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.”
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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, president of MG RUSH Facilitation Training, was just 22-years-old and working as a Sales Engineer at Honeywell when he recognized a widespread problem—most meetings were ineffective and poorly led, wasting both time and company resources. However, he also observed meetings that worked. What set them apart? A well-prepared leader who structured the session to ensure participants contributed meaningfully and achieved clear outcomes.
Throughout his career, Metz, who earned an MBA from Kellogg (Northwestern University) experienced and also trained in various facilitation techniques. In 2004, he purchased MG RUSH where he shifted his focus toward improving established meeting designs and building a curriculum that would teach others how to lead, facilitate, and structure meetings that drive results. His expertise in training world-class facilitators led to the 2020 publication of Meetings That Get Results: A Guide to Building Better Meetings, a comprehensive resource on effectively building consensus.
Grounded in the principle that “nobody is smarter than everybody,” the book details the why, what, and how of building consensus when making decisions, planning, and solving problems. Along with a Participant’s Guide and supplemental workshops, it supports learning from foundational awareness to professional certification.
Metz’s first book, Change or Die: A Business Process Improvement Manual, tackled the challenges of process optimization. His upcoming book, Catalyst: Facilitating Innovation, focuses on meetings and workshops that don’t simply end when time runs out but conclude with actionable next steps and clear assignments—ensuring progress beyond discussions and ideas.
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.)
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.
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, president of MG RUSH Facilitation Training, was just 22-years-old and working as a Sales Engineer at Honeywell when he recognized a widespread problem—most meetings were ineffective and poorly led, wasting both time and company resources. However, he also observed meetings that worked. What set them apart? A well-prepared leader who structured the session to ensure participants contributed meaningfully and achieved clear outcomes.
Throughout his career, Metz, who earned an MBA from Kellogg (Northwestern University) experienced and also trained in various facilitation techniques. In 2004, he purchased MG RUSH where he shifted his focus toward improving established meeting designs and building a curriculum that would teach others how to lead, facilitate, and structure meetings that drive results. His expertise in training world-class facilitators led to the 2020 publication of Meetings That Get Results: A Guide to Building Better Meetings, a comprehensive resource on effectively building consensus.
Grounded in the principle that “nobody is smarter than everybody,” the book details the why, what, and how of building consensus when making decisions, planning, and solving problems. Along with a Participant’s Guide and supplemental workshops, it supports learning from foundational awareness to professional certification.
Metz’s first book, Change or Die: A Business Process Improvement Manual, tackled the challenges of process optimization. His upcoming book, Catalyst: Facilitating Innovation, focuses on meetings and workshops that don’t simply end when time runs out but conclude with actionable next steps and clear assignments—ensuring progress beyond discussions and ideas.
by Facilitation Expert | Aug 31, 2017 | Meeting Support, Scrum Events
Agile’s Scrum Master facilitator techniques ensure that business communities get quick and responsive results. Constant feedback helps teams prioritize and make adjustments. A Scrum Master facilitates against impediments and for product owners’ requirements to support development team efforts. Scrum Master’s experience and discipline prove that every structured meeting should embrace ‘agile’ practices.
Professional facilitation lends essential skills to the Scrum Master role because an agile environment demands frequent meetings. Much of what Scrum Masters have learned applies to your meetings as well. Basic Scrum Master facilitator techniques include:
Leveraging Agile Scrum Master Facilitator Techniques
- Asking open-ended questions
- Bringing people together who should listen to each other but don’t
- Consensus building where everyone wins, NOT voting where there are winners and losers
- Facilitating Scrum events as requested or needed, including preparing and post-processing results
- Helping the Development Team to continually improve their methods
- Mediating conflicts that arise during product development
- Providing visuals (eg., agendas and other information radiators) that provide focus and enable measurement of progress
- Providing a variety of activities to stimulate breakthrough, employee engagement, and product innovation
- Removing impediments to the Scrum Team’s progress
- Structured collaborative tools—too many to list here but many of them are also used in waterfall and traditional phase gate approaches
- Timeboxing and constantly pushing the Pareto Principle to get the most out of the least
Clear benefits derive from an agile approach supporting Scrum Master facilitator techniques including:
- Documented and shared knowledge about product and process decisions
- Early identification of high-benefit opportunities
- Encouraging flexibility and adjustments around unexpected developments (that always develop in projects)
- Frequent re-assessment to identify appropriate acceleration or course corrections
- In-depth exploration of more evidence and factors than normally considered by unstructured, intuitive methods
A Scrum Master Facilitator Generates Focus
Keeping participants conscious to “be here now” burns a lot of fuel. Additionally, keeping multiple concepts in mind, at the same time, is virtually impossible. Highly intelligent individuals can rarely think about more than four concepts at once, and thinking about only two at once is optimal, therefore . . . Focus. The hardest part of any session is getting a group of people to focus on the same thing at the same time with a common meaning and intent. Be sure to keep the energy flowing and take a break(s) if necessary.
- Conduct frequent breakout sessions to keep the energy flowing.
- Consider ergonomic stretches and breathing exercises to keep participants vibrant.
- If necessary, use timeboxing rather than burning out participants. A subsequent meeting can pick up where you leave off, with fresh energy.
- Schedule the most important stuff early in your meeting and, when possible, schedule the meeting for the first part of the day.
- We believe that two ten-minute breaks are superior to the traditional fifteen to twenty-minute breaks traditionally offered. We do project counting timers, however, and do not allow breaks to become eleven minutes (or longer). Do NOT penalize people who are on time by waiting for people who are not.
Demand Evidence (Think Deeply)
Challenge the intuitive, short-term thinking for support that takes a long-term view and deeper insight into implications and consequences. What are the deeper associations? Because the cost of omissions, that is ‘missing stuff’, is exorbitantly high (especially with information technologies). We need to value and appreciate some of the longer exercises that may be required to bring discussions to a higher level. By challenging and demanding evidence, the facilitator removes the myopic view from participants and forces them to be integrative with their thinking. But understand, that causal diagrams take longer than ideation sessions.
Visual imagery also stimulates making it easier to analyze. Images (i.e., iconic) and sketches (i.e., illustrative) are more efficient for capturing complex relationships than narrative (i.e., written) terms. If you work in a multi-national organization, graphical displays mitigate some of the challenges associated with translations and transliterations. Mapping stimulates—the power of patterns remains unchallenged and continues to be supported by most scientific research across a broad spectrum of disciplines. Mapping, such as logical models and process flow diagrams, makes it easier to identify omissions and more fully explain the complex relationships that exist among the components being discussed.
Write That Down
In addition to providing visual stimulation, if it is not written down it will be forgotten. In other words, if it is not written down, it does not happen. Do not waste everyone’s time, please write it down. It is easier to delete later than to recall what was said, “back then.”
Zen of the Experience (use all the senses):
When physical/ spatial, visual, and sound (and optimally even taste and smell) harmonize, we create more vivid associations that improve our memory recall. Who cannot recall the smell, standing at the seashore, of an “ocean breeze”? To amplify your meeting’s ‘Zen’, use analogies. Educators have known for centuries that learning is amplified when explained via analogy or metaphor. For nearly thirty years now, we have been promoting the use of analogy or metaphor as a way to explain the agenda and how the pieces fit together.
Combining the Scrum Master facilitator practices makes it easier for your participants to act on knowledge accessed and developed during your meetings and workshops. For additional activities to support your sessions, search for some of the many tools we provide that support collaborative sorting, experience prototyping, idea generation, and other simulations that build consensus and higher-quality deliverables, FAST.
Experience and evidence for the preceding derives partially from Cara Turner, who discusses proof about the relationship of agile methods and neuroscience at her blog site, facilitatingagility.com. Cara, along with numerous authors and scientists she cites in support, refer to key practices proven to improve both decision quality and project quality.
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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, president of MG RUSH Facilitation Training, was just 22-years-old and working as a Sales Engineer at Honeywell when he recognized a widespread problem—most meetings were ineffective and poorly led, wasting both time and company resources. However, he also observed meetings that worked. What set them apart? A well-prepared leader who structured the session to ensure participants contributed meaningfully and achieved clear outcomes.
Throughout his career, Metz, who earned an MBA from Kellogg (Northwestern University) experienced and also trained in various facilitation techniques. In 2004, he purchased MG RUSH where he shifted his focus toward improving established meeting designs and building a curriculum that would teach others how to lead, facilitate, and structure meetings that drive results. His expertise in training world-class facilitators led to the 2020 publication of Meetings That Get Results: A Guide to Building Better Meetings, a comprehensive resource on effectively building consensus.
Grounded in the principle that “nobody is smarter than everybody,” the book details the why, what, and how of building consensus when making decisions, planning, and solving problems. Along with a Participant’s Guide and supplemental workshops, it supports learning from foundational awareness to professional certification.
Metz’s first book, Change or Die: A Business Process Improvement Manual, tackled the challenges of process optimization. His upcoming book, Catalyst: Facilitating Innovation, focuses on meetings and workshops that don’t simply end when time runs out but conclude with actionable next steps and clear assignments—ensuring progress beyond discussions and ideas.
by Facilitation Expert | Aug 10, 2017 | Facilitation Skills, Leadership Skills, Meeting Agendas, Meeting Structure, Meeting Support, Meeting Tools
Below are eight habits we call meeting killers that every facilitator, or meeting leader, must avoid.
Neglect to prepare your participants in advance.
Meeting Killers: Have you ever been in a meeting where someone asks: “So, what’s this all about?”
People attending a meeting should know the purpose of the meeting before they accept. Since their input is presumably valuable, provide them with a pre-read package. Participants should show up properly prepared to make the contributions they seek. That’s why we call them subject matter experts. Read our article on “Meeting Announcements” for other meeting announcement considerations prior to shipping your pre-read packages.
Penalize people who are on time.
#7 – Disregard the use of any ground rules.
Meeting Killers: Imagine it’s one of those days when you have two or three meetings back to back. Time is precious, so you make sure to arrive on time, only to discover the meeting will be delayed (and possibly run late) because the session leader insists on waiting for latecomers.
As a professional session leader, do NOT wait for people who are running late. You do NOT want to penalize people who are on time. You don’t even know if the people who are tardy will show up at all, so start promptly.
If someone does show up late and needs to be informed or updated, pair them off with someone and ask them to go in the hallway for a quick debrief, while you continue.
The last thing you want to do is stop the meeting and review (i.e., repeat) what has already transpired. Do NOT penalize everyone else and force them to waste time reviewing things they’ve already heard once, twice, or even three times. Note that the first ground rule we recommend is “Be Here Now”. Control context and be an enforcer, not a wimp. We also recommend starting your meetings five minutes after the normal start time. Conclude five minutes early. Be the one kind enough to know that participants deserve a few minutes between meetings to attend to stuff. Enhance your track record with punctuality and your reputation will soar.
Don’t have a deliverable or any concept of what DONE looks like.
Meeting Killers: Have you ever been in a meeting where everyone seemed to have their own discrete and sometimes competing purpose?
As a professional leader, it’s your job to ensure everyone fully understands the purpose of the meeting. Professional leaders always have a vision of success. More concretely, they can visualize what the meeting will produce or deliver. Steven Covey used the expression “Start with the End in Mind.” We prefer the expression of knowing what DONE looks like.
Don’t have an agenda or any structure.
Meeting Killers: Have you ever been in a meeting where one comment (or one person) suddenly sends the discussion—or, worse yet, the entire meeting–in a completely new and unrelated direction?
As the meeting leader, it’s your job to prevent meeting scope creep from the beginning until the end. Limit discussion unrelated to your deliverable. Your agenda is a road map that tells the group how you are going to get them to the deliverable. There is more than one right answer, so do not permit any arguments around context. As a leader, you have predetermined the best way, given your constraints, to get there. Not having an agenda is truly the ‘kiss of death.’ Our curriculum focuses on agendas and tools. We provide many specific and useful suggestions for building agendas, here are a few:
Begin every sentence with the word “I” as in “I think . . .”, “I want . . .”, “I need . . .”, “I believe . . .”, “I feel . . .”
Meeting Killers: Ever heard your meeting leader constantly refer to themselves in the first person?
As a leader, you should consistently substitute integral terms and pluralistic rhetoric such as we, us, and ours. Make sure everyone knows that this meeting is NOT about you. Walk the talk by controlling your rhetoric.
Better yet, don’t shut up. Start talking and never stop.
Meeting Killers: Ever go to a meeting and say nothing?
Why? Because the leader spoke one, long sentence from the beginning of the meeting to the very end. When anyone else is speaking, rarely should you, the leader, interrupt or cut them off. Remind them that you are servile, and the meeting serves to support them.
Disregard the use of any ground rules.
Meeting Killers: Have you been to a meeting where everyone is head down, buried in their laptops or phones?
Do not permit dysfunctional behavior. If everyone behaves and does whatever they want, you might as well not have a meeting. The adage, don’t text and drive applies equally well for a meeting. A meeting where participants aren’t paying attention (i.e., texting or checking email) is bound to end in a wreck—one where the damage means economic loss for the company. If email must be responded to, ask them to take it out into the hallway where their keyboard inputting is not such a distraction. Build and use ground rules. You’ll be glad you did.
Ignore your virtual or remote participants entirely.
Meeting Killers: Notice how teleconference or video-presence participants contribute much less frequently than live participants?
Remote folks are frequently ignored. Begin with them instead. Do not string them in at the end for additional comments. Ask them to take the lead. If you take a round-robin approach, start with them. If you create a virtual seating arrangement, put them upfront. However, make the ground rules apply to them as well. No multi-tasking, working on email, or shopping.
SUMMARY: MEETING KILLERS
Follow the suggestions above to ensure that the output and next steps of your meeting are clear, certain, and shared. Wouldn’t it be great if participants left the meeting saying:
“It’s pretty clear what I have to do next to add value.”
What are we missing? Let us know and reply with some irritants we left out. Enter your comment or reply below.
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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, president of MG RUSH Facilitation Training, was just 22-years-old and working as a Sales Engineer at Honeywell when he recognized a widespread problem—most meetings were ineffective and poorly led, wasting both time and company resources. However, he also observed meetings that worked. What set them apart? A well-prepared leader who structured the session to ensure participants contributed meaningfully and achieved clear outcomes.
Throughout his career, Metz, who earned an MBA from Kellogg (Northwestern University) experienced and also trained in various facilitation techniques. In 2004, he purchased MG RUSH where he shifted his focus toward improving established meeting designs and building a curriculum that would teach others how to lead, facilitate, and structure meetings that drive results. His expertise in training world-class facilitators led to the 2020 publication of Meetings That Get Results: A Guide to Building Better Meetings, a comprehensive resource on effectively building consensus.
Grounded in the principle that “nobody is smarter than everybody,” the book details the why, what, and how of building consensus when making decisions, planning, and solving problems. Along with a Participant’s Guide and supplemental workshops, it supports learning from foundational awareness to professional certification.
Metz’s first book, Change or Die: A Business Process Improvement Manual, tackled the challenges of process optimization. His upcoming book, Catalyst: Facilitating Innovation, focuses on meetings and workshops that don’t simply end when time runs out but conclude with actionable next steps and clear assignments—ensuring progress beyond discussions and ideas.
by Facilitation Expert | Jul 13, 2017 | Communication Skills, Facilitation Skills, Leadership Skills
With facilitation today there is no common, shared body of knowledge. In part, because facilitation is a fuzzy word and widely applied, there is no single definition — making Facilitation Certification fuzzy as well.
In North America, there are three primary methods for certifying professional skills and knowledge. None of the methods is necessarily superior or inferior when compared with each other.
- Association; e.g., Project Management Institute, Scrum Alliance, etc.
- Service Provider; e.g., Microsoft®, Oracle®, etc.
- University; e.g., Georgetown University, UCLA, etc.
First, consider the credibility of a facilitation certification:
Successfully complete a rigorous, five-day MG RUSH course to earn Certified Structured Professional Facilitator (CSPF) status, a premier facilitation certification
- Facilitation: The definition of the word facilitation is applied in many ways. There is no central body defining or controlling what facilitation is or where/ how it is applied. A search via Google or Bing returns many disparate uses of the term facilitation. Definitions range from facilitation among business groups, social groups, mediation, and dispute resolution, to teaching/instruction, community development, and many more.
At MGRUSH our instruction in facilitation supports all of the mentioned situations. Through a structured approach, we focus on business and organizational challenges, especially planning and understanding requirements. We cover workgroups, projects, executive sessions, board meetings, and workshops of all types and durations.
- Certification: Most professional certifications include these elements:
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- Body of knowledge (BoK), representing best practices and best of breed for industry standards
- Minimum level of practice with the certifiable skills and knowledge in appropriate, demonstration situations
- Test(s) or other repeatable, comparable, standards of the skill and knowledge being practiced
There are three global associations that provide certification focused exclusively on facilitation. They include the Association for Talent Development (ATD), the International Association of Facilitators (IAF), and the International Institute for Facilitation (INIFAC).
There is no central, unambiguous standard-setting agency. However, the IAF focuses its promotional efforts on the “core competencies” of facilitation. There are less than 500 IAF Certified Professional Facilitators (CPF), most of them outside of the USA. The INIFAC facilitation core competencies are quite similar but their requirements are more stringent. There are less than thirty INIFAC Certified Master Facilitators (CMF) worldwide in 2018.
The IAF Handbook of Group Facilitation published in 2005 provides a compendium of articles written by 30 authors, assembled around a set of core competencies. See the comparison charts below. Neither the IAF nor INIFAC provide facilitation training through their organization. Rather, they rely on outside experts such as ourselves to prepare students.
Related associations include the International Business Analyst’s Association (IBAA), Project Management Institute (PMI), and Scrum Alliance
Both the IAF and the INIFAC operate in a manner similar to the Project Management Institute (PMI), the International Business Analyst’s Association (IIBA), or similar associations. They provide a body of knowledge, and certification testing, and rely on Registered Educational Providers (REP) such as ourselves for training on the core competencies. Current BoK includes the Project Management Institute’s PMBok (Sixth Edition, 2017) and the International Business Analyst’s Association BABok (Third Edition, 2015). We rely partially on our certification and endorsement among these and other Associations as Registered Educational Providers to justify the certification of our robust curriculum and proven teaching methods.
For in-depth training on facilitation, students depend on the best efforts of commercial organizations (like ours), universities, and clubs/ associations. Frequently, the university certifications derive from trainers that also teach for us, or our competitors. No university can satisfy the rigorous requirements mentioned above (body of knowledge, testing, experience, requirements, etc.) without borrowing heavily on the knowledge codified by others, such as our MGRUSH Professional Facilitation curriculum, classroom immersion, practice, feedback, and testing.
Thousands of companies provide varying levels of certification for the products and services they provide. Motorola famously certified Green Belts, Black Belts, and Master Black Belts from its very own, Motorola University before the intellectual property for Six Sigma® was purchased by Underwriter’s Laboratories.
Microsoft®, Oracle®, and hundreds of others in the Information Technology space continue to provide certification by product type and role. Needless to say, a certain cachet derives from branded certification that exceeds that of independent associations that are not privy to all the working parts of proprietary solutions.
There are various clubs/ associations that promote facilitation (in any of its many meanings) as a means to build community and share tips and techniques. They generally promote whatever form of facilitation the local association/ club prefers.
Among commercial trainers, MGRUSH provides some of the most long-standing, recognized, and well-developed facilitation trainers and certifiers available. Our MGRUSH Professional Facilitation Reference Manual augments nearly one thousand documents, templates, and visual aids available online. Thus, our alumni instantly access our body of knowledge, downloading agendas, tools, and methods. The integrated resources contain contributions by the trainers, students, and others who are continuously testing in the field. We also apply a soft test to the usefulness of our certification by mentioning our training in students’ resumes. With our longevity and deep content, students frequently include our certification in their CVs and Biographical Sketches.
Discover how our structured form of facilitation creates amazing results, proven to make you a better leader.
The competencies gained from our rigorous training are inspirational and practical, you will love the results. For information on claiming your educational units for the IBAA, PMI, or Scrum Alliance click here.
For a comparison of the three Associations’ various core competencies for facilitation scroll down. We also demonstrate to what extent our MG RUSH Professional Facilitation curriculum covers the IAF core competencies. (MG RUSH does not provide IAF certification. Nor are we formally endorsed by IAF. For IAF certification guidelines, please visit their website.)
If you want, drop us a note and we’ll send you a table that compares over twenty facilitation certification organizations. We have compiled attributes such as:
- Facilitation certification class pricing ranges from USD$11,000 (Ten Directions®) to $200 (Lego® Education)
- Facilitation certification class durations range from one day (various) to sixteen days (UCLA—plus offsite reading and exercises).
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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, president of MG RUSH Facilitation Training, was just 22-years-old and working as a Sales Engineer at Honeywell when he recognized a widespread problem—most meetings were ineffective and poorly led, wasting both time and company resources. However, he also observed meetings that worked. What set them apart? A well-prepared leader who structured the session to ensure participants contributed meaningfully and achieved clear outcomes.
Throughout his career, Metz, who earned an MBA from Kellogg (Northwestern University) experienced and also trained in various facilitation techniques. In 2004, he purchased MG RUSH where he shifted his focus toward improving established meeting designs and building a curriculum that would teach others how to lead, facilitate, and structure meetings that drive results. His expertise in training world-class facilitators led to the 2020 publication of Meetings That Get Results: A Guide to Building Better Meetings, a comprehensive resource on effectively building consensus.
Grounded in the principle that “nobody is smarter than everybody,” the book details the why, what, and how of building consensus when making decisions, planning, and solving problems. Along with a Participant’s Guide and supplemental workshops, it supports learning from foundational awareness to professional certification.
Metz’s first book, Change or Die: A Business Process Improvement Manual, tackled the challenges of process optimization. His upcoming book, Catalyst: Facilitating Innovation, focuses on meetings and workshops that don’t simply end when time runs out but conclude with actionable next steps and clear assignments—ensuring progress beyond discussions and ideas.
