by Facilitation Expert | May 25, 2017 | Analysis Methods, Meeting Structure
Experienced facilitators understand both the challenge and value of getting a group to focus on the same thing at the same time. For most project-related meetings, Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) provides a simple method to increase focus. According to Goldblatt’s Triple Constraint Theory, mitigate risk through focused discussion on the cost, schedule, and scope of discrete portions of the project rather than the entire project at once.
Work Breakdown Structure represents a method that groups the project’s distinct work elements to help organize and define the total work scope of the project. While many experts suggest that a WBS element may be a product, data, a service, or any combination; at a detailed level strive to use verbs, and terms that represent the work and activity that needs to be completed. Work Breakdown Structure also provides framework for detailed cost estimating and control along with providing guidance for schedule development and control. Additionally WBS enables the project manager or product owner to dynamically revise and update as needed.
Each descending level of the Work Breakdown Structure represents an increasingly detailed definition of the project work. Note this illustrative WBS for building a house. Break work down into separate elements, the total sum of which represents all the work necessary to build the house.
Work Breakdown Structure – House Construction
In summary, the Work Breakdown Structure:
- Ensures you have defined the significant aspects that make up the project
- Provides a framework for organizing and managing project scope
- Provides feedback for planning and controlling costs and scheduling
When you have numerous projects being performed simultaneously, each project competes for the limited resources available. WBS enables you to review project details and distinguish one project’s needs from others within your organization. Therefore, you are better enabled to identify resource requirements and allocate resources more effectively.
Preparing a Work Breakdown Structure
Here are some suggested steps for preparing a Work Breakdown Structure:
- Always start with the end in mind, the project deliverable. Identify final project products necessary for achieving project success.
- Identify the major aspects necessary for project completion and success.
- These are items that by themselves do not complete the project need but, when combined, make up a successful project
- Examples shown previously include structural, electrical, and plumbing
- Build out additional levels of detail for managing and controlling the project requirements.
- Remember that each project is different, thus each WBS will be different
- WBSs from previous projects can be used as templates, but remember that the management philosophy and the level of detail may be different from project to project
- Understand your controlling and reporting requirements
- Review and refine the Work Breakdown Structure until the stakeholders agree with the level of project planning and reporting.
- Remember that no matter how detailed your WBS is, there are planning and reporting restrictions created by a WBS.
- See below for an example of the detail you need contrasted with what management may need for reviews.
Work Breakdown Structure – Management Needs
In developing a Work Breakdown Structure, realize that there are multiple ways to develop a WBS for any given project. Some ways might be better than others, but the two most important items apply to both:
- The Work Breakdown Structure must contain all approved scope and
- The Project Manager must develop the Work Breakdown Structure to reflect the way you intend to manage the project.
Helpful WBS templates HERE:
Chief Collaboration Officers
Granted, much of the suggested material above is the responsibility of the session leader. But if they won’t do it, you better. Remember, it’s worth thousands and thousands of dollars to promote more collaborative work. Harvard Business Review states further that collaboration may answer many of your biggest business challenges. They encourage leaders to promote collaborative work and teamwork, and suggest . . .
“. . . we believe that the time may have come for organizations to hire chief collaboration officers.”
______
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 | May 18, 2017 | Meeting Agendas, Scrum Events
The Economist reports that “Some apartment building owners now require tenants to provide a DNA sample of their dog so that unscooped poop can be penalized.” Alex Pentland of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has invented a “sociometric” badge that measures tone of voice and propensity to talk or listen.
The current trend towards evidence-based decision-making devalues opinions alone. In fact, an evidence-based meeting design becomes optimal.
What is an Evidence-Based Management?
Evidence-Based Management and Meeting Design
Evidence-based is a term taken from the field of medicine in the 1990s. Its principles extend across education, public policy, social work, and most recently, management. Because an evidence-based practice supports making decisions through the explicit use of the best available facts, it demands:
- Asking: turning an issue or problem into an answerable question
- Acquiring: looking for and getting the evidence
- Appraising: judging the trustworthiness of the evidence
- Aggregating: assembling the evidence
- Applying: building the evidence into the decision-making process
- Assessing: evaluating the outcome of the decision taken
According to the Center for Evidence-Based Management (CEBMa):
Our mission is to promote, develop and teach evidence-based practice to enhance the profession of management. We provide support and resources to managers, teachers, and others interested in evidence-based management.
Research published by the Harvard Business Review discovered that:
Evidence-based management is conducted best not by know-it-alls but by managers who profoundly value how much they do not know.
What better role to lead with the support of an evidence-based meeting design than a facilitator?
The Harvard writers conclude:
If taken seriously, evidence-based management can change how every manager thinks and acts. It represents a way of seeing the world and thinking about the craft of management. It proceeds from the premise that using better, deeper logic and employing facts, to the extent possible, permits leaders to do their jobs better. Facing the hard facts and truth about what works and what doesn’t, understanding the scary half-truths that constitute so much conventional wisdom about management, and denying the total nonsense that too often passes for sound advice will help groups perform better.
From an Agile perspective . . .
. . . while Scrum builds itself around an empirical practice, Michael Bodé suggests the following:
“EBP (Evidence Based Practice) gives a framework for the higher level decision making process than is implied with Scrum. Though there is certainly a stress on using empirical data, Scrum fails to clearly guide the practitioners in the decision making process. If we translate an evidence-based practice into project management, we create the following:
-
- Asking: What will the minimum viable product (MVP) look like such that it produces value?
- Acquiring: What are the PBIs that will reach the goal of the MVP and produce value?
- Appraising: What is the level of complexity of PBIs and their applicability to accomplishing the business value (acceptance criteria)?
- Aggregating: What different categorizations and business values do individual and aggregate PBIs produce?
- Applying: What PBIs should we plan for sprints and releases based on the priority and business value?
- Assessing: What shift in PBIs do we need to execute based on current progress and other factors?”
While opinions and feelings always slip into discussions, without much challenge, best-of-breed facilitators become aware of the challenge of facts and evidence while discounting vague assertions. We remain convinced that the intuitional mind appeals to a higher sense of reason than the purely rational.
Want to increase the quality of your deliverables? Increase the amount of challenge and demand for more evidence-based proof, as the most complex decision-makers do. In God We Trust, but everyone else brings evidence.
Our alumni understand that leading and facilitating is simpler and easier than coming up with an optimal meeting design. Therefore, consider Scrum’s Evidence-Based Management for Software Organizations (EBMgt™)[1] which measures value to help improve your organizational agility.
The EBMgt or Scrum’s Evidence-based approach enables service groups to make rational, fact-based decisions, taking conversations from preferences and opinions to logic and insight. Above all, details and a modified meeting design have been based on the “Evidence-based Management Guide: Empirical Management for Software Organizations” written by Ken Schwaber, Patricia Kong, and David Starr.
Because Service Groups Struggle to Prove their Value
Within service groups, so much effort is focused on features and functions that benefits get overlooked. For example, monitoring the efficacy of the software does NOT provide evidence of a group value-add, rather . . .
Outcomes Provide Evidence of Value and Ways to Improve
The Current Value of any organization must be supported by evidence of its ability to meet market demand with timely delivery (Time-to-Market) while being able to sustain delivery over time (Ability to Innovate.) Therefore, Scrum’s evidence-based approach encourages groups to focus on the following Key Value Areas (KVA) categories:
- Current Value
- Time-to-Market
- Ability to Innovate
Current Value reveals the organization’s actual value in the marketplace but has no relevance to an organization’s ability to sustain value in the future.
Time-to-market evaluates the organization’s efficacy at delivering new features, functions, services, and products. Hence, without actively managing Time-to-Market, the ability to sustain delivering value in the future remains uncertain.
The Ability to Innovate helps avoid software that is overloaded by low-value features. Consequently, as low-value features accumulate, more of the budget and time is consumed maintaining the product, not increasing the capacity to innovate.
What to Measure
Within the KVAs, EBMgt recommends eleven Key Value Measures (KVMs). Additionally, each should stand on its own and remain clear and transparent.
KVA: Current Value
| KVM: |
Measuring: |
| Budget or revenue per Employee |
Approved budget or gross revenue / #employees |
| Product Cost Ratio |
All expenses that develop, sustain, provide services, and administer the product or system. |
| Employee Satisfaction |
Because engaged employees are a major asset of any software group or organization. |
| Customer Satisfaction |
Sound management, solid software, and fulfilled stakeholders. |
KVA: Time to Market
| KVM: |
Measuring: |
| Release Frequency |
The time needed to satisfy the customer with effective products and services. |
| Release Stabilization |
Impact of poor development practices and underlying design and code base. |
| Cycle Time |
The time (including stabilization) to satisfy a key set of customers or to respond to a significant organizational request. |
KVA: Ability to Innovate
| KVM: |
Measuring: |
| Installed Version Index |
Because of the difficulty customers face adapting or changing to a new release. |
| Usage Index |
Determines a product that is burdensome and difficult to use and excess software that must be maintained even if rarely used. |
| Innovation Rate |
Growth of technical debt caused by poorly designed and developed software. Consequently, the trend of the budget percentage being consumed keeps old software alive. |
| Defects |
Additionally, measures increasingly poor-quality software that leads to greater resources. |
How to Improve Empirically through EBMgt
Scrum’s Evidence-based Methodology
Monitoring KVAs provides a great start toward managing with evidence, but not enough to change the way agility is managed. The EBMgt approach recommends four phases that enable organizations to constantly learn and improve the value derived from software investments.
-
Measure KVMs
First, build actual values for the KVMs. Now you have an initial view of organizational value. In the figure below, KVMs are displayed in a radar graph that helps visualize relative strengths and weaknesses. In the example, the group’s ability to bring new features, functions, and products to its customers is strong, but its costs and defects are high.
Baseline: Eleven Key Value Measures (KVMs)
-
Select KVAs to Improve
Thus, with a clear view of current organizational value and an understanding of the measures that reveal it, leaders can now make informed decisions about which KVAs to change. Incremental changes performed in small learning loops are the most effective method for increasing an organization’s overall agility.
-
Conduct Practice Experiments to Improve Value
Next in sequence, practitioners select a single or small set of practices to use in an experiment. For example, a software group may want to increase quality to reduce the Defects of KVM. Therefore, an experiment might implement test-first practices in development teams. Making this change in a time-boxed experiment allows observation of the impact of these practices on overall organizational value.
-
Consequently, Evaluate Results
Finally, assess the results and impact of an experiment to monitor the trend of value over time. Because understanding the changes of the KVMs prepares the organization for its next learning loop. Consequently, organizations that track changes periodically across time learn from patterns that emerge. Therefore, you can interpret the final chart below:
Trends: Eleven Key Value Measures (KVMs)
[1] ©2014 Scrum.Org. Offered for license under the Attribution Share-Alike license of Creative Commons, accessible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode and also described in summary form at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.
Citations
Evidence-Based Management: The Basic Principles, Barends, Rousseau & Briner, Center for Evidence-Based Management, 2014.
Evidence-Based Management, Pfeffer and Sutton, Harvard Business Review, January 2006.
Evidence-Based Process as Applied to Scrum and Facilitation, Michael Bodé, MS 2015
______
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. 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 blog HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite meeting 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 | Apr 27, 2017 | Communication Skills, Leadership Skills, Meeting Support
The most important action you take every day is to make choices–to decide.
Your productivity amplifies when your decisions are optimal. Therefore, choose wisely when to work alone, speak with another person, or call for a meeting. Here are five compelling reasons for when to use structured facilitation sessions:
Advantages of Structured Facilitation Sessions
Structured Facilitation Sessions
- Higher quality results: Groups of people generally make higher quality decisions than the smartest person in the group. Structured facilitation sessions encourage the exchange of different points of view. Structure enables the group to articulate the purpose of its decision, identify new options, and prioritize decision criteria.
- Faster results: Structured facilitation accelerates the capture of evidence-based information, improving the objectivity of your decision. The structure also expedites results by getting the meeting participants (aka subject matter experts) to arrive prepared. The meeting provides time to share and justify answers to questions already provided in advance. Without structure, the questions may be heard for the first time, leaving participants ill-prepared to respond. With a prior understanding of your questions and issues that need to be discussed, participants respond faster.
- Richer results: By pooling skills and resources, diverse and heterogeneous groups generate higher degrees of innovation. Diverse groups are capable of developing a wider understanding and even anticipating future demands, subsequently saving time and money across the life cycle of your project or program. If you want the same answer you always get, clone yourself. If you are seeking breakthroughs or innovation, stir things up.
- People stimulate people: Structured facilitation provides the catalyst for innovative opportunities. Multiple and sometimes competing perspectives generate a richer (360-degree) understanding of problems and challenges, rather than a narrow, myopic view. Groups stimulate and empower one another to create valuable contributions that did not walk into the room.
- Transfer of ownership: Structured facilitation orients toward further action by creating deliverables that support follow-up efforts. Professional facilitators use a method that builds commitment and support from the participants, rather than directing responsibility at the participants.
To Host Structured Facilitation Sessions
Conducting structured facilitation sessions requires preparatory time, ample session time, and follow-up as well. Therefore, successful sessions depend upon clearly defined roles, especially distinguishing between the role of facilitator and the role of methodologist (that are also discrete from the role of scribe or documenter, coordinator, etc.). Carefully managed sessions should embrace ground rules to ensure getting more done, faster.
Your preparation efforts help ensure higher productivity during meetings, including:
- Researching both meeting design options and content to be explored
- Review and documentation of minutes, records, findings, and group decisions that affect the project being supported by your meeting or workshop
- Completion of individual and small group assignments prior to sessions
When conducted properly, meetings with groups of people are strenuous for everyone involved. Therefore, call them workshops or workouts. Strive to avoid an overly ambitious agenda and plan for at least two, ten-minute breaks every four hours. Use our MGRUSH ten-minute timers to ensure that breaks do not extend to eleven or twelve minutes. Always provide dedicated resources, such as a facilitator professionally trained in structured methods.
Structured Facilitation Considerations
Discourage unplanned interruptions, especially through electronic leashes. “Topless” meetings are increasingly popular, meaning no laptops or desktop devices (e.g., smartphones). Allow exceptions for accessing content needed to support the session. “No praying underneath the table” is another expression used to discourage people from using their gadgets on their laps, presumably beyond the line of sight of others, when in fact, everyone can see what they are doing anyway. For serious consensual challenges or multiple-day sessions, conduct sessions away from the participants’ everyday work site to minimize interruptions and everyday job distractions. Using structured facilitation sessions will increase your productivity and others’ if you properly plan your work and work your plan.
______
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.
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 | Apr 20, 2017 | Communication Skills, Facilitation Skills, Managing Conflict, Meeting Support
A problem person causes a meeting distraction. Their message is ineffective because some characteristic gets in the way of communicating clearly. Always empower your participants, but learn to control challenging personality types to avoid problems in meetings.
First of all, the deliverable or decision is theirs, not yours. Therefore, manage politics by removing ideas from the individual participant and turning them over to the entire group. Because it’s not WHO is right, but rather WHAT is right that we seek. All ideas belong to all participants—never to an individual. While ‘Ground Rules’ help mitigate some behavior, firmer action is required for select individuals. As a result, difficult participants known to cause problem meetings are discussed below.
“Politikos” — Nature of the Problem Person
The term ‘Politikos’ means ‘the science of people. You deal more ably with participants as you gain more experience. However, there is a certain degree of comfort in recognizing that there are some common patterns of behavior that are likely to occur. Keep one thing in mind, however; participants cause problems only for a certain time. Often a participant causing a problem becomes productive in a different situation. Never label a person permanently as a problem person.
Firm But Flexible, How to Manage Personality Types in Problem Meetings
You identify participants displaying problems because they generally disrupt the session. Sometimes, however, they don’t participate. When you have a problem person in a meeting, their contribution remains unclear because some characteristic gets in the way of communication. To deal with the people on the ends of the curve (i.e., the outliers), assume that people have good intentions and focus your energy on discovering what is causing the difficulty. In other words, identify the problem—do not highlight the problem person (or, person with the problem).
Problems in Meetings and Difficult Participants
People Principles to Remember
Following are guiding principles for dealing with people (all based on “Treat others as you wish to be treated”):
- Never embarrass people, especially in public. People . . .
- are creative if asked.
- are intrinsically reasonable.
- do not like to be blamed.
- have different goals in life.
- prefer the positive to the negative.
- share similar fears.
Motivation of People
People are motivated by:
- Need to control (power motivation)
- They rebel against a loss of control.
- Turf issues arise.
- Need to excel (achievement motivation)
- People don’t want to look bad in a group.
- All participants are speaking publicly—public speaking scares many people.
- Need to bond (affiliation motivation)
- Attacks and win-lose situations affect participants’ ability or willingness to bond.
Managing the Problem Person
Determine what is motivating a participant you are dealing with. Once you understand their motivation, use the following sequence of guidelines to deal with them.
- First, determine and correct the cause of the problem person
- Mitigate the symptom if the cause cannot be corrected by:
- Ground rules
- Body position
- Eye contact
- Talking with the participant during a break
- Enlist help from the business partner or executive sponsor.
- Last resort—have the problem person removed.
When erratic or distracting behavior occurs, prepare to control it. While ‘Ground Rules’ may help contain much of the non-malicious behavior, additional interventions are required for select personality types. The following table lists the characteristics of difficult participants that could cause problem meetings. Each comes with thoughtful and proven suggestions on how to deal with them.
| NAME |
CHARACTERISTICS |
WHAT TO DO |
Attacker
|
Launches verbal, personal attacks on other group members and/ or facilitator; constantly ridicules a specific point of view. |
Stand between two people fighting; stop attacks; maybe use additional ground rules
to control. |
Backseat Driver
|
Keeps telling the session leader or facilitator what to do—or not do; attempts to control the meeting by changing the methodology. |
Listen to some comments—because they may be good; never turn over control; talk to them during breaks; enforce scope. |
Broken Record
|
Bringing up the same point repeatedly; and constantly trying to focus discussion of this issue; can prevent the group from moving ahead to new items even if ready. |
The broken record needs to be heard. Document their input but do not make it an open item until later in the workshop. |
Busybody
|
Ducking in and out of meetings does not ask subordinates to hold calls, and gives the impression of being too busy (and therefore important) to devote full attention to the meeting and the group. |
Deal with similar to the latecomer or early leaver; try to establish rules to control during preparation. Allow frequent bio-breaks for people to react to their electronic leashes. |
Dropout
|
Constantly engaged with their smartphones or laptop; expresses disapproval or dislike by ignoring the proceedings; may read, or do unrelated paperwork to avoid getting engaged in the session. Caution, a doodler is not dropping out—they may be a horizontal thinker. |
Use laser focus so that they know that you see them. During a break, talk to them. Do NOT publicly call out their name and ask for participation.
Encourage your culture to embrace “topless meetings” that prohibit laptops and smart devices. |
Early Leaver
|
Drains the group’s energy and morale by leaving the meeting before its end. |
Handle similar to a latecomer; do not stop the meeting for one person. |
Head Shaker
|
Actively expresses disapproval through body language and nonverbal cues such as rolling eyes, shaking head, crossing and uncrossing arms, sighing, etc. Covertly may influence a group to reject an idea. |
Approach the head shaker. Use open hands to ask them to explain a viable, counter position. Do not allow these nonverbal cues to continue unnoticed. |
Interpreter
|
Always speaks for someone else, usually without an invitation to do so; restates ideas or meanings and frequently distorts it in the process. |
First, get the original speaker to confirm without embarrassing or putting them on the spot. Then pass the “talking stick” to the interpreter for their own point of view. |
Interrupter
|
Jumps into the discussion and cuts off someone else’s comments; acts impatient, too excited, or concerned that own ideas will not be acknowledged. |
Stop them immediately to protect the source; always get back to them but do not allow them to interrupt; they will learn. |
Know-it-all
|
Uses credentials, age, seniority, etc., to argue a point; focuses group attention on opinion and status as opposed to the real issue. |
Often a supervisor or manager; writes it down to satisfy and challenge them about relevancy to the holarchy and for evidence. |
Latecomer
|
Arrives late to meetings, makes a show of arrival, and insists on catching up and stopping the group midstream. |
Use 50-minute meeting intervals. Enforce the “Be Here Now” ground rule. Do not interrupt the meeting. Review during a break, not during the meeting. |
Loudmouth
(Monopolizers)
|
Talks too often and too loudly; dominates the discussion; seemingly impossible to shut up; maybe someone who has a higher rank than other group members. |
Record input if on topic. If not, a direct conversation away; stand in front of a person for a short time; talk to them during the break. |
Negative Nancy
|
Voiced skepticism, shrouded with genuine concern. |
Use the “What—So What—Now What” tool. They may know something significant. Meet them privately before the meeting. |
|
|
While it is true that we are not going to convert quiet people into aggressive extroverts who dominate a meeting, there are steps that facilitators can take to transform the velocity of contributions from quieter participants. |
1. Interview your participants
2. Breakout sessions
3. Non-verbal solicitation
4. Reinforce during break
5. Round-robins & Post-it note approaches |
Sleeper
|
Challenged to stay awake, especially during late afternoon sessions. |
Ideally, open a window. Practically, walk around them if possible or lead a quick ergonomic break. |
Uninvited
|
Show up without an invitation |
Explain and enforce the role of Observer, noting they may speak during breaks. |
Whisperer
|
Constantly whispering during meetings, holding offside conversations; upstaging the facilitator or session leader, as well as other group members. |
Hence, standing close to the whisperer(s) will stop their conversation. Enforce one conversation at a time with the entire group. |
______
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.
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 | Mar 23, 2017 | Leadership Skills, Meeting Support
MGRUSH Certified, Professional, Endorsed Facilitators are truly special.
Thousands of alumni have earned promotions to executive positions, directorships, and C-level responsibility. MGRUSH facilitators lead groups ranging from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to greenfield initiatives about the genetic bar-coding of zebra meat to prevent illegal poaching. Furthermore, many alumni branch out on their own as independents, frequently providing pro-bono support for charitable organizations. While others contribute as valuable keystones, embedded in organizations for survival and growth. Here we provide you with some endorsed facilitators, that are as good or even better than you have ever experienced before.
Endorsed Facilitators
Since we are frequently asked for facilitator referrals, we thought it would be prudent to share some of the “best of the best”. As authors and instructors, our endorsed facilitators maintain high standards, while consistently generating results that clients need. Today, about five percent of our incoming students have their Ph.D. or Doctorate and more than half have advanced/master’s degrees. Most importantly, our alumni understand that galvanizing consensus and effective meeting management depend on integrating three components:
Integrating Leadership, Facilitation, AND Meeting Design
Meetings capture a huge investment of time. Unproductive meetings affect your profit and loss statement, morale, and potential growth of your biggest asset, your people. Many of us attend frequent and important meetings. However, little (if any) structured training has been provided to help us become better meeting participants, and more important, meeting leaders. More effective meetings for teams and groups are dependent on improving three areas of behavior, namely:
WHY —
Leadership training ensures that we begin with the end in mind. WHY we’re meeting equates with what DONE looks like. The best facilitators in the world will fail miserably if they don’t know where they are going. Yet the worst facilitators can still succeed when the deliverable is clear. Effective leadership draws a line of site about the impact of the meeting on the quality of life of its participants.
WHAT —
Once it has been made clear where we are going, facilitation skills make it easier to know WHAT to do to make a meeting successful. Unfortunately, we have developed poor muscle memory over the years. Some behaviors need to be ‘unlearned’ before new behaviors are embraced. The only way to change such behaviors is through practice and immersion. Talking heads (i.e., the instructor’s lips are moving) won’t do it. Only active participation and practice will work at instilling effective and facilitative behaviors.
HOW —
Even a great facilitator who knows where they are going (i.e., What DONE looks like) still needs help. They need to know HOW they are going to build consensus and get a group of people from the meeting Introduction to the Wrap. While the best meeting design or approach (i.e., Agenda) has more than one right answer, there is one wrong answer — if the meeting leader does not know HOW they are going to do it.
Our endorsed facilitators have proven themselves. Get to know them if you need a more effective enterprise, business unit, program office, or project direction. They will lead your group to new horizons. FIND OUT MORE
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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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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.
