by Facilitation Expert | Mar 17, 2016 | Communication Skills, Facilitation Skills, Leadership Skills, Managing Conflict
Scope creep kills a lot of projects. Scope creep kills many more meetings. The hardest task to accomplish in leading a group of people is to get them to focus. Their minds drift, twist, and become partially selective.
When the right group of people is assembled, they can accomplish nearly any task at hand if the leader can get them to focus. Yet they continue to drift, and even begin to discuss and argue about issues that are not within the scope of the meeting as they impose their own scope creep.
Understanding Meeting Scope Creep and Precision of Your Questions
Secrets to Prevent Meeting Scope Creep
There are two secrets to prevent scope creep in meetings. First, the session leader or facilitator needs to make the meeting scope clear when the meeting begins, as well as secure agreement from the participants about the meeting scope. Frequently meeting scope is limited by geography, duration, or situation—frequently it represents only PART OF the project scope.
When people argue about the validity or purpose of a project, for example, the discussion is usually NOT within the meeting scope. Only a conscious facilitator can police scope creep carefully.
Secondly, the facilitator needs to know the precise question that the group should be addressing. When the facilitator does not know the question, ANY answer is appropriate. Most meeting facilitators should focus on context before meetings rather than content, by knowing the right questions and the proper sequence to ask them. They also cannot afford to ask for the meeting deliverable, as that question is so broad as to be DUMB (i.e., Dull, Ubiquitous, Myopic, and Broad).
Ask Precise and Detailed Questions to Prevent Meeting Scope Creep
If a product marketing plan is the deliverable, you cannot ask “What is the product deliverable?” For example, a marketing plan is a function of segmentation, targeting, positioning, market mix, message, medium, etc. If the question is “What are our top three market segments?” the facilitator cannot allow arguments over social media, as such content is out of the scope of the question at hand.
The holarchy above illustrates the narrowing of the scope of the enterprise through the question being discussed in a meeting. The facilitator’s role is to know the precise questions that support the completion of agenda steps that support the completion of the meeting deliverables that support the completion of the project, etc. When the facilitator does not know the right question to ask, all hell breaks loose, and rightfully so, scope creeps . . . Do not let that happen to you.
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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 every day 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 timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.
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 3, 2016 | Decision Making, Meeting Structure, Meeting Tools
A perceptual map works well when the PowerBall approach is not robust enough, yet many of your attributes and criteria remain fuzzy and subjective. Thus we are able to help a team compare and prioritize its options using a rich visual display, called a perceptual map, that provides visual support (in a directional manner) of your optimal and sub-optimal options.
Illustrative Perceptual Map on Customer Loyalty
Rationale for a Perceptual Map
With a perceptual map, we can also expand our understanding of the options, since there is likely more than one right answer. By locating the options we stimulate discussion and solicit the rationale for placement. The analysis provides insight into which options may demand more or less urgent attention and care.
Method One for a Perceptual Map
After you have helped the team build their options (e.g., actions to take), consider arranging them along a perceptual map. One version called a Payoff Matrix dimensions includes: 1) Ease of implementation, and 2) Impact of the solution.
- If you have dozens of options, consider using a large whiteboard.
- You should use Post-It® notes because the discussion will lead to moving around (relocating) some of the options.
- Be careful to know how to illustrate and define “High” and “Low” and to the extent possible, draw from your personal metaphor or analogy (Agenda discussion point in the MGRUSH curriculum).
- Use active listening and challenge frequently to discover evidence that can be used to support beliefs and claims. Enlighten all participants as to which conditions are required to support the arguments.
- Modify the “Two-by-Two” illustration below by adding a moderate dimension, making it what others call a “Nine-Block Diagram” (or “9-Block Diagram”) shown at the bottom.
- In Six Sigma, comparisons are made of the CTQs (Critical to Quality) with the improvement or weighting factors.
An Illustrative Perceptual Map and Generic Payoff Matrix
Method Two for a Perceptual Map
You can also facilitate building a perceptual map by creating the following nine-block:
- Identify two dimensions that most affect the decision or situation.
- Typically array from low to high but be prepared to define what is meant by “Low” or “High” (see video on PowerBalls).
- If you need to use a third dimension, such as quantity, consider varying your symbols or notes. Change the size of the Post-It notes so that width, height, or shape equates to the third dimension.
- Consider using different colored Post-It notes that relate to a third or fourth dimension such as large, medium, and small.
- The alternative shown next is the Nine-Block Diagram that provides an additional, third sector of information contrasted to the Two-by-Two up above.
A Nine-Block Perceptual Map
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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 every day 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 timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.
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 | Feb 18, 2016 | Analysis Methods, Meeting Tools
Measure the increase in productivity per employee using the formula for Total Factor Productivity.
Accomplishment may be measured by the increase in productivity per employee. For many, calculating productivity has been nebulous and argumentative. Total Factor Productivity permeates industries from service and software to the manufacturing of products and goods. Since no formula of any value goes without an acronym, call it the TFP. As a calculation, TFP looks like this:
Total Factor Productivity
XX% CiR − (0.4 constant * XX% CiA) = TFP
Here is an explanation for Total Factor Productivity:
CiR represents the “Change in Revenue (per employee)”. If an illustrative small company or business unit with $218 million has 1,400 employees has a revenue of $155,000 per employee. If the following year they grow to 1,500 employees and realize revenue of $257 million, they will realize $171,333 per employee or a positive change of 14.2 percent.
Constant represents a baseline and 0.4 is being used, although it could be modified. Be careful, however, as MIT Professor Robert Solow received a Nobel Memorial Prize for his work. He discovered that 0.4 represents the best overall constant to use. If used by others, it also allows for direct comparison.
CiA represents the “Change in Assets (per employee)”. If our illustrative company or business unit grows its assets from $60,000 per employee to $70,000 per employee, it will realize a 16.7 percent increase in its CiA.
Therefore, using our illustrative results above, the calculation would look like this:
14.2% CiR − (0.4⊂ * 16.7% CiA) = 7.5 percent TFP
TFP now represents gains made in labor productivity, less gains from investing in capital. TFP can be driven by various factors including cost cutting, increased market share, new products, or getting something out of idle assets (e.g., vacant property). Innovation and new technology drive or propel the USA economy for increasing TFP, including hardware (e.g., GPS or geo-positioning systems equipment) and software improvements (e.g., resulting in fleet and fuel optimization).
TFP measures the revenue for each employee and also factors in capital assets and investments in equipment, information, and technology.
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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 every day 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 timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.
Terrence Metz, MBA, CSM, CSPF, PSP01, HTTO1, is the Managing Director of MG RUSH Facilitation Leadership, Training, and Meeting Design, an acknowledged leader in structured facilitation training, and author of “Meetings That Get Results – A Facilitator’s Guide to Building Better Meetings.” His FAST Facilitation Best Practices blog features nearly 300 articles on facilitation skills and tools aimed at helping others lead meetings that produce clear and actionable results. His clients include Agilists, Scrum teams, program and project managers, senior officers, and the business analyst community among numerous private and public companies and global corporations. As an undergraduate of Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and an MBA graduate from NWU’s Kellogg School of Management, his professional experience has focused on process improvement and product development. He continually aspires to make it easier for others to succeed.
by Facilitation Expert | Jan 21, 2016 | Analysis Methods
When you facilitate alignment, you help groups identify gaps, omissions, and overkill, and confirm the appropriateness and balance of their action plan.
Facilitate Alignment, an Illustration
Rationale to Facilitate Alignment
Building consensus around alignment can be very challenging, especially if you facilitate exclusively in the narrative world (i.e., written words). Therefore, MGRUSH suggests the use of icons (see PowerBalls) that are both appropriate and powerful to help you facilitate alignment. Method to Facilitate Alignment
First of all, create a matrix with your options (e.g., actions) and the targets (e.g., goals). Common items that may be aligned include the comparison of strategies to objectives. To facilitate alignment, consider these three steps:
- First, complete the matrix with a linear approach, but be careful to always ask the open-ended question, “To what extent does ‘x’ (i.e., option, action, or strategy) support ‘y’ (i.e., target, goal, or objective) ?”
- Having defined the PowerBalls (preferably with a legend that is visible throughout the activity for your participants to reference), label each cell with either a high, low, or moderate PowerBall symbol, indicating the extent to which the option supports the target.
- While completing the matrix, ask the group to confirm completeness. Add anything missing or modify as required (i.e., Create a new option or calibrate an existing option).
Note: Since the solid balls indicate high and the empty circles indicate low, the half-filled balls indicate moderate. We like to define High as mandatory, “must have at any price.” We define Low as “would like to have but not willing to pay extra.” The stuff in between is Moderate, the stuff for which we would be willing to “pay a reasonable amount.” The equivalent to the MoSCoW tool would be: Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won’t have (null).
For seasoned professionals and alumni, consider using the Book-end method to equal dispersion after you complete your initial baseline analysis.
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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 every day 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 timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.
Related videos
Terrence Metz, MBA, CSM, CSPF, PSP01, HTTO1, is the Managing Director of MG RUSH Facilitation Leadership, Training, and Meeting Design, an acknowledged leader in structured facilitation training, and author of “Meetings That Get Results – A Facilitator’s Guide to Building Better Meetings.” His FAST Facilitation Best Practices blog features nearly 300 articles on facilitation skills and tools aimed at helping others lead meetings that produce clear and actionable results. His clients include Agilists, Scrum teams, program and project managers, senior officers, and the business analyst community among numerous private and public companies and global corporations. As an undergraduate of Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and an MBA graduate from NWU’s Kellogg School of Management, his professional experience has focused on process improvement and product development. He continually aspires to make it easier for others to succeed.
by Facilitation Expert | Jan 14, 2016 | Managing Conflict, Meeting Support
Begin stakeholder analysis by identifying and examining how each interacts with the organization when they provide or receive services or benefits. External or internal people, systems, and other groups comprise stakeholders. They interact with the group through a specific process.
Stakeholder Analysis Begins by Defining Organizational Interests
Identify process stakeholders and examine their contributions to the process (inputs) and benefits or what they receive from the process (outputs). Use the three-step approach below to identify process stakeholders.
One – Identify inputs
- What inputs does the process require, or what goes into the process? Consider using the FAST Creativity Exercise to help prevent missing items.
- Who provides each input from Activity 1 immediately above? Link the source(s) of each input.
- Where does the input go? Describe the activities and how each activity plays out.
Two – Identify outputs
- What outputs does the process create? List them as “things” or nouns such as a form, report, or event (e.g., deposit).
- Who uses or benefits from the output of the process—link to the client(s) of each output.
- What creates the output? Describe activities that depend on the outputs and how each makes them into something of value.
Three – Identify stakeholders
- Link each input/ output to one/ more stakeholders by one/ more activities within a process. Meanwhile, a stakeholder relationship shown in the table below clarifies the relationship between stakeholder, input, output, and activity within the process.
Stakeholders’ Relationships
Group Stakeholders
Therefore, stakeholders can be grouped together according to how they use or interact with the inputs and outputs. From the table above members and employers group together because “Payers” interact with the collection process in the same manner.
Acknowledge Stakeholder Interests
The motives and needs of the stakeholders determine their interest in the process and indicate how they can contribute/ derail the success of the project.
Define Stakeholder Strategy Plan
The stakeholder strategy plan provides a blueprint for the BPI (i.e., Business Process Improvement) team’s interaction with stakeholders. Focus on the stakeholder’s contribution shows how the team can use the stakeholder’s interests to support the project and make it successful.
The plan identifies
- What the project wants to achieve with each stakeholder
- Stakeholder issues and interests
- How stakeholders will be managed
- The frequency of communication
- The changing content of communication over the life of the project
The plan must be constantly updated to reflect changes in stakeholder opinions over the life of the project. The template below supports the development of the stakeholder strategy plan.
Stakeholder Strategy Plan Answers . . .
Stakeholder Name:_____________________________
- The objectives of the strategy plan . . .
- It is important for the project to have a stakeholder plan because . . .
- The purpose of the process is to . . . So that . . .
- Give a short description of the stakeholder group:
- The members of this stakeholder group are . . .
- Describe this group’s role in the process.
- Identify inputs the group provides:
- Identify outputs the group uses:
- Stakeholder thinks that the current process . . .
- Stakeholder thinks this because . . .
- Stakeholder’s interest in the current process . . .
- Stakeholder’s power in the current process…
- Stakeholder thinks that the BPI project . . .
- Stakeholder’s likely reaction:
- Stakeholder wants . . . from an improved process.
- It is essential for the stakeholders to support the project because:
- Without the stakeholders’ support . . .
- Stakeholders’ support . . .
- Stakeholders can contribute to the success of the project by . . .
- The stakeholder can hamper the project by . . .
- The BPI team wants the stakeholder to . . .
- Three things that are important to the stakeholder are:
- The team can guarantee . . .
- We need to tell the stakeholder . . .
- We need to tell them because . . .
- The best way to communicate with this group is to . . .
- This will cost (prepare a budget):
- We need to meet with this group because/ when:
- At what points in the project is it critical to meet with each stakeholder?
- How do we deal with confidentiality issues?
- Can each team member be privy to all information?
- Can each stakeholder be privy to all information?
- What is the strategy to ensure that confidential information stays that way?
Develop a Communications Action Plan
The communications action plan identifies exactly how and when a project team will communicate with each target audience (or stakeholder) over the life of the project. Therefore a flexible plan updates over the life of the project and recognizes the need for intervention and ad hoc meetings. Match the communications plan with your project milestone and plan outreach to the stakeholders and staff at critical points of your project.
Next, consider the need for different types of meetings. One-way communications may be appropriate when the team needs to reveal the decisions made and share information. Therefore, use facilitated workshops for decision-making and to encourage participation and ownership. Ad hoc meetings deal with negative situations and negotiate among stakeholders. The communications action plan provides significant input for the change management plan.
Determine Stakeholder Risks
Because the amount of power each stakeholder/ stakeholder group enjoys now and the extent to which this power change provides an indication of the level of resistance the stakeholder will have to the project. The more pain that each stakeholder absorbs, and the more power/ status (s)he loses, the greater the resistance. NOTE the figure below to predict the amount of resistance from the stakeholder group.
Mitigate Behavior
Because of our analysis, developed an action plan to encourage positive behaviors and limit negative behaviors. Certainly, a stakeholder analysis recognizes the fragility of the human condition and sensitivity to its environment. Therefore your team must constantly monitor and evaluate stakeholders’ reactions by revisiting the stakeholder analysis at each milestone in your project.
Conclusion
Stakeholders (internal and external) have invested interests in your project and can provide positive support. Therefore the project team’s responsibility demands identification of stakeholder contributions. The project team needs to be aware of the impact a project may have on each stakeholder and their power base, and develop strategies that are appropriate for advancing their project.
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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 every day 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 timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.
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.
