by Facilitation Expert | Aug 23, 2012 | Analysis Methods
Here are some sequentially listed A3 project questions, modified from an A3 project approach.
These questions serve as a litmus test for determining the overall health of a project. After the questions, you will find an A3 Project Facilitation Reference Guide.
A3 Project Questions
Borrow or modify the A3 project questions to develop richer insight into the health of your project.
A3 Project Questions
“To what extent” should precede the following questions:
- Can you clearly and succinctly define the “presenting problem”—the actual business issue that is being felt?
- Have you engaged other people?
- Might you show the gap between the target and the current condition?
- Did you clarify the optimal business objectives?
- Could you isolate the root cause(s) of the main components of the gap?
- Have you engaged other people?
- Will you uncover the substantive (i.e., most meaningful) information to support the analysis?
- Have you identified the real problem?
- Have you gathered and verified facts-not just data and anecdotes-to clearly understand the current state?
“HOW will you” should precede the following questions:
- Decide to tackle this problem.
- Capture and share the learning?
- Decide which countermeasures to propose.
- Get agreement from everyone concerned?
- Know if your countermeasures work?
The “WHAT” should precede the following questions:
- Are some possible countermeasures?
- Are the root causes of the problem?
- Do you actually know and how do you know it?
- Follow-up issues can you anticipate?
- Is the business context?
- Is the problem or issue?
- Might be the problem?
- Is your implementation plan—who, what, when, where, and how?
- Problems may occur during implementation.
The “WHO” should precede the following questions:
- Is responsible for this issue?
- Owns the problem?
- Owns the process for addressing the problem (or realizing the opportunity or managing the project)?
This Facilitation Reference Guide supports an A3 project workshop. It begins with management perspective and clarity around what needs to be delivered to be called a success. Some call this, “knowing what DONE looks like.”
Facilitation Reference Guide for an A3 Project Workshop
Facilitation Reference Guide — Preparation Phase
- First and foremost, articulate and codify the deliverables.
- Next, understand the organizational holarchy and the impact of failure. Hence, the value of the initiative, project, or meeting should be stipulated by the amount of money and wasted FTE at risk if the project fails.
- Listen and then listen more. Therefore, speak with the project team, the business community, the sponsors, and the customers to ensure clarity and alignment. Come to understand the political risks and potential personality issues associated with an IT project workshop.
- Conduct a quantitative, MGRUSH risk assessment. Remember, if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it.
- When considering multiple IT project workshops or multiple days, build an IT project workshop plan for the series of meetings required.
- Emphasize roles and the equality of all meeting participants. Have them leave their titles in the hallway before entering the meeting room. Assign the role of observer to people you cannot keep out.
- Build your approach (i.e., agenda) for each session based on discrete deliverables.
Facilitation Reference Guide — Workshop Phase
Hence, as you prepare for your meetings and workshops:
- Take the basic approach for each session identified above and expand into the detailed questions you need answers to and the activities you will lead to getting results.
- Create an annotated agenda including review material, ground rules, and appropriate audio-visual support.
- Default to the two primary activities when necessary:
- Brainstorming:
- List (ideate, diverge, create undiscussed input)
- Analyze (e.g., if prioritizing, what tool, what questions, etc.)
- Document (converge, decide, agree on final output)
- Process Sequence
- Build consensus around the purpose of the process.
- Clarify each supporting activity (preferably in verb-noun format).
- Clarify information (input) needed to support each activity.
- Detail the transaction including supporting calculations or algorithms.
- Describe the environmental conditions and policy impact.
- Confirm what changes and fully define the new outputs.
Facilitation Reference Guide — Review and Resolution Phase
Finally, provide a smooth segue from the meeting deliverable to use by the project team:
- Distribute clear and valid documentation from the meeting.
- Follow up personally with the project team to de-brief the findings.
- Obtain any calibration of meeting notes from meeting participants.
- Submit an evaluation report of the meeting or workshop effort, including benefits and concerns from your own performance as the session leader.
Follow this structured reference guide and you are ensured a higher likelihood of preventing any significant omissions. Additionally, prepare thoroughly and allow twice as much time as possible. As a meeting leader, you need to keep all your participants fully engaged. Thorough preparation requires planning your activities, scripting your questions, and creating backup plans. You will be responsible for keeping participants clear about what you need from each of them; therefore, do the following:
- Hereafter, always provide participants with a written meeting purpose, scope, objectives, and Basic Agenda.
- Stipulate broad expectations and detailed questions that your subject matter experts need to properly prepare for the session.
Which Path? The Art of Questioning
For longer than the recorded history of humans, hikers and mountaineers have turned around, faced their group or partner, and asked, “Which way?” and as soon as someone says, “To the left,” someone else asks, “Why?”
As a mountain climber, your decision or choice is a function of countless variables, including duration, distance, and elevation. Later in the journey, you will discover the best path is also influenced by sun orientation and wind direction. Because the decision about which path to take becomes a function of those primary variables, you will also realize that those variables are not equally valued.
As an example, for one person or group, ambient comfort (with their purpose being “experience”) represents the highest importance, so sun exposure and wind chill are critical. Another group stresses elevation and distance (their purpose is “conditioning”). Both rationales are optimal for their respective groups. A neutral facilitator, armed with the appropriate tools, could help them both decide and agree on a path. However, business decisions are usually far more complex than that.
A Guide on the Side, Not a Sage on the Stage
Once you have confirmed that you accurately heard and understood what participants believe, use questions rather than edicts to advance the conversation. Use either prepared or impromptu questions that will:
• Build group cohesion
• Create receptiveness to change and development
• Direct teams to look for similarities—for example, apples and oranges are both fruit and similar in shape, size, and weight; they both bruise easily and rot as well
• Help maintain focus within the scope
• Increase learning and innovative thinking
Questions are most effective when presented with an inquiring, probing, and neutral perspective. Finally, effective questions are open-ended discoveries and not opinions disguised as questions.
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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.
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 16, 2012 | Communication Skills
Information is physical. “To do anything requires energy. To specify what is done requires information.” –Seth Lloyd (2006) c/o James Gleick
“The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood” released by First Vintage Books in March 2012, and written by James Gleick © 2011, will leave you exhilarated with the implications of information as a thing, and exhausted at understanding the implications of information as another dimension, much like length, width, and height. his highly acclaimed and best-selling author has probably forgotten more about this topic than this author is capable of restating, but his work is definitely worth a read.
For me, I was quite awakened to the understanding that the term itself is dynamic—notice “in – formation.” For us, the difference between ‘information’ and ‘data’ becomes apparent when you hyphenate the former. Then you see that the intent of the word is to capture the dynamic, the stuff that is in formation. The latter then represents the static, stuff that doesn’t necessarily change.
No wonder that the requirements and technology to support information, are never static and constantly changing. His discussion about the history and evolution towards the current state of quantum computing is remarkably clear yet simply challenging. Who can honestly explain teleportation cleanly and clearly to someone else? Yet most of us know and would agree with the Einsteinian equation “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
The Information (a book by James Gleick)
Wikipedia
For me, particularly enjoyable was the chapter on Wikipedia, since it represents the true sense of digital collaboration. It also represents consensus, except for the disambiguations, or areas void of clear consensus.
From early Charles Babbage and “No Thought Can Perish” to the edit wars of Wikipedia if you are regularly engaged in the sphere of information technology, you will find Glieck’s book worthwhile at least, and at most, highly illuminating. After all, which is more accurate—is a human with a cat its “owner,” its “caregiver,” its “human companion,” or other? Or, to borrow liberally from Glieck’s painstaking research “factions fission into . . . the Association of Wikipedians Who Dislike Making Broad Judgments About the Worthiness of a General Category of Article, and Who are in Favor of the Deletion of Some Particularly Bad Articles, but That Doesn’t Mean They Are Deletionists.” (for real).
His Prologue of references and Bibliography alone are worthy of any library, including yours, if part of your life’s passion deals with information 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.
- Alan Turing name-checks his predecessor Charles Babbage (wired.com)
- James Gleick: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (ritholtz.com)
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 9, 2012 | Planning Approach
Most people are confused about the difference between a mission and a vision. An MBA grad from a prestigious east-coast USA school told us that he “learned more about strategic planning in the past two hours than during my entire MBA curriculum.”
While humbled, we are not surprised. Since most people are confused about the difference between the terms ‘mission’ and ‘vision’. Their confusion is made greater by some of the famous minds of our ‘liberal’ academic world. Sometimes it’s their opponent, the ‘conservative’ military-industrial complex. The confusion became stronger by some of the world’s largest and most influential consulting firms. The same ones that have brought us over 20 types of roles and responsibilities tools. Those include RACI, RASI, RASCI, ARCI, etc. (see Transform Your Responsibilities Matrix into a GANTT Chart).
In fact, the argument may be ended quickly by not using the terms mission and vision. If you seek to end the confusion, substitute the questions they attempt to answer. One term represents sentiment that answers the question “Why do we show up (or, Why are we here?)?” The other term represents sentiment that answers the question “Where are we going?” With this logic, the natural order is to know where we are before we discuss where we are going.
Academic vs. Military-industrial
Mission or Vision?
In many textbooks, strategic planning begins with the mission (i.e., Why are we here?). It then yields to vision (i.e., Where are we going?). The military-industrial complex answers the same questions, in the same order, but defines the terms differently. Note that NATO armed forces have a vision. “Liberty and independence for all” explains their existence. When threatened, however, they go forth on a “mission to (insert location; e.g., Iraq).”
A versatile facilitator remains agnostic. They are biased toward one definition over the other. They are biased however to maintain consistency within the organization and culture they are serving. Since confusion exists in most organizations, an important part of the preparation activity involves building the glossary for your meetings and workshops that homogenizes operational definitions and ensures that they are applied consistently, within and between your meetings and workshops.
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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.
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 2, 2012 | Facilitation Skills
Remaining neutral describes the single most important trait of an effective facilitator.
As a YMCA-certified SCUBA diver, we heard “take only photographs and leave only bubbles.” Likewise, an effective facilitator should take only participant input and leave only a thorough trail of documentation and rationale. You will find this premise emphasized in the 27th verse of the Wisdom of the Tao written 2,500 years ago. While varying translations and transliterations exist, we’ve borrowed one version of the 27th verse below:
A knower of the truth
travels without leaving a trace,
speaks without causing harm,
gives without keeping an account.
The door that shuts, though having no lock,
will not open.
The knot he ties, though using no cord,
cannot be undone.
“Leave Only Bubbles”
Be wise and help all being impartially,
abandoning none.
Waste no opportunities.
This is called following the light.
What is a good man but a bad man’s teacher?
What is a bad man but a good man’s job?
If the teacher is not respected
and the student is not cared for,
confusion will arise, however clever one is.
This is the great secret.
The Role of Remaining a Neutral and Contextual Master
The role of facilitator is captured by both the knower and the teacher, of context. The shut door represents preventing scope creep. The tied knot represents connection and consensus. Meaning, not one’s “favorite” necessarily, but at a high enough standard that participants will support it professionally and not lose any sleep over it personally. Helping all suggests the innovative potential that exists by embracing heterogeneity. Wasting no opportunities implies thorough listening and documentation.
Above all, to be wise is to be impartial—this is the great secret.
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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.
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 19, 2012 | Leadership Skills
The book “Crashing Through” by New York Times bestselling author Robert Kurson includes innumerable reflections about struggle, collaboration, and victory that also apply to the sphere of facilitation.
Most importantly, the book emphasizes the scientific understanding that pre-existing knowledge affects perception. In other words, what you know changes what you see. The challenges around consensual decision-making are thus amplified by the plurality of the group.
Sight recovery after a lifetime of being visually impaired is extraordinarily rare. Only around 20 people in known history have had their vision restored in adulthood after being visually blind since early youth. As explained by Kurson, he captures Mike May’s “true story of risk, adventure, and the man who dared to see.” Suffice it to say that vision and the brain’s role supporting it is massively complex.
Visually impaired, but not without vision
Keep in mind that Mike May, while blind, established world records in downhill skiing. He also became a co-inventor of the world’s first laser turntable and was the first blind person hired by the CIA (Central Intelligence Unit). In Mike May’s words, “Life with vision is great. But life without vision is great too.”
The optic nerve is technically part of the brain. It can also transmit perfect signals from the cornea region of the eye that can be rendered uniquely in each person’s mind based on what they know when they receive the signal. In other words, two people can look at the same scene and see different things. That’s probably not a surprise if you are a trained facilitator, but it becomes increasingly important that you emphasize the diversity of perception and the simple fact that there is more than one right answer.
Details of perception
The story explores the details and science to support its conclusion that perception relies largely on prior life experiences and the judgments those experiences have brought to each of us. For example, some of May’s problems are related to depth perception. While he saw horizontal lines, most of us would have instantly recognized a stairway, and would not have crashed down or up the stairs, unlike May.
He was largely unable to determine sexual gender by looking only at the face of someone. It’s not important that facilitators discriminate, but it is rather curious and significant that our preconceptions about small details such as eyebrow width or color nuances lead us to conclusions, that may be wrong.
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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.
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.
