by Facilitation Expert | Dec 2, 2021 | Leadership Skills, Meeting Structure, Meeting Support
Our last article launched a method for managing new product ideas called Catalyst or PCM
Now we take a step back before explaining the activities (next article) to tackle some of the myths and gremlins associated with new product concept management and development.
New Product Concept Development Disciplines
Product Concept Management requires numerous disciplines, including technical, information systems, creative, marketing, and financial management. Cross-functional demand frequently becomes a point of failure for many organizations in their attempts to maintain a fertile pool of new product ideas. The PCM process comprises three major steps: “SOURCING” ideas, “MANAGING” ideas (into concepts), and “USING” concepts for further evaluation and possible development.
Three major steps of the PCM process: “SOURCING” ideas, “MANAGING” ideas (into concepts), and “USING” concepts for further evaluation and possible development.The act of ‘deciding’ represents the most important activity of PCM; deciding whether to USE or publish a concept for further development. Without the movement of a concept onto final development, no useful work gets accomplished. At the same time, most investment today focuses on the SOURCING or authoring activity. Namely, the source volume and “creativity” of the ideas placed for consideration.
With Catalyst, the bulk of the work occurs during QUALIFYING. PCM holds that raw ideas represent slight notions of a product or business need. Most new product people have enough “good” ideas. In truth, most ideas are “good,” but suffer from a lack of certainty about their future viability.
In our view, their degree of certainty distinguishes good ideas. The QUALIFYING step in PCM requires activities that convert raw ideas into polished concepts. Then polished concepts become available for consideration and additional investment.
Product Concept Management (PCM or Catalyst) and Development Overview
PCM specifies each step as multiple, discrete activities. In practice, often compressed in time, they look like a single step. For example, when a salesperson suggests an idea to a product manager. In that discussion, the product idea takes partial form in terms of its function, customer benefits, competitive situation, and future sales opportunities. The product manager evaluates the idea for fit into the product line, corporate marketing strategy, and the organization’s appetite for funding new products. In this example, the bulk of the PCM technique occurs in a matter of minutes.
Typical Idea (Instant) Evaluation Process
The Many Product Concept Management Myths
Many myths perpetuate the practical and academic field of New Product Development and Ideation. We don’t purport to disrupt the belief system of these fields but do wish to add to the excellent progress made in recent years in improving the management of Ideation and New Product Management.
MYTH: There are good ideas and bad ideas, but only a few really great ideas.
FACT: All ideas are good as long as they are sound in their construction. An idea seen by a business manager (or “reviewer” in our parlance) may be a poor fit for the business conditions of that day and for his/her specific purposes. But fit does not equivocate to the quality of an idea. PCM frees ideas from judgments of “good” or “bad.” The “goodness” of an idea depends on two characteristics of the reviewer: (1) the fit of the idea with the needs of the company, and (2) certainty about the future performance of the product in the market, in the hands of a specific company, through specific channels, to specific customers, at a specific time. These two characteristics do not depend on the idea but on the owner of the idea. The burden of finding “great” ideas, therefore, falls into the hands of the organization.
MYTH: We don’t need more ideas, we need “home runs.”
FACT: An organization and its management may want “home runs.” They seek the eventual impact of new product ideas, not whether the idea becomes a “home run” or not. A home run for one company could be a dud for another. A home run this year could be a dud next year. With slight changes in material specifications, the dud could become a cash cow in a different division. The burden is not on the idea of being great. The challenge of greatness belongs to those who handle the idea.
MYTH: We don’t have enough ideas. We’ve run out.
FACT: Zillions of new ideas develop every day. Each of us probably develops a handful of new ideas for products, product attributes, packaging, and so on. Many take shape before we arrive at our offices, based on our morning routines. Frequently we envision ideas, but perhaps not for our own business. Those ideas might be availed to whomever is willing to invest to gather them. Ideas arise in our heads continuously, for untold numbers of products and applications. Most of these ideas evaporate soon after they form.
MYTH: Our new product development process is terrific. We need better filters at the ideation stage to keep the bad ideas out. (Or, more filters are better.)
FACT: We don’t argue that your NPD process may be functioning well, or that ideas pass through development and flop in the market. However, more and better filters do not assure better product market performance. The perfect filter would be needed only once. Therefore, “more filters” implies low-quality filters at each stage of their application. More ideas indicate more success, with better information about their prospects, rather than fewer with tighter filters. If the profitability of an idea exceeds thresholds with 100% certainty when conceived, it would be pushed through development and launch with no filters. The defect in NPD and launch is not “bad” ideas or necessarily poor filters. The quality of information about the prospects for a new idea or the “certainty” of an idea’s prospects drives improved decision-making.
MYTH: We can’t afford to invest in many new product ideas.
FACT: Again, we don’t take issue with the notion of allocating scarce investment resources. However, we believe that if proper investment is not made at the earliest stages of idea management, poor-performing concepts will make it through NPD and into launch (for eventual failure) without sufficient success to pay for the failures.
MYTH: We can’t afford a product failure.
FACT: No one wants product failure, but some failures cannot be avoided. To eliminate new product failures, the only complete solution prohibits new product development. To accept a reasonable degree of risk, investment is required to reduce the uncertainty around a new idea.
MYTH: We don’t need a process of new product ideas, we need a champion.”
FACT: A “champion” provides prima facie evidence that your approach remains hostile to new product ideas and new product success. Perhaps not by intent, but by behavior. A champion is only needed when one or more of these conditions exist:
- The existing new product idea and development process has low/no credibility within the organization (or doesn’t exist) and the “champion” acts in a vacuum;
- “Certainty” appears only to the champion and not to the people involved, and the champion provides the lone supporting voice.
Popular business management lore converts folk heroes into “champions.” Champions reflect a failure to create a viable system that transcends individual fortitude and charisma. When you find an aggressive “owner” of a neutral method, then you’ve found your true “champion.”
MYTH: There isn’t enough money to support more new product ideas.
FACT: Money abounds. With a decent idea and reasonable certainty. you can attract a virtually endless supply of money. An idea with a certain payoff will attract investment with ease. Certainty provides the key. Money stays away from ideas it doubts. Venture capitalists knowingly invest in incredibly risky ideas: they invest in ideas they feel have a reasonably good chance of success after researching the opportunity. Venture capitalists accept different risks than the average corporation, but not necessarily more risk, and certainly not less well-researched ideas. The more certainty in the performance of your idea, the easier the money will be found.
Product Concept Management Gremlins
Many “gremlins” also arise in Product Concept Management. By gremlins, we mean the attitudes, behavior, policies, and cultural norms that tear at the fabric of successful new product ideation and development. Gremlins operate to hinder PCM at any time, in many ways, and with frightening effectiveness.
Gremlins range from apathy to “championing” a product through to launch. Our observation of the greatest gremlins suggests:
- Apathy – When the motivation to share new product ideas with those who can make use of them diminishes the apparent idea flow.
- Arrogance – When a participant in ideation and/or new product development demonstrates the arrogance to diminish ideas from other sources. Thus, they discourage the prolific exchange of new ideas that hamper the new idea process.
- Under Investment – The critical investment in a new idea demonstrates the assessment of its commercial, technical, and financial viability, especially early in the life of an idea.
- Lack of Direction – Do not build your PCM to be ad hoc. Catalyst requires clear direction to focus scarce resources toward the most productive sources of new product ideas that support the organization’s strategy.
Before we explain the various agendas supporting the primary steps in Catalyst, a forthcoming article provides some excellent and practical tips on “Teams and Team-Building Techniques.”
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[1] The term “service” can be freely substituted for the tangible concept of “product.”
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The following provides you with a Holiday Gift. Below are links to sites found in our Best Practices articles, but seldom recognized. No doubt you’ve seen a few already. However, a few of them will cause a WOW reaction:
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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.
Go to the Facilitation Training Store to access proven, in-house resources, including fully annotated agendas, break timers, and templates. Finally, take a few seconds to buy us a cup of coffee and please SHARE with others.
In conclusion, we dare you to embrace the will, wisdom, and activities that amplify a facilitative leader. #facilitationtraining #MEETING DESIGN
Terrence Metz, MBA, CSM, CSPF, PSP01, HTTO1, is the Managing Director of MG RUSH Facilitation Leadership, Training, and Meeting Design, an acknowledged leader in structured facilitation training, and author of “Meetings That Get Results – A Facilitator’s Guide to Building Better Meetings.” His FAST Facilitation Best Practices blog features nearly 300 articles on facilitation skills and tools aimed at helping others lead meetings that produce clear and actionable results. His clients include Agilists, Scrum teams, program and project managers, senior officers, and the business analyst community among numerous private and public companies and global corporations. As an undergraduate of Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and an MBA graduate from NWU’s Kellogg School of Management, his professional experience has focused on process improvement and product development. He continually aspires to make it easier for others to succeed.
by Facilitation Expert | Nov 4, 2021 | Facilitation Skills, Leadership Skills, Meeting Structure, Meeting Support
The purpose of this article is to prepare you with a workshop approach, including the method and tools you can use to increase product innovation in your workshops — to speed up product development based on structuring the voice of your customer. If you have suggestions about how we can improve this or other Best Practices, please reply or contact us at (630) 954-5880, or by email at info@mgrushfacilitation.com.
PRODUCT INNOVATION RESULTS
Below you’ll find the guiding principles, structure, theory, and practical advice for leading product innovation results in your organization. We hope you beg, borrow, steal, and modify heavily from our benchmark method called Product Concept Management (Catalyst). Catalyst is our method for clarifying the “fuzzy front-end” in product development. The “fuzzy front-end” represents the time and space between a thought (problem or solution) and the transformation into action by first converting the thought into a tangible concept.
What is a new product “idea”?
We are defining a thought as only a fragment of an idea. To have a complete idea to develop a new product with the Catalyst technique requires five elements. We’ll cover them in greater detail in our next article (part 2 of 3). For now, the five fragments include:
- Statement of the problem, pain, want, or improvement that needs to be solved
- Description of the solution that creates value including some of the technical descriptions and functional specifications
- Explanation of the customer’s options, choices, and competitive alternatives
- An estimation of how large the solution or opportunity is measured by currency over time
- Narrative description of the value proposition created by the new product idea — both economic and emotional benefits
Prerequisites
The prerequisites for developing and applying product innovation within your organization are few but important:
- Desire to improve the quality and quantity of new product ideas emerging from your organizational network
- Desire to improve the new product lifecycle by increasing the quality and reducing costs by structuring valuable new product ideas
- Hunger to reduce the waste from lost and abandoned new product ideas
- Desire to increase the enthusiasm, productivity, and creativity of your new product “ideators”
- Desire to “win” in the market, win with your employees and colleagues, and win by increasing the wealth of your company.
PRODUCT INNOVATION WORKSHOPS
We recommend the use of facilitated workshops that bring stakeholders, thought leaders, and implementors together with key designers and planners, under the guidance of professional facilitators. The network of individuals required in the analysis, design, and implementation of new products can be overwhelming. The guidance of a trained professional facilitator in Catalyst, new product development, and voice-of-the-customer assures the highest integrity with this proven method that should be adapted to your organization when seeking to support your mission and objectives.
Catalyst Product Innovation Method The Catalyst product innovation approach provides substantial benefits (when compared to traditional interviewing and internal team analysis and design):
- Early leadership involvement
- Early customer (user and owner) involvement in the evolution of the design
- Business analysis that reflects a broad understanding of the market as well as the intricacies of each segment, technology, and economic climate as appropriate
- Sharing and socialization of intent about strategic direction, product development capabilities, and supply and demand chain structure and value, thus creating stronger group and individual ownership
- Common commitment to persisting in the design of the process through to completion
Within MG Rush, workshops are more than just a generic term. Each workshop aims to achieve specific results and to further the design and implementation method through a structured sequence. This article guides you when planning, conducting, facilitating, and managing the design and implementation of product innovation results by applying a flexible structure.
WHEN SHOULD INNOVATION RESULTS WORKSHOPS BE USED?
We recommend that workshops be used in situations guided primarily by
- The number of participants,
- The complexity of the market and product information,
- Disparity (or diversity) of participant backgrounds and knowledge, and
- The visibility desired for the design process.
The basic structure for the sequence of product innovation workshops is:
- Orientation & Planning
- Business Purpose
- Design Process
- Catalyst NPD (New Product Development) Introduction
- Team Building and Optimization
- Design and Workshop Protocols
- Process Schedule
- Workshop Approach & Structure
- Internal Situation
- Focusing
- Visioning
- Business Requirements
- Organization Structure
- Product Inventory
- Product Commercialization Process
- NPI (New Product Ideas) and NPD Experiences and Lessons Learned
- Organizational Best Practices
- External Situation
- Market Strategy(ies)
- Customer Segmentation
- Sales and Service Channel Structure & Performance
- Competitor Behavior
- Process Design
- Implementation Design
- Measurement, Monitoring, and Control
WHEN SHOULD WORKSHOPS NOT BE USED?
Workshops should not be used when:
- There is only one business user;
- The available participants do not understand the business, typically due to inexperience overall, inexperience in their function, or inexperience within the Organization;
- Participants are not able to garnish resources to support the function of self-organizing teams;
- Commitment to the design outcome is not clear from necessary senior management, including the lack or availability of resources to implement;
- Lack of availability of participants’ time, facilities, or the inability to complete tasks and assignments;
CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS
Here are the factors critical to the success of your workshops and to the completion of product innovation results:
- Appropriate facilities
- Belief in the relevance of the organization’s mission and initiatives
- Experienced and prepared facilitator or facilitation team
- Focus on design (initially) and less on implementation
- Management commitment
- Participants with knowledge, availability, interest, and availability
- Time and resources for preparation, task and assignment completion, session attendance, and follow-up
(WHEN) SHOULD PRODUCT INNOVATION WORKSHOPS BE USED INSTEAD OF WORK SESSIONS?
The Catalyst design typically requires a multi-functional, stratified team and is thus most often best served by workshops. However, work sessions are an acceptable substitute when:
- Are less formal, but no less disciplined in analysis, information exchange, and documentation.
- The work session involves a few participants
- The work session involves participants from a particular discipline
- The workgroup is focused on a narrow issue(s) and is working in support of the broader design-team objectives
- There are logistical (such as geographic distance) issues that are best served by discrete teams working apart from the general group
- Work product, including deliberations, notes, and input information, can be reasonably summarized and disseminated to the broader NPD design team – and reported on during workshop sessions
PRODUCT INNOVATION RESULTS TECHNIQUES
For each workshop during product innovation design, and for each step in the workshop agenda, decide on the particular technique to support the appropriate introduction, discussion, and completion of the agenda item. Workshop tools supporting product innovation include:
SESSION LEADER RESPONSIBILITIES
A successful product innovation method depends on the effectiveness of the person assigned as the facilitator – for team management, workshop management, and content delivery. The assignee is more than a facilitator; they are also the quality control officer for the NPD design process. Successful workshops require special support and a special temperament from the facilitator. Participants must feel comfortable, valued, safe, respected, and motivated if they are to contribute fully to the overall Catalyst design during each workshop session. Their motivation will continue over to the assigned tasks when they feel that their efforts will be valued when returning back to the team in subsequent workshops. The facilitator’s role requires the following responsibilities to gain participants’ respect, following, trust, and cooperation:
- Be flexible to meet clients’ schedules
- Behave without ego, and be non-defensive
- Demonstrate respect for each individual, be fair in dealing with each participant, and in the interplay between participants
- Facilitate group consensus, while seeking the best overall output
- Monitor session agenda and time constraints
- Provide an environment for each participant to have an opportunity to contribute
- Provide for document exchange of the inputs, in-workshop work product, and post-work product follow-up, including workshop notes, assignments, and agenda
- Remain open and self-disclosing
- Seek and work with the sponsor(s) to provide continuous commitment
- Stick to the agreed-upon plan regarding deliverables, scope, timing, and MG Rush Facilitation stipulated leadership responsibilities (in and out of the workshops)
FACILITATOR TECHNIQUES SUPPORTING PRODUCT INNOVATION
Conducting successful product innovation workshops requires a combination of skills, techniques, and content knowledge. A successful facilitator requires high, sustained energy, intense concentration, and a good disposition. A sense of humor is useful, too. A facilitator is non-defensive, absorbs barbs of all descriptions, and stays focused on the challenge of delivering on the objectives of the workshop and goals of the product overall. There are many skills and tools used by skilled, successful facilitators. A few are mentioned below but are not intended to be a comprehensive inventory. Other techniques may evolve outside of the view of our Best Practices for Catalyst and product innovation and may also be useful for you.
FACILITATOR SKILLS
- Ask and give clarification
- Avoid ambiguity
- Be alert to differences in information as provided and information as received
- Document, clarify, and expand the information exchanged in the workshop
- Explain the structure behind the flow
- Identify, communicate, and demonstrate decision-making methods
- Legitimize participants’ comments and contributions
- Practice active listening
- Provide “structural flex” and adapt the task, workshop, and overall process as needed
- Provide traceability – Adopt a retrospective perspective, that is, construct plans and documentation so that they are understood in the present and in hindsight
- Recognize opportunities to intervene – Be prepared to prevent or change an activity or event to improve the quality or productivity of the workshop procedures.
- Use guiding questions; provide sample answers from a metaphor or analogy
Examples of Preventions to Secure Innovation Results
- Confirm agreement on purpose, scope, deliverables, and agenda
- Follow-up workshops with accurate and comprehensive documentation
- Involve and utilize client workshop experts (such as trained facilitators, Product Owners, and Master Black Belts)
- Pre-determine work groups and breakout teams
- Prepare materials in advance
- Provide advance information to inform, educate, and normalize participants’ knowledge
- Respect client protocols, practices, and workshop traditions
- Utilize subject matter experts to leverage outside (of the workshop) knowledge to the benefit of the workshop participants
Examples of Interventions to Secure Innovation Results
- Observe and reverse retreats or aggression by participants. Most people have a “primary style” of discussion, debate, and persuasion, however, when a person’s primary style is ineffective (that is, they feel challenged, frustrated, or embarrassed), that person will often retreat into a secondary style that is either aggressive or sullen.
- Prevent attacks on an individual or organizations, including those not participating in the workshop. Work to inhibit attacks and, in particular, abuse during the workshop on any participant or group. As necessary: physically move between speaker and target of any “attack”; or, interrupt attacks by calling for a break, or attention back to the agenda, or summarize a key point; or, turn the situation with appropriate humor.
- Some comments or questions are unclear to all but the speaker. Restate comments or questions that you perceive as unclear by one or more of the participants. If appropriate, ask the speaker to clarify their comment or question without embarrassing the speaker or recipients.
- Watch for impatience with progress during the agenda. Periodically, highlight the progress made during the workshop by physically indicating the current agenda item and upcoming items. Remind participants of the important progress made during the day and workshop, especially during transitions.
In our next article, we’ll provide the product innovation workshop design support tools and work products for the Catalyst method (or other NPD phases), such as:
- Facilitating Internal Environment Assessment
- Facilitating External Environment Assessment
- Converting Ideas Into Product Concepts
- Consensual and Co-Owned Implementation
______
Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.
Go to the Facilitation Training Store to access proven, in-house resources, including fully annotated agendas, break timers, and templates. Finally, take a few seconds to buy us a cup of coffee and please SHARE with others.
In conclusion, we dare you to embrace the will, wisdom, and activities that amplify a facilitative leader. #facilitationtraining #MEETING DESIGN
______
With Bookmarks no longer a feature in WordPress, we need to append the following for your benefit and reference
Terrence Metz, MBA, CSM, CSPF, PSP01, HTTO1, is the Managing Director of MG RUSH Facilitation Leadership, Training, and Meeting Design, an acknowledged leader in structured facilitation training, and author of “Meetings That Get Results – A Facilitator’s Guide to Building Better Meetings.” His FAST Facilitation Best Practices blog features nearly 300 articles on facilitation skills and tools aimed at helping others lead meetings that produce clear and actionable results. His clients include Agilists, Scrum teams, program and project managers, senior officers, and the business analyst community among numerous private and public companies and global corporations. As an undergraduate of Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and an MBA graduate from NWU’s Kellogg School of Management, his professional experience has focused on process improvement and product development. He continually aspires to make it easier for others to succeed.
by Facilitation Expert | Oct 12, 2021 | Meeting Agendas, Meeting Structure, Meeting Support
Activities and Basic Agenda Approach for Meeting Preparation
In an ideal world, you have ample time for meeting preparation. But in the real world, you’re swamped. Too much work, too many meetings, not enough time. What you need is a quick reference for building your agenda steps, and that’s what we’ve provided below, along with some additional scripting to consider.
Optimally, you also have time to get your participants prepared. So, we’ve added some bonus material on conversational questions you might use for your meeting preparation. Chapter references below are from the new facilitator’s guide, “Meetings That Get Results.”
Quick Reference Guidelines: Nine Activities for Your Meeting Preparation
Use the following guidelines for every significant meeting you lead. Below you’ll find the requisite Introductory and Wrap activities to lead these meetings.
- Codify the purpose and scope of the meeting: What project or product are you supporting? Stipulate what the project or product is worth in currency and FTP (full-time person): Why is it important? How much money or time is at risk if we fail?
- Articulate the deliverables: What specific content represents the output of the meeting and satisfies what DONE looks like? What is your analogy for explaining it? Who will use it after the meeting?
- Identify known and unknown information: What are the goals and objectives of the organization, business unit, department, program, product, or project? What information is needed to support activities that will fill the gaps?
- Draft Basic Agenda Steps: Compose a series of steps from experience or other proven approaches that would be used by experts to build the plan, make the decision, solve the problem, or develop the information and consensus necessary to complete your deliverable and get DONE. See “Meetings That Get Results” for frequently used agendas.
—Gestation—
When possible, sleep on it. Go back and review your meeting purpose, scope, deliverables, and Basic Agenda to ensure it will yield the deliverables you need to get DONE.
- Review Basic Agenda for logical flow: Walk through the Agenda Steps with someone else to confirm that they will produce the desired results. Link your analogy to each of the Agenda Steps. Rehearse your explanation of the white space, why the steps exist, how they relate to each other, and how they support the deliverable to get DONE.
- Identify meeting participants: Determine the optimal subject matter expertise you require, the meeting participants who can provide the information required or both. Share the meeting purpose, scope, deliverables, and Basic Agenda and invite them to the meeting.
- Detail the procedures to capture the information required: Gather and assemble specific questions that need to be addressed. Time permitting, consider including questions for which subject matter experts are also seeking answers. Sequence the questions optimally. Build yourself an Annotated Agenda that focuses on the appropriate Tools, methods, and activities to produce the information for each agenda step.
- Perform a walk-through with business experts, executive sponsors, project team members, and anyone else who will listen to you (grandmothers are good for this and you might get a delicious, home-cooked meal).
- Refine: Make changes suggested or developed from your walk-through, edit your final Annotated Agenda, firm up your artifacts, fill out your glossary, complete your slides, distribute your handouts, and rehearse.
Quick Reference: Basic Agenda Framework
Use this Launch and Wrap for every meeting—whether your meeting lasts 50 minutes or multiple days.[1]
- Introduce yourself: stress neutrality, meeting roles, and quantify the impact.
- State the meeting purpose and get an agreement.
- Confirm the meeting scope and get an agreement.
- Show the meeting deliverables and get an agreement.
- Cover the “administrivia” (for example, safety moment); have the attendees introduce themselves.
- Walk through the meeting agenda (preferably using an analogy).
- Explain the Ground Rules (Chapter 4), emphasizing duty (fiduciary responsibility).
Middle Agenda Steps (Chapters 6, 7, and 8):
Insert an Annotated Agenda that details activities and procedures for each Agenda Step and include:
-
- Agenda Step name
- Deliverable from each Agenda Step
- Estimated time for each Agenda Step
- Purpose scripting for each Agenda Step (and analogy)
- Procedure for each Agenda Step (tools, methods, questions)
- Graphical support required (such as legends, screens, definitions, and so on)
- Closure scripting for each Agenda Step (and analogy)
- Review the final output and deliverable: Restate or summarize what the group got DONE.
- Parking Lot (Open Items): Assign responsibility and detail how the group can expect to be updated.
- Guardian of Change: Determine what meeting participants agree to tell their superiors and other stakeholders about what happened or what was accomplished during the meeting.
- Continuous Improvement: Use Scale It, Plus/ Delta, Where Are You Now or a more comprehensive meeting and facilitator assessment form.
Structuring Meeting Preparation with Mindful Conversations
The time it will take you to prepare the Agenda Steps between Launch and Wrap takes longer than the meeting itself. Plan on a ratio of preparation time to meeting time of 2:1 or 3:1 (or more) to thoroughly prepare yourself and others. For online meetings, experts suggest to double that amount of time. For standard 50-minute meetings, allow at least another 50 minutes to organize, invite, and prepare. A few hours may be more prudent if you are seeking exceptional results.
Conversations with Participants
Optimally you will speak with participants in advance to learn about them, the people they work with, and their pain points. For workshops, allow 15 to 30 minutes for one-on-ones. Meet face-to-face when permitted, or at least by videoconference, so that you establish eye contact before facilitating them in a meeting.
Sequence of Conversations
In sequence, meet the executive sponsor, business partners, project team, stakeholders, and meeting participants. Conduct conversations privately and assure participants that their responses will be kept confidential.
Objectives of Conversations
These conversations have the following aims:
- Familiarize yourself with each subject matter expert’s role and competencies
- Confirm who should, or should not, attend and why
- Help participants show up better prepared to contribute
- Identify potential issues, hidden agendas, and other obstacles
- Transfer ownership of the meeting output, beginning with the meeting purpose, scope, and deliverables
Mindful Questions to Ask
For structured, stress-tested, and well-sequenced questions, use the ones below. Begin by explaining your role and asking for permission to take notes.[2] Use the following open-ended questions, sit back, and listen—discover the participant’s value and the value added by the participant to the initiative you are supporting.
Get to know participants’ subject matter expertise and attitude toward workshops with openers like “Tell me, what do you do?” and “What has worked for you in the past?” Then continue with questions in this sequence:
- What do you expect from the session?
- Who or what will make the meeting a complete failure?
- What should the output look like?
- What problems do you foresee?
- Who should attend the meeting? Who should not? Why?
- What is going to be my biggest obstacle?
- Does the deliverable and agenda make sense to you?
- Will you silence your “electronic leashes?”
- What questions do you think we should answer?
- What should I have asked that I didn’t ask?
The precision and sequence of the questions are important. They are all open-ended. They help manage “right-to-left” thinking; i.e., ‘expect’ and ‘output.’ Next, they focus on the hidden politics; i.e., ‘failure,’ ‘problems,’ and ‘obstacles.’ They end with a strong, closing question that emphasizes humility in the role of facilitator.
Workshop Preparation Includes Building a Participant’s Package
After structured conversations, send participants a pre-read package, especially at the kickoff of major events. If you happen to provide printed packages, place the spiral edging across the top to make the package both unique and easier for left-handed notetakers. Try to include the first five items listed here in every Participant’s Package. The other suggestions are supplemental:
- An articulate workshop purpose, scope, and deliverables along with the Basic Agenda Steps
- Glossary for terms used in the workshop purpose, scope, deliverables, and Basic Agenda Steps
- Organizational and business unit strategic planning support—especially Mission, Values, Vision, and performance Measures such as objectives and key results
- Product, project, or team charter and detail about the value being supported by the session
- List of questions to be addressed during the meeting or workshop
- Relevant reading materials gathered from others during your conversations
- Responsibilities of the participants, including any overnight assignments, reading, or exercises that may be included in a multiple-day workshop
- Sponsor’s letter of invitation—organizational strategic plan
- Team members’ contact information
Sequencing and Personalization
The sequence of the items above is listed in order of priority. No meeting or workshop arrives at a consensual agreement if the participants do not agree at first on the purpose, scope, and deliverables of the meeting. Next, a consensual understanding of what those terms mean must be controlled and not facilitated. Third, to create a sense of importance and urgency, show how the balance of the organization depends on the success of this meeting and its contributions (i.e., deliverable).
We also recommend that you provide each invitation with a cover letter. If assembling “relevant reading material” that contains too much bulk, many participants won’t look at it. Some will perhaps when the meeting commences. Rather, attach a cover letter to each participant. Stipulate which pages are essential for them to read based on their ability to make significant contributions.
Meeting Preparation Completion
If you can answer yes to the following questions, you are ready to proceed:
- Can you describe a potential deliverable from each Agenda Step?
- Is your Annotated Agenda comprehensive and scripted?
- Does a walk-through of your Annotated Agenda provide the right deliverable?
- Can the participants answer the questions for each Agenda Step?
- Have you had conversations with stakeholders?
Tooling for Each Agenda Step Requires Scripting
Scripting furnishes an anchor during workshops by telling you precisely what to say to be clear, helping you when you forget where you are going, and providing additional support when you have trouble getting there. We all need help at one time or another. Therefore, for every Agenda Step, in every agenda, a well-scripted Annotated Agenda compels you to anticipate and visualize the tools, activities, and procedures you need.
An Annotated Agenda provides tremendous predictive power. From reviewing the rigor and thoroughness of an Annotated Agenda, I can easily predict how well your session will progress, regardless of your talents and skills (or lack thereof, because someone not highly skilled but thoroughly scripted will outperform anyone not well-scripted but relying on their “natural” talent).
Do not rush your effort. Skimping on the Annotated Agenda ensures suboptimal performance. Next—please use it. Do not build it, set it down, and forget about it. We prefer a leader who is holding a piece of paper, reading to us, and being clear over one who speaks extemporaneously and leaves us a bit confused.
For workshops and significant meetings, some facilitators include details about real estate management (where they are mounting their large format paper, legends, grounds rules, and so on) and online technology instructions such as which type of screen share to use.
When you have completed the procedures above during your meeting preparation, your confidence and ease will rise. According to Amy Cuddy, confidence plus ease increases executive presence, and meeting preparation may be the best way to demonstrate executive presence during meetings and workshop facilitation.
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[1] A few exceptions might include daily Scrum sessions, regularly conducted staff meetings, and meetings conducted using Robert’s Rules of Order, such as meetings of boards of directors, community governments, and so on.
[2] Please do not tell someone that your conversation is confidential and then take copious notes without asking permission. I have had two people say no, they would rather I not take any notes. I’ve had dozens compliment me on the question itself because rarely have others extended the courtesy to ask for permission to take notes.
______
Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.
Go to the Facilitation Training Store to access proven, in-house resources, including fully annotated agendas, break timers, and templates. Finally, take a few seconds to buy us a cup of coffee and please SHARE with others.
In conclusion, we dare you to embrace the will, wisdom, and activities that amplify a facilitative leader. #facilitationtraining #MEETING DESIGN
______
With Bookmarks no longer a feature in WordPress, we need to append the following for your benefit and reference
Terrence Metz, MBA, CSM, CSPF, PSP01, HTTO1, is the Managing Director of MG RUSH Facilitation Leadership, Training, and Meeting Design, an acknowledged leader in structured facilitation training, and author of “Meetings That Get Results – A Facilitator’s Guide to Building Better Meetings.” His FAST Facilitation Best Practices blog features nearly 300 articles on facilitation skills and tools aimed at helping others lead meetings that produce clear and actionable results. His clients include Agilists, Scrum teams, program and project managers, senior officers, and the business analyst community among numerous private and public companies and global corporations. As an undergraduate of Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) and an MBA graduate from NWU’s Kellogg School of Management, his professional experience has focused on process improvement and product development. He continually aspires to make it easier for others to succeed.
by Facilitation Expert | Sep 23, 2021 | Meeting Structure, Meeting Tools
The Purpose
There’s nothing more frustrating than an unproductive meeting—except one that leads to another unproductive meeting. Which is why I wrote Meetings That Get Results. Developed from over 17+ years of research, delivery, and practice, including 15,000+ hours providing live instruction using a certified curriculum, this practical, comprehensive facilitator’s guide is for the millions of people right now who are out there leading meetings without any training in facilitation or meeting design. Within the book’s pages, you’ll learn how to ensure your meetings produce clear and actionable results—meetings that are profitable and productive—and that ultimately lead to fewer meetings.
In addition to basic information-exchange meetings (such as staff meetings and board meetings), “Meetings That Get Results” focuses on three important forms of meetings:
- Decision-making—focusing on prioritization and ranking
- Planning—that is, consensual agreement and shared ownership (who does what by when?)
- Problem-solving—for example, focusing on innovative solutions during the meeting
It’s All About You
I understand that in a world of back-to-back meetings, you barely have time to find the right resources and training to become a better leader. Yet, while you would not attempt to build a boat without the proper training, equipment, and support, every day millions of people are conducting meetings without a critical understanding of or formal training on how to be an effective meeting leader in person or online. Meetings whose deliverables affect tens, hundreds, or even thousands of jobs, or determine the success or failure of a department or company, regularly cost organizations more money than all the boats, ships, and skyscrapers being built today. This book gives you a significant edge:
- Empowering you to help your groups create, innovate, and break through the barriers of miscommunication, politics, and intolerance.
- Making it easier for you to help others reach consensus and shared understanding, while never yielding to the easy answer.
- Providing you with specific Agenda Steps and Tools to avoid the worst possible result of any meeting: another meeting.
MAKING IT EASY
Facil in Latin means “easily accomplished.” The word facilitaera evolved from the Latin verb facilius reddo, meaning “easily accomplished or attained.” When a group of subject matter experts manages to stay focused, miracles can happen. Therefore, I define business facilitation as a method that removes all distractions, making it easy or attainable for a group of experts to gain traction by focusing on the same question at the same time, led by a meeting facilitator who knows how to sequence questions, ask questions with precision, and guide consensual understanding and agreement around optimal solutions for that specific group of experts.
THE TOUGH PART
Rarely do events, meetings, or workshops proceed in a linear fashion. They don’t just “start here” and then “end there.” Rather, they continually loop and twirl—for reasons such as these:
- Someone joins the meeting late, online or in person.
- A subject matter expert gets called away unexpectedly and upon return discovers some critical information missing.
- You are asked to go back and add something.
- Someone changes her mind because her introspection has found a connection between a few things previously not considered.
- Someone comes back from break with added information obtained from an outside subject matter expert or from the internet.
- You are asked to substitute or combine something.
- Someone wakes up and cannot understand something decided earlier.
- Two people start arguing because they refuse to agree with each other based on “principle.”
- You need to fully define something.
- You do a poor job handling participants’ electronic leashes (cell phones, laptops, etc.) and when everyone wakes up, they quickly unravel what has already been accomplished.
Sound familiar?
If so, the remedies in this book are meant for you. I cannot promise you a method to resolve everything you encounter in meetings. But this book does provide a method and additional confidence to manage anything that develops or erupts during your meetings.
When you see the term “meetings” you might substitute the generic term “sessions.” Meeting leadership skills allow you to pivot among ceremonies, conferences, events, meetings, and workshops—wherever groups assemble in session to decide, plan, prioritize, and solve problems. I want to make it easier for you to be a credible meeting leader and meeting facilitator[♠] when leading diverse types of meeting sessions, for all types of groups, organizations, teams, and tribes.[♦]
RELAX
The style of this facilitator’s guide supports quick reading and cross-referencing. Conventions include the following:
- Lists of items (such as bullet points) are typically alphabetically ordered. If not, lists are sorted by chronology, dependency, frequency, or importance (impact).
- Meeting Approaches, Agenda Steps, and Tools appear in italics, with cross-references to the chapters or sections where they appear.
LEGACY
Like you, I know how it feels to sit in a meeting and think, “What a waste of the organization’s time and money.” To solve this problem, I’ve spent years improving a structured method to design and lead better meetings. Once you have read this book, you will have the knowledge I wish I had earlier in my career. The book is the result of more than 15,000 hours invested in training thousands of people on four different continents. These people now plan and run better meetings using disciplined, holistic meeting design, based on proven techniques such as structured conversations, with an ever-vigilant eye toward decision quality and collaborative ownership.
Facilitator’s Guide Chapters
How to Navigate This Facilitator’s Guide to Meeting Design
- Read the first four chapters to understand and reinforce meeting leadership; the core skills and discipline of effective facilitation; and how to manage group collaboration, meeting conflict, and personality dysfunction. When you need a refresher, refer to the table of contents to isolate the topic you need to reinforce, such as “How to Manage Arguments.”
- For your meetings and events, use the Quick Reference sections and Tool selection guide at the end of the book to remind you about suitable activities for structuring your agenda and meeting design. The Quick Reference sections prompt you with detailed instructions to use when building your Launch, Agenda Steps, and Wrap (fully detailed and scripted in Chapter 5).
Facilitator’s Guide Chapter Summary
- For specific agendas, tools, and procedures to use repeatedly when conducting meeting sessions, turn to these chapters (also see the summary table below)
- Planning sessions—Chapter 6
- Decision-making and prioritization sessions—Chapter 7
- Problem-solving and innovation sessions—Chapter 8
- Online sessions and differences—Chapter 9
- Staff meetings and other information-exchange sessions—Chapter 9
- Board meetings and “Robert’s Rules” situations—Chapter 9
- After identifying your situation and locating the appropriate Agenda Steps, adapt the prescribed procedures to your personal taste and environmental constraints by considering the following factors:
- Duration or amount of available time
- Monetary impact of your meeting deliverable on organizational objectives
- Number of participants, expected and optimal
- Physical space or online ease of using breakout rooms
- Your ability to adapt the tools to both in-person and online settings
- Your experience and confidence with the recommended tools
Facilitator’s Guide Scripting and Support
- Script your Annotated Agenda (chapter 5) from start to finish. For best results, follow the seven activities of a professional Introduction (Launch) using the prescribed sequence. Script them and follow your script. According to New York Times best-selling author Daniel Pink,[♣] the four activities of a professional Conclusion (Wrap) are even more important than a smooth Launch. So thoroughly prepare for your four concluding Review and Wrap activities, which ensure clear and actionable results.
- Prepare your participants. For major initiatives or workshops, send out a Participants’ Package (chapter 5). For 50-minute meetings, prepare a one-page description of the meeting purpose, meeting scope, meeting objectives, and basic agenda.
- Once your Annotated Agenda (Chapter 5) is complete, and even while you are working on it, prepare supplementary material and visual support such as a glossary, slides, legends, posters, and screens (illustrated throughout this book) to help you explain the tools and procedures you will use to build deliverables and get DONE.
[♠] The meeting facilitator represents one of four roles performed by the meeting leader; the other three roles commonly performed by the meeting leader include meeting coordinator, meeting documenter, and meeting designer.
[♦] Teams reassemble every season with new players. Tribes stay together through thick and thin, over the long haul.
[♣] Daniel Pink, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing (2018).
______
Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.
Go to the Facilitation Training Store to access proven, in-house resources, including fully annotated agendas, break timers, and templates. Finally, take a few seconds to buy us a cup of coffee and please SHARE with others.
In conclusion, we dare you to embrace the will, wisdom, and activities that amplify a facilitative leader. #facilitationtraining #MEETING DESIGN
______
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 | Aug 12, 2021 | Analysis Methods, Communication Skills, Decision Making, Facilitation Skills, Leadership Skills, Managing Conflict, Meeting Agendas, Meeting Structure, Meeting Support, Meeting Tools, Planning Approach, Problem Solving, Scrum Events
For over ten years, we have consistently posted articles on Facilitation Best Practices. Articles are written to help you lead better meetings.
Throughout, we have updated these articles to keep them fresh, current, and vibrant. Some Facilitation Best Practices articles include links to valuable downloads, such as our one-page meeting template agenda and business model canvas. Below is a list of 27 highly useful posts based on viewer popularity and the current needs of our volatile and ever-changing business climate. Read, learn, and enjoy—and don’t forget to share!
Facilitation Best Practices Acknowledge Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
When weighing agile vs. waterfall benefits, consider how the Stacey Matrix arranges projects from the simple through the chaotic.
Avoid these eight meeting killers that can destroy your meeting and your professional reputation . . . do not penalize people who are on time . . .
Agendas should include a beginning, a middle, and an end. To conduct a professional meeting introduction, complete these five activities.
Meeting Wrap — How to facilitate four important closing activities: 1-Review, 2-Next Steps, 3-Communications, and 4-Assessment.
Leading online meetings effectively requires more skills than facilitating meetings in person. Here are dozens of tips for technology and participant challenges.
It is not your responsibility to GENERATE CONFLICT RESOLUTION. However, here are four activities that show you how to MANAGE meeting conflict.
Always empower your participants, but learn to control challenging personality types to avoid problem meetings and problem people.
Nobody wants more meetings or more time in meetings, so use this meeting agenda template to add your own agenda steps to get DONE faster.
Meeting problems are indicative of resistance during a meeting. Resistance can be prevented and mitigated. Here’s what to do about them.
Every meeting leader needs a simple tool to facilitate prioritization and build consensus quickly. Combine our PowerBall method (MoSCoW) with BookEnds for a robust approach.
Active listening requires facilitators and other servant leaders to reflect on WHAT was said. Highly effective active listeners also reflect WHY.
Quantitative SWOT analysis was developed by Metz at Kellogg because qualitative situational analysis provides a poor method for building consensus.
Presenting a brief, yet powerful, list of Facilitation Do’s and Don’ts for reference before and during meetings, sessions, and workshops.
Deliverables should drive meetings, even review meetings. Here are the deliverables, frequency, and structure for the three review meetings.
Use ground rules and ideation rules to manage individual and group behavior during meetings. A bit of structure will help get you DONE, fast.
A robust action plan answers ten planning questions. They aggregate to build consensus with participants agreeing on WHO does WHAT by WHEN.
A poor question by facilitators asks “How would you like to categorize these?” Learn the secret that drives natural categories of raw lists.
Detailed Scrum facilitation events/agendas, inputs required, and comments about the skills required to facilitate Scrum events effectively.
The Business Model Canvas uses a one-page primer and template, providing a general scan. The specific questions you can use are detailed here.
To ensure your participants are prepared and responsive, provide 4 documents: Pre-Read, Annotated Agenda, Slide Deck, and Meeting Output Notes.
To build consensus, you and your teams require three clear and critical behaviors, namely: Leadership, Facilitation, and Meeting Design.
Problem-solving demands structure and focus to get more done quickly, especially with many symptoms, causes, and mitigations to be considered.
How to facilitate speakers and get the most out of speaker and conference presentations. Some call this the WHAT, SO WHAT, and NOW WHAT.
Real-Win-Worth: To what extent an opportunity is real, we can win compared to competitive options, and to what extent an opportunity is worthhttps://mgrush.com/blog/real-win-worth/.
You will not change quiet people into extroverts, yet there are steps to increase the amount of meeting participation from all people.
Edward de Bono: Six Thinking Hats instructs on HOW TO think rather than WHAT TO think, making it easier to generate more ideas and increase decision quality.
When meeting participants are professionals, meetings are NOT just an opportunity to speak up, but an obligation to contribute.
______
Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.
Go to the Facilitation Training Store to access proven, in-house resources, including fully annotated agendas, break timers, and templates. Finally, take a few seconds to buy us a cup of coffee and please SHARE with others.
In conclusion, we dare you to embrace the will, wisdom, and activities that amplify a facilitative leader. #facilitationtraining #MEETING DESIGN
______
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.
