the exact opposite definitions. We are not biased by the term used, but promote the concept that there are three different types of criteria: namely, SMART (i.e., specific—frequently referred to as KPIs or Key Performance Indicators), fuzzy (may be subjective, such as “a great view at the top of the mountain”), and binary (such as, “reach the summit”).
5. What is our current situation?
Frequently viewed as four lists, robust TO-WS actually contrasts two dimensions. The first dimension captures stuff within the group’s control, frequently referred to as strengths (plus) and weaknesses (minus). The second dimension captures stuff the group cannot control and is referred to as opportunities (plus) and threats (minus). A weakness that can be mitigated is NOT an opportunity because it is controllable. A group of mountain climbers might be agile (strength) and resource-thin (weakness). Additionally, they face a break in the weather (opportunity) or an avalanche (threat).
6. To reach our goals and objectives, what must we do?
To generate consensus when prioritizing hundreds of options, TO-WS analysis begins to transfer ownership when participants own their analysis. While typically much can be done, groups and teams only have time and resources to manage the most important stuff. As a result, our quantitative approach to TO-WS analysis simplifies complex situations and ensures consensual understanding. (NOTE: Many call this SWOT analysis but you should build the external Threats and Opportunities before tackling the internal Weaknesses and Strengths.)
7. To what extent will these actions guarantee our success?
Alignment ensures the proper balance of WHAT is being done to reach the objectives (created to ensure reaching the vision). Use an open-ended approach, as in asking, “To what extent does this WHAT support reaching this objective?” and NOT the traditional, close-ended approach that suggests, “Does it?” Consider using the Bookend method to prioritize which actions have the greatest impact on reaching the objectives.
8. WHO does WHAT?
Frequently called Roles and Responsibilities, over twenty varieties of RACI models, all promulgated by different consulting firms, answer the question WHO does WHAT. Our approach appends each assignment with WHEN it will be done, how much FTE (or, FTP)[1] is required, and what type of resources will be requested—resulting in a consensually owned GANTT chart.
9. What should we tell others about our progress?
Wouldn’t it be great if we sounded like we were all in the same meeting? Most call this step a traditional communications plan. We call it Guardian of Change because of the bias found in some organizations where the best ideas are NOT approved; rather the most charismatic “Champions” obtain approvals (a scary thought if you are a stakeholder).
10. Who will report back on open issues?
In your professional “Wrap” review your work, manage the “Parking Lot” or open issues, confirm a quick communications plan, and get feedback on how you did as the facilitator. Consequently, if you facilitate these ten questions, the group will understand, own, and live by WHAT it agrees to do.
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[1] FTE equals Full-Time Employees roughly equivalent to 2,000 hours per year. FTP equals Full-Time Person (FTP) and also equates to roughly 2,000 hours per year.
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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.)
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Go to the Facilitation Training Store to access proven, in-house resources, including fully annotated agendas, break timers, and templates. Finally, take a few seconds to buy us a cup of coffee and please SHARE with others.
In conclusion, we dare you to embrace the will, wisdom, and activities that amplify a facilitative leader. #facilitationtraining #MEETING DESIGN
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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.
