Change or die? Most people do not change their minds—rather, they make a new decision based on new information.  Sometimes the things they look at change as well.

Change or Die, The Business Process Improvement Manual

Every morning a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.

Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. 

It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle when the sun comes up . . .

. . . you’d better be running.

Source:  Unknown

Change or Die – Darwin

Change is stimulated by decisions. Groups make higher quality decisions than the smartest person in the group because groups create more options. Any group or individual presented with more options is known to make higher-quality decisions.

Most change is incremental or evolutionary rather than revolutionary.  Yet, by harnessing one degree Fahrenheit, steam power ushered in the industrial revolution.  Today’s revolution is both digital and dynamic, it is “in-formation”. With anything in formation, change is inevitable, only growth is optional.

“It is NOT the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”   — Charles Darwin

Change or Die – The Tao

Some of the best books about facilitating change do not mention the term or role of a “facilitator”. Take Dr Wayne Dyer‘s book for example, “Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life.”

We have always argued that effective facilitation begins with clear thinking, and that unclear speaking or imprecise writing is indicative of unclear thinking.  Dr. Dyer’s transliteration of “The Tao”, is also called “Living the Wisdom of the Tao.”

The 17th verse begins and completes as follows:

Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life

With the greatest leader above them,

people barely know one exists . . .

 . . . The great leader speaks little,

He never speaks carelessly.

He works without self-interest

and leaves no trace.

When all is finished, the people say,

“We did it ourselves.”

Change or Die – Being Facilitative

One can easily substitute the term facilitator for a leader or include the adjective “facilitative” in front of the term, as in “facilitative leader.”  Modern, facilitative leaders create an environment that is conducive to productivity, where all of the meeting participants feel that they have a personal responsibility to contribute and own the outputs, and the deliverables.  Clear learnings that we can import from Dr. Dyer’s treatment of the 17th verse also include:

• Facilitators create an environment that helps everyone act responsibly.
• Effective facilitators are able to make themselves invisible when the group reaches high-performance mode. Although most groups do not reach this level, when they do, the facilitator becomes a scribe.
• When it is time for accolades, facilitators dissolve in the background, wanting the participants to feel that their accomplishments derive from their own talents.
• Instead of believing that they know what is best for a group, they trust the group participants and the method to generate what is best for them.
• The surest way to gain the trust and confidence of participants is to allow them to make as many decisions as possible. Avoid grabbing the low-hanging fruit by answering simple content. Put even the simplest items in the form of a question.

Try being more neutral as a business agent, friend, spouse, family member, parent, etc. and be surprised by the results of people who will live up to their own answers.  Remember, there is usually more than one correct answer, the real question remains the taste for risk and reward.

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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.)

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Facilitation Expert

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.