Facilitating a planning session makes you a change agent.

Because even President Eisenhower (then General) was known to say,

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

While an effective facilitator keeps their group focused on the meeting output (i.e., deliverable), the real work begins when the meeting is over, because what we really plan for are new outcomes. Consequently, planning intends to change minds, not merely make plans.

Therefore, when President Eisenhower was suggesting that three-ring binders may sit on a shelf and gather dust, he implied that key deliverables from planning sessions occur in the fifteen cm (six inches) between our ears.

To change (as a verb) can mean a lot of things including, among others, to:

From Planning to Rewards

• Adapt
• Adjust
• Alter
• Amend
• Differentiate
• Doctor
• Evolve
• Innovate
• Modify
• Productize
• Redesign
• Refine
• Remodel
• Reorder
• Reorganize
• Reshape
• Restyle
• Revamp
• Revise
• Transfigure
• Transform
• Tweak
• Vary

Change or Be Changed

Every one of us has been involved in change, and if you are reading this, you are probably involved in a change effort right now. Congratulations, the ability to lead a group of people to change, agree, and take ownership and maintenance of the future state represents tremendous success for the session leader who got them there.

Consequently, groups that are proactive in their approach to change make more money than those who simply react. Many studies point to innovation as the modern driver of profitability. As a core competency, groups who become adept at change, which can convert their creativity into profit (innovation defined), learn the value of effective facilitation. The facilitator, remaining unbiased and neutral about HOW TO change, serves as the primary catalyst and accelerator of change, corporate learning, and financial growth.

The more we mature in the role, the more we understand that corporate reality is subjective and decisions are driven by the perception of reality, from each person. Therefore, we embrace learning to ‘homogenize’ our separate realities into our common, objective reality—that is unfortunately accepted by everyone but owned by no one. As context experts, our role during meetings get people closer to shared understanding, to acceptance of what is truly objective, and to own their commitments and consequences when our meetings conclude. When performed seamlessly, our role helps individuals who help groups that help organizations exceed their goals and maximize their financial rewards. And to think, it all started with a planning meeting.

In the words of Giuseppe di Lampedusa in The Leopard, even:

“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”

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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.