Work Breakdown Structure Increases Focus and Reduces Scope Creep
Experienced facilitators understand both the challenge and value of getting a group to focus on the same thing at the same time. For most project-related meetings, Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) provides a simple method to increase focus. According...
Evidence-based Meeting Design Improves the Agility of Your Group
The Economist reports that “Some apartment building owners now require tenants to provide a DNA sample of their dog so that unscooped poop can be penalized.” Alex Pentland of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has invented a “sociometric”...
Five Compelling Business Reasons To Use Structured Facilitation Sessions
The most important action you take every day is to make choices--to decide. Your productivity amplifies when your decisions are optimal. Therefore, choose wisely when to work alone, speak with another person, or call for a meeting. Here are five...
How To Manage Challenging Personality Types to Avoid Problems in Meetings
A problem person causes a meeting distraction. Their message is ineffective because some characteristic gets in the way of communicating clearly. Always empower your participants, but learn to control challenging personality types to avoid problems...
Six Strategy-Crushing Mistakes Organizations Make And How You Can Rise Above the Rubble
By Mark Morgan, CEO and Founder of StratEx Advisors, Inc. Oh, the mistakes organizations make. Business plans or strategies usually sound fantastic at the outset. But far too often what sounded good at the beginning somehow just did not work out....
MG RUSH Certified, Professional, Endorsed Facilitators are Helping to Solve World Problems
MGRUSH Certified, Professional, Endorsed Facilitators are truly special. Thousands of alumni have earned promotions to executive positions, directorships, and C-level responsibility. MGRUSH facilitators lead groups ranging from the Joint Chiefs of...
The New Science of Teamwork: Is It New or Simply MG RUSH Professional Facilitation At Work?
The lead article in the March-April (2017) Harvard Business Review reads like a promotion for our MG RUSH Professional Leadership, Facilitation, and Methodology training. The principal recommendations in Johnson and Christfort’s article, The New...
30 Powerful Questions to Change the Point of View in Meetings
Too often, we rush straight to asking for the deliverable. For instance, if the goal is to develop a plan to mitigate burnout in the IT Service Department, we tend to jump to ‘solving’ by immediately asking for ideas on what actions to take. MG...
What is TRIZ, When You Should You Use It, and Stop Doing the Counterproductive
TRIZ represents a methodology focused on innovative processes or product improvement. Use it when you need innovative thinking that extends beyond common process flow diagrams and requirements gathering. Look at further variations such as ARIZ,...
Presenter Tips: How To Simply Make Your Presentations More Facilitative
Research by the National Speakers’ Association shows that becoming more facilitative (i.e., more interactive or service-oriented) is the single most important change a speaker or presenter can make. Following, you will find three powerful presenter...
Triple Constraint Theory: Use a Flexibility Matrix to Fortify Product Vision
Triple constraint theory suggests that it is not realistic to expect to build the fastest, the cheapest, and the highest quality. Something has to “give.” Yet, most executive sponsors and product owners want all three at the same time. Triple...
Ground Rules and Ideation Rules for Optimal Group Behavior in Meetings
Use ground rules to help manage individual and group behavior during meetings and workshops. You can lead meetings and discussions without ground rules, but did you ever leave an unstructured meeting with a headache? The term "discussion" is rooted...
Designing Strategy Execution, by William Malek
A.T. Kearney published the results of a 2014 Strategy Study with over 2,000 global executives on strategy trends, challenges, and opportunities. Here are some key findings worth highlighting that relate to the design of strategy execution. 1. 46%...
Addicted to Being Right: 4 Participant Responses to Avoid Being Wrong
Most people associate shame or loss of power with being wrong. Ever felt yourself getting defensive? When your meeting participants turn defensive, especially when they feel they are losing ground, neurochemistry hijacks the brain. Because they are...
Facilitating an Effective After-Action Review (AAR / Hot Wash): Agenda and Best Practices
An After-Action Review (AAR) is an effective tool for debriefing projects, programs, or other initiatives. It may also be considered similar to a Hot Wash, After-Action Debriefing, Look Back, Postmortem, or, in the Agile community, a Retrospective....
Stop wasting time and money!
With Meetings That Get Results, you’ll learn how to lead meetings that produce clear and actionable results every time. More important, how to avoid the worst possible outcome from any meeting—another meeting!
Developed from over 17+ years of research, delivery, and practice, including 15,000+ hours providing live instruction using Certified curriculum, Meetings That Get Results provides you with the tools and methods necessary to lead meetings that generate clear and actionable results, with deliverables that participants both understand and own.
“An essential handbook for any leader or facilitator of meetings. Especially as we have transitioned to more remote-based collaboration, I value all the tips to lead global team meetings.”
— Sana A. Manjeshwar, Global Principal Ombuds Manager, Chevron