by Facilitation Expert | Apr 3, 2014 | Meeting Structure, Meeting Tools, Prioritizing
In managing capital projects or leading teams, facilitators often grapple with prioritization, where every item can feel equally important. However, allowing everything to be “most important” dilutes focus and slows down decision-making. This is where our Bookend method and accompanying rhetorical techniques come into play, offering a strategic solution to rank priorities efficiently and meaningfully.
Why the Bookend Method Works
The primary challenge with traditional, linear approaches to prioritization is that they encourage discussions around gray areas—those items that fall into moderate categories (e.g., “moderately important,” “reasonable cost”). Unfortunately, these middle-ground discussions often lead to drawn-out debates that add little to decision quality.
Instead, experience shows that extreme criteria—the highest and lowest importance factors—drive impactful decision-making. By focusing on these extremes, the Bookend method bypasses fruitless arguments and identifies the most crucial factors first.
The Problem with Traditional Prioritization
Untrained facilitators often begin with a linear approach, asking whether an item is high, medium, or low in importance. The result? Most items end up in the “high” category, diluting the overall value of the list. While each item on the list may indeed be important, the method fails to differentiate clearly between them.
By using the Bookend method, facilitators avoid these pitfalls and achieve better balance across categories. PowerBallls make this easy as demonstrated below.
How the Bookend Method Works
- Identify the Extremes: Start by asking, “Which item is the most important?” and mark it using the filled circle PowerBall icon. Then ask, “Which is the least important?” and mark it with the empty circle PowerBall icon.
- Work Toward the Middle: Repeat the process, alternating between the next most important and least important items, until two-thirds of the list is scored.
- Address the Middle: For the remaining one-third, ask the group, “Will you lose any sleep over categorizing these as moderate?”
- Consistent Language: Always ask in singular terms—“which is”—to focus discussions. Be ready to take multiple inputs if participants speak simultaneously.
- Bucket Distribution: Divide the total list into three categories (high, moderate, low) while ensuring balance. If necessary, adjust by adding or removing an item from a category, maintaining overall distribution.
- Force-Ranking Alternative: For a more granular ranking, apply the highest available number for the most important, the lowest for the least important, and alternate until all items are ranked.
Use the Bookend Method to Avoid Wasting Time with Lists
Use Cases and Flexibility
When comparing illustrations or scenarios, ask questions like:
- Which is most similar?
- Which is least similar?
Repeat the process until one-third of the items remain uncategorized, placing them in the moderate bucket.
For discussions around personal or group strengths and weaknesses:
- What is your greatest strength?
- What is your greatest weakness?
Again, repeat this process until the list is reduced to one-third, placing the remainder into the moderate category.
We discourage overly complex breakdowns (e.g., one-quarter or three-quarter categories) unless they help avoid unnecessary debates. Flexibility is key—apply this method pragmatically to keep the group focused on progress, not arguments.
Numeric Alternative (Six Levels)
For more complex scenarios where finer gradations are needed, consider this six-level system:
- Low Importance
- Moderately Low Importance (if needed)
- Moderate Importance
- Moderately High Importance (if needed)
- High Importance
- Null (Will not have)
By guiding groups to focus on extremes and avoid gray areas, the Bookend method enables efficient, impactful decision-making. It saves time, reduces frustration, and enhances the clarity of priorities.
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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. 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.) Take a moment to SHARE this article with others.
In a world where everyone can engage in decisions that affect them,
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by Facilitation Expert | Mar 20, 2014 | Analysis Methods
To build an operational and consensual definition that your group can live with, in their own words, and with their understanding, use the following Definition tool. Since narrative descriptions alone may fall short of expressing the complete meaning, we also want to fortify the consensual definition with an illustration and examples.
Use this robust method for consensual definitions of terms, phrases, or expressions with a group of meeting or workshop participants. Keep in mind that the standards expected below are demanding. They include five effective activities. Keep this tool in your hip pocket and use it whenever you encounter serious discord over the meaning of something. You may also need this tool when you manage open issues (i.e., Parking Lot) and your participants do not agree or cannot remember what something meant.
Additionally, the analysis activity of brainstorming begins when the ideation energy begins to wane. An indicator that it may be time to transition to analysis could be a question raised about what a term means, or someone raising an argumentative point that something can or cannot satisfy a specified condition or requirement.
Session leaders are faced with groups and participants (who may be in violent agreement with each other) who need to develop a consensual understanding of what a particular term, phrase, or expression means. The most underutilized tool in the sphere of facilitation is a robust definition tool. Therefore the first step frequently required to support effective analysis requires properly defining something.
Purpose of Consensual Definitions
To build a consensual definition of a term or phrase that the group can live with, in its own words, and with its own understanding. Since narrative descriptions alone may fall short, support your consensual definition with an illustration and examples.
Rationale Behind Consensual Definitions
Consensual Tool for Definitions
This MGRUSH tool supports a consensual understanding of terms and phrases. Use something more robust to develop rich definitions for complex ideas like processes. Hence, for an entire workshop(s) Activity Flows may be more useful.
Method to Build Consensual Definitions
When a term or phrase requires further definition or understanding, it may be best to compare it to a dictionary definition(s). However, do not begin with dictionary definitions. Rather, offer them as a stimulus for the group after drafting their own definition. The five additional activities include:
- First, identify “WHAT THE TERM OR PHRASE IS NOT”.
- Next, compile a narrative sentence or paragraph that generally describes it. Compare later to a dictionary or other professional definitions and support.
- Then list the detailed bullets that capture the specific characteristics or specifications of the term or phrase as intended by the participants. For example, with a camera, we might detail requirements for the number of megapixels, zoom range, etc.
- Obtain or build a picture of concrete items or create an illustration of the item if it is abstract or dynamic (e.g., process flow).
- Provide at least two actual, real-life examples from the participants’ experience that vivify the term or phrase. For example, a utility bill can be defined, but it is helpful to show an actual invoice (e.g., electricity for the period 15JAN20xx to 14FEB20xx).
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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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by Facilitation Expert | Mar 13, 2014 | Meeting Tools, Planning Approach, Problem Solving
Assuredly, organizational executives are known to go off-site to conduct strategic planning sessions, building consensus around vision and strategy to lead an organization to the future it seeks.
Yet infrequently, if ever, the Account Payable Department (or, some other function, process, activity, or product) justifies off-site strategic planning sessions. They still need consensus around why that department (or, some other function, process, activity, or product) exists, where they are going, and how they are going to measure their progress. To build consensual understanding around WHY something exists or WHY it is important, consider using our meeting Purpose Tool. If used appropriately, Commander’s Intent (aka, the meeting Purpose Tool) may be the second most frequently used workshop tool, after Brainstorming.
Meeting Purpose Tool (aka Commander’s Intent)
The Purpose Tool (or, Commander’s Intent)
This activity yields a wonderful, group-constructed statement that captures the integrated reason, plan, scope, and benefits of a business area.
Meeting Purpose Tool Rationale
Provides the group with a consensually built backdrop that can be appealed to. Helps galvanize consensus around analytical methods and decision-making that follow.
Meeting Purpose Tool Method
Either on one easel or two separate easels, in advance, you should build out the visual prompt (preferably in a separate color), that “The Purpose of ____ is to . . . (ellipsis) So that . . . (ellipsis).”
- Prompt your participants with “The Purpose of ____ is to . . .”
- While scribing, print the last word from the previous input, and prompt them audibly with “So that . . .” because you want to keep the energy high.
- Do not use hyphens as you capture, rather use commas as you are helping them build one, long run-on sentence.
- Do not wordsmith the results but be certain to reread, review, and confirm that they have created a statement that everyone can live with. Basically, you have created a strategic plan at the level of a business area or activity—why it is important.
- Review during the workshop as an appeal to ensure that the discussion stays on topic. If necessary, either take off-topic discussion and ask that it be placed in the Issue Bin or go back and modify this statement to allow for its inclusion.
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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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by Facilitation Expert | Mar 6, 2014 | Meeting Tools, Problem Solving
The following Creativity tool stimulates the ideation activity of Brainstorming and enables people to express ideas and beliefs non-verbally, even if they cannot or will not do it orally. This is especially beneficial for developing visions of the business, system, or organization. The Creativity tool should also be used when defining, especially complex products or processes.
Creativity Tool Method
Creativity Tool Example
The Creativity tool allows each team to draw pictorial answers to a specific question or to provide solutions for a specific scenario. Additionally, the Creativity tool frequently takes less time than narrative capture. If you use the Creativity tool early during the workshop, you can mount visually stimulating wallpaper that participants will refer to later. Since teams rather than individuals generate the results, you provide timid participants permission to speak freely by enabling them to defend or explain what their teams created. Complete the following:
- Divide the group into smaller teams of three to five people. Watch the mix of people—plan how you want to mix them.
- Explain what they will be doing and provide a visual prompt of the question(s) that need to be answered. Examples:
- Draw a picture of how the organization looks today.
- Illustrate how you would like the organization or system to look in the future.
- Draw your vision of where you are going with the business or system.
- (illustrative) Provide answers to the question, “What do you expect to get out of this workshop?”
- You can use one or more of the above examples or your own. Therefore, if you have the teams draw pictures of both today and the future, you empower them with the ability to compare and contrast.
- Provide a time limit, flip chart paper, and colored markers.
- When finished, have each team present their drawing(s). Consider using the Bookend tool for identifying commonalities and items that may be extremely unique. Keep the drawings mounted on the wall and do NOT mark on them.
- Separately, capture their narrative explanations and feedback and confirm that the narrative reflections are accurate and complete.
Creativity Tool Notes
The Creativity tool is powerful in drawing out beliefs and ideas. Use it effectively by knowing how you are going to use the output.
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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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by Facilitation Expert | Feb 27, 2014 | Meeting Support
Use icebreakers to get participants vocal and more participatory sooner by introducing themselves beyond name and title. The following examples can be used by virtual participants as well. When virtual, make sure all participants identify themselves before speaking.
Questions to Launch Effective Icebreakers (aka Meeting Sparks)
Effective Icebreakers (aka Meeting Sparks)
- A simple yet effective method: “If I were a . . . “ approach such as—“If I were a gem, I would be a ____” or “If I were a flower, I would be a ____” or “If I were a bird, I would be a _____” or “If I were a vehicle, I would be a _____”
- Describe your dream career as a child.
- Describe the first event you remember vividly in life.
- Explain how you got one of your scars (and where it is).
- Explain your strangest paying job or chore.
- If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
- If you were a room in a house, which room are you and why?
- “My hero is . . .”
- Name a talent that you have and no one here knows about it.
- Name the last song you sang out loud by yourself.
- Sound out or act out your high school mascot.
- Tell us an animal you would like to be, and why.
- Tell us your favorite James Bond actor and explain why.
- The title of your autobiography?
- Two truths and a lie—participants guess the lie.
- Use one word to describe where you are right now.
- What kitchen appliance or tool would you be and why?
- What would you bring with you on a desert island?
- What’s on your reading list or nightstand?
- When wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?
- Which model and type of automobile would you be and why?
- “Would you rather?” questions; e.g., Would you rather be invisible or be able to read minds? Would you rather live without music or live without television? Would you rather be 4 feet tall or 8 feet tall?
- Your favorite ice cream?
Meeting Sparks – another phrase for icebreakers
- Based on a project theme, create new surnames for participants; e.g., Lori Aconcagua (i.e., the highest mountain in South America).
- Begin with a “Fun Fact” sharing by each individual of something previously unknown to everyone.
- On a rotating basis, have an assignee bring in a joke.
- Start the meeting with a song and award a prize to the first person who correctly identifies the name artist or both.
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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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by Facilitation Expert | Feb 20, 2014 | Leadership Skills, Meeting Agendas, Meeting Support
The rule of thirds helps guide the facilitator and meeting designer. The Project Management Institute (PMI) refers to planning, analysis, and design as separate stages across a project or product development.
At ground level, the basic Use Case refers to Input>Process>Output as the basis for understanding requirements. Many of the world’s great religions of philosophy embrace the concept of a trinity. From Shiva, Vishnu, and Brahma of Hinduism to the great agnostic Plato, who referred to logic, rhetoric, and grammar as the trivium; testing of which allowed citizens to vote.
The Trivium
As elementary students, we learned the importance and proper sequencing of WHY before WHAT before HOW.
The Trivium: source Terrence Metz
Let’s look at two components of Goldblatt’s Theory of Constraints (aka Triple Constraint Theory), namely time and quality.
Time
Optimally allow at least one hour of preparation time for each hour of meeting or workshop time. Early in the role of facilitator, as you develop your experience, competencies, and body of knowledge, the ratio can be much higher. Many suggest a practical ratio of two hours of preparation to every one hour of meeting or workshop time. The less familiar you are with the agenda and the tools you plan to use, the larger the ratio you can estimate.
Unfortunately, people forget the importance of the back-end as well; namely, what to do and invest after the meeting or workshop. Please make certain that your documentation is complete, and that it sizzles. Frequently the only residue of value left after a meeting or workshop is the document, and if it was not documented, it did not happen.
Take time to add context, typically cut and paste from your annotated agenda if thoroughly constructed. Context provides the background and rationale, the WHY, behind WHAT gets done during the meeting.
For example, take a decision made by a group to the executive sponsor or decision review board and their first question is WHY. Why did you make that decision? Let us be careful to document the rationale, the BECAUSE, behind the various components within a deliverable. Explain why they were built, how they relate to each other, and how they accelerate the project your meeting supports.
Quality
PMI refers to it as “front-end loading”, in other words, do not underinvest in the planning and building consensus around WHY something is important. For example, why do perform this function, process, or activity? Why we do something dramatically affects what we will do to support it.
Note the difference between a primary residence to raise a family and a beach house or camp hut used for family vacations. The purpose alone dictates different decisions and designs. A family vacation house for example may emphasize more beds than privacy, or give the family room more space while minimizing the study or library.
Even during a meeting, make sure you include a beginning, a middle, and an end. All too frequently, meetings fail to include one of them. Most people would rather go to a movie than a meeting because even a poor movie has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Do not discount the value of an effective review and wrap, and see Four Activities to Efficiently and Effectively Wrap-up a Meeting to manage the end, better than most.
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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.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.
by Facilitation Expert | Feb 6, 2014 | Analysis Methods, Communication Skills
In the role of facilitator, you will discover a lot of power by using metaphors or analogies to explain your method. Avoid using the content and experience of the subject matter experts. In other words, a metaphor is worth a thousand pictures.
To use “their” content violates neutrality. Use a metaphor or analogy about which you have passion. A metaphor helps you to explain it to your great-grandmother, the test of ultimate clarity. In the following example, we use “Mountain Climbing” to explain one form of a USE CASE, called SIPOC (i.e., Source, Input, Process, Output, and Client/Customer).
Illustrative Analogy (SIPOC): A Metaphor is Worth a Thousand Pictures
Previously completed work that helped to identify some of the “requirements” could have led us to understand that one of the activities required to support the purpose of mountain climbing has been identified as “pack supplies” (note the simple verb-noun pairing). Rather than explain the SIPOC tool orally, we can provide a picture or illustration of the tool by using the metaphor or analogy of mountain climbing.
Right-to-Left Thinking
The phrase “right to left thinking” (similar to “start with the end in mind”) derives from SIPOC. There are five discrete activities, namely:
- Anchor the framework with the activity or process, here previously identified as “Pack Supplies”. Since subject matter experts (aka SMEs) perform similar tasks differently, socialize and document how the activity is or should be performed, allowing for multiple perspectives. Later, take this material and transpose or append it to process flow diagrams or swimlanes.
- Identify the outputs or things that result from the completed activity. A “thing” could be information, a transaction, or a tangible item. Think of a “thing” as a noun such as a person, place, or object about which we need more information to make an informed decision.
- For each discrete output, discuss where it goes or who is the client or customer of the output. Note there could be more than one client for each output. For example, information called “Inventory Depletion” is shared with both the purchasing role so that they can reorder and perhaps the vendor to enable auto-replenishment.
- Working to the left side, identify the things needed to complete the activity.
- Finally, identify the source(s) of each thing, noting again that there could be multiple sources for a single item. The “Pack” for example, might come from the sherpa, supplier, or even the climber.
By using an illustrative analogy you can now explain to your meeting participants where you are in the agenda and how the agenda steps support one another. Using an analogy reinforces that your role remains content-neutral. The analogy makes abstract terms such as “input” concrete or tangible and more easily understood. Remember, a metaphor is worth a thousand pictures.
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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.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.
by Facilitation Expert | Jan 23, 2014 | Decision Making, Problem Solving
“Contrary to popular opinion, you don’t need weird shoes or a black turtleneck to be a design thinker . . .” so goes the article from Harvard Business Review♦. The author suggests five characteristics found in design thinkers (i.e., innovators) that relate directly to the core competencies required for effective facilitation. Included (in alphabetical order) are Collaboration, Empathy, Experimentalism, Integrative Thinking, and Optimism.
Design Thinker: Collaboration
The increasing complexity of options and decision-making demands the involvement of many, rather than one. Lone genius has been replaced with cross-disciplinary subject matter experts. Select subject matter experts have the talent to succeed, the initiative, and the motivation to succeed, but frequently do not know how to succeed in a group setting. Many are subject matters across disciplines with experience drawn upon multiple backgrounds and organizations. At IDEO for example, they engage engineers, marketers, anthropologists, industrial designers, architects, and psychologists, among others.
Design Thinker: Empathy
Understanding that there is more than one right answer, seeking the best among multiple perspectives lends itself to creating an answer that did not walk into the meeting; but rather one that is created during the meeting. To support creation, empathy in the form of active listening with a neutral session leader becomes critical.
Design Thinker: Experimentalism
Challenging subject matter experts to make their thinking visible, from the heart, can advance the rationale behind their thoughts that breed both consensual understanding and breakthrough solutions. Through observation and questioning, session leaders can inspire and transfer ownership of the meeting output.
Design Thinker: Integrative Thinking
While analytical methods are certainly helpful, integrative approaches support innovation. A neutral facilitator can help a group understand multiple perspectives and build a solution(s) to reconcile seemingly contradictory points of view. For example, one participant may prefer black and another prefers white. Instead of viewing them as opposing thoughts, how can we integrate both black and white? Immediate answers include options such as two-tone, plaid, polka dot, shades of grey, etc.
Design Thinker: Optimism
Successful session leaders rely on confidence in method rather than expertise around content to generate higher quality solutions. Practically speaking, however, optimism and confidence come from experience, so don’t forget to try, practice, and some more. There is usually more than one right answer. You may not be the best facilitator in the world, but you are the best facilitator your group can find.
Trust that in the role of session leader, they need you more than anything else, to lead with Collaboration, Empathy, Experimentalism, Integrative Thinking, and Optimism. With this technique, you can open the doors of perception that make it easier for your group to develop breakthrough solutions.
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♦ June 2008 (pg 87)
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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.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.
by Facilitation Expert | Jan 16, 2014 | Planning Approach
Research by Ana Guinote and Mario Weick shows that people in positions of power are particularly ineffective planners.
People who feel powerful focus on getting what they want and ignore the potential obstacles that stand in the way. The planning fallacy: the planning efforts of powerful people rely frequently on “best case scenarios” and lead to far shorter time estimates than more practical plans that take into account what may go wrong.
Overconfidence: The Fallacy of Planning
Good time management starts with the deliverable and breaks it into manageable pieces, understanding the activities required to support each, and an estimate based on multiple factors such as group size, functionality, and experience. However, most leaders are relatively poor at estimating the time they will need to complete any task. Psychologists refer to this as both the planning fallacy and the bias of overconfidence. Fallacies and biases put us at increasing risk of reaching our objectives on time.
The Overconfidence Bias Damages
You can learn more accurately how to predict the length of an activity and become a better estimator and planner if you consider the potential obstacles and two other factors.
- Reflect on your past experiences and how long similar activities have taken in the past, and
- Break the activity into smaller pieces or tasks (e.g., questions or steps) and factor in the time for each task.
For example, Brainstorming as an activity should be broken into three tasks, namely:
- Diverge or List—estimate time based on whether or not you are using break-out teams, ELMO rule (Enough, Let’s Move On), etc.
- Analyze—estimate based on the tool to be used (e.g., PowerBalls or Decision Matrix) and allow time for scrubbing the list. Estimate separately for some time for thorough definitions, capturing omissions, and deleting sub-optimal input.
- Converge or Decide—estimate based on providing substantial reflection (i.e., active listening) around the rationale for decisions made and allow extra time for testing the decision against the initial purpose of the decision.
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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.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.
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by Facilitation Expert | Jan 9, 2014 | Meeting Support
If you seek innovation and breakthroughs during your group meetings or workshops, do not clone yourself.
Constantly strive to blend and mix various ingredients that stimulate participants, such as tactile stimulation. Prepare to keep all of your participants stimulated. We call it the “Zen” of the experience—that is appealing to all the senses to stimulate and maintain vibrancy, including chenille stems.
Stimulate the Senses
Tactile Stimulations Adds to the Zen of the Experience
As you know, moods and judgments can be influenced by unrelated experiences of sight and sound. For example, we typically feel happier on sunny days and perhaps more relaxed when listening to certain types of music. Research shows that heat and humidity provoke more fighting, violence, and even riots.
Visual Stimulation
You are encouraged to use multiple colors to break up the monotony of a single color hue. You are encouraged to use icons and illustrations to break up the monotony of recording notes purely in the narrative format. Likewise, use matrices, tables, and templates to stimulate your participants.
Music Helps a Lot
Our popular break timers blend a musical background that could best be described as eclectic—everything, from Frank to Frank as in Frank Sinatra to Frank Zappa. We even suggest the use of Purell®, citrus fruit, and fresh air to alert participants who may be dozing off. Likewise, we encourage the use of 30-30, or 30-second stand-up and stretch breaks every 30 minutes.
Tactile Stimulation Works
In a similar fashion, we have used chenille stems (aka pipe cleaners) and foam stickers for nearly twenty years now. While not all participants use them, research by Joshua Ackerman, Christopher Nocera, and John Bargh shows that the weight, texture, and hardness of the things we touch are unconsciously factored into decisions that have nothing to do with what is being touched. Tactile stimulation works.
Most people associate smoothness and roughness with ease and difficulty. Note the expressions “smooth sailing” and “rough seas ahead.” According to the researchers, people who completed a puzzle with pieces covered in sandpaper described their interaction as more difficult and awkward than those with smooth puzzles. Chenille stems offer both silky smoothness and flexibility, characteristics we seek from our participants and meetings. Let the chenille stems make everything seem better, they work, and research confirms why.
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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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by Facilitation Expert | Dec 26, 2013 | Analysis Methods, Decision Making
Most of us have heard that a picture tells a thousand words. Consensually built pictures, especially those covering complex topics and interactions, can be used to help solve and resolve a thousand arguments.
We are reminded by the IIBA (International Institute of Business Analysis) Quick Tip Bulletin #58 about the value of one type of picture of the business, called a Context Diagram.
Illustrative Context Diagram
A Context Diagram, also known as a Scoping Picture or Picture of the Business (area) may look complicated and un-informing to the uninformed, but a picture of the business quickly enables a session leader to tighten the reign on scope creep issues that plague many meetings and workshops.
The Context Diagram on the right illustrates “who” the business interacts (here, an organization or business called “Home Finance”) with, “what” the business receives from them, and “what” the business gives to them. Many refer to the “whats” as inputs and outputs. Inputs and outputs are used in requirements gathering to narrow the scope of discovery and discussion. The picture helps both the participants and the facilitator focus on the deliverable.
How to Build a Context Diagram
Consider using the simple agenda shown below. It captures the answers to three simple questions to complete the modeling:
- WHO do we work with to support our purpose (e.g., Actors or Agents)?
- WHAT do we get from them (inputs)?
- WHAT do we give them (outputs)?
Consequently, modify this “plain vanilla” agenda for a Context Diagram as shown or as you see fit. Use the MGRUSH 7-step introductory sequence and 4-step review and wrap for the workshop bookends. Have an ample supply of Post-It® Notes available, in at least three different colors, sizes, or shapes to distinguish the WHO from the inputs and outputs. Once complete, and consensually validated, you can proceed further with follow-up meetings or workshops to further define and illustrate WHO the business uses to support its purpose, and what activities (Activity Flow or Functional Decomposition workshop, leading to use cases such as SIPOC) and information (Logical Modeling or Entity Relationship Diagram) are also required to support their business purpose.
The following shows the simple agenda that typically takes two to four hours to complete. Also, refer to your MG Rush Professional Facilitative Leadership manual for more details.
- INTRODUCTION
- PURPOSE OF THE BUSINESS AREA
- WHO INTERACTS (Actors)
- WHAT COMES IN (Inputs)
- WHAT GOES OUT (Outputs)
- MODEL AND VALIDATION (Walk-thru)
- THE SCOPE DEFINED (Narrative)
- REVIEW AND WRAP
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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Register for a workshop or forward this to someone who should. MGRUSH facilitation workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each participant 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 descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.
by Facilitation Expert | Dec 12, 2013 | Managing Conflict
Here is a quick and somewhat humorous listing of fourteen different facilitator typologies or “personalities” you might seek to avoid. Our favorite is “The Pretender.”
14 Facilitator Types
The “I Can’t Hear You” Guy—
The facilitator refuses to listen, probably because they are too busy analyzing, judging, and processing information.
The Blabber—
The facilitator who loves the sound of his or her own voice, and actually believes they are adding value when speaking about content rather than context.
The Centerpiece—
The facilitator makes him or her the real content of the workshop because, of course, it’s all about them.
The Drill Sergeant—
The facilitator is rigidly stuck on the agenda and puts the clock above quality content.
The Guardian—
The facilitator makes certain that all conversation goes through him or her and not from participant to participant, so as not to lose control.
The Ice Cube—
The distant and aloof facilitator is unwilling to personalize the experience, sometimes becoming accusatory.
The Know-it-all—
The facilitator always has the answer. The know-it-all who can’t say “I don’t know.”
The Marathon Man—
The facilitator piles activities on top of one another, doesn’t allow for breaks, and ignores the need for groups to pause, reflect, and absorb topics and ideas.
The Molasses Man—
The facilitator is painfully slow and doesn’t have an innate feel for pacing, variety, or style.
The Parrot—
The facilitator relentlessly recaps information, restates ideas, and summarizes the obvious (although sometimes justifiable for groups that are challenged to focus and “be here now.”)
The Passenger—
The facilitator lets people talk too long and gives up the reins of facilitation to whoever is speaking at the time.
The Pretender—
The facilitator doesn’t ask real questions but only “pretense questions” that are really designed to give the facilitator an excuse to pontificate.
The Storyteller—
The facilitator tells far too many cutesy stories or “war stories” and never gets deep into the content.
The Tunnel Driver—
The facilitator who keeps doing the same thing or uses the same method hour after hour.
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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.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.
by Facilitation Expert | Nov 21, 2013 | Facilitation Skills
Facilitating for-profit business plans and requirements captures substantially different challenges than facilitating a Kum-Ba-Yah community forum or other volunteer-based meetings. While active listening serves both scenarios, decision-making that supports most business initiatives differs from win-lose voting methods.
Frequently, business facilitators are not seeking agreement, but rather harmony. The difference follows. Agreement suggests that everyone is singing the same note, perhaps even with the same instrument. Boring. Reminiscent of the railroad industry trying to protect itself, rather than redefining its role as transportation and logistics.
Harmony implies we are seeking an outcome where everyone’s musical note or expression is heard, from whatever instrument they play. Successful facilitation provides appropriate structure so that the deliverable captures all instruments and all tones, like a symphony. The sound of cicadas every few years represents agreement. The music of Pyotr Tchaikovsky reflects a symphonic movement.
Structured Decision-Making
When seeking consensual understanding, as in decision-making, for example, the right structure makes it easier for your participants. Consider the PowerBall approach when you can help drive a group toward a simple decision surrounding a well-articulated question (e.g., What should we buy?).
For complicated situations, use the Scorecard approach that separates fuzzy from SMART criterion. By applying weightings you generate a quantitative score to compare your options. For highly complex situations like portfolio management, always embrace the TO-WS (SWOT) analysis (introduced to the MGRUSH workshops in its quantitative form in 2004). In the facilitator’s world, our approach to TO-WS is like comparing a Tchaikovsky composition to playing the same note over and over on a kazoo.
Structured Decision-Making Matrix
Harmony Over Agreement
As facilitators, our business constraints rarely afford the time and luxury of sitting around the campfire singing Kum-Ba-Yah and building trust. Therefore, build your structure in advance. Then lead the method best suited to reconcile the business challenges and trade-offs you expect. Everyone agreeing will keep you in the box, suffocating innovation. But with harmony, you don’t even see the box, as you lead to the creation of a solution that no single participant envisioned when they entered your workshop.
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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.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.
by Facilitation Expert | Nov 14, 2013 | Meeting Support, Meeting Tools
This Meeting Icebreaker is from our collection of practical tips, tools, and techniques. Our tips are gathered from our experience, training classes, and alumni contributions.
IceBreaker Tip One: Warming Up A Group
This icebreaker tip is useful for people who are unfamiliar with each other, or for familiar groups that need some new dimension to their relationships for the purpose of the workshop. Because it may take up to one-half hour for a group of nine, manage your time accordingly.
Ice Breaker Tip — Newspaper or Magazine Headline
- 2 minutes: Have each person write their name on a small piece of paper. As they finish, collect the names in a container (e.g., bowl, box). Next, have each participant draw or select a piece of paper.
- 5-10 minutes: Allow a few minutes for each person to find the person named on their piece of paper and “interview” them. In addition, encourage them to take notes from the interview because you want them to share the highlights.
- 3 minutes: Now have the participants write a newspaper or magazine headline that describes an event or accomplishment of the person named on their piece of paper. Consider a specific newspaper or magazine that most members of the group are likely to read. Either emphasize a personal or professional accomplishment, but consistently emphasize the perspective you choose. Point your participants to a frequently read page or within a specific column of the magazine or newspaper.
- 5-10 minutes: Finally, have each person read the headline for the person named on the piece of paper.
IceBreaker Tip Two: Alternative
Move the headline to some point in the future (e.g., five years from now) when it becomes the aspiration of the participant rather than an actual accomplishment.
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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Register for a workshop or forward this to someone who should. MGRUSH facilitation workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each participant 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 class descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.
by Facilitation Expert | Oct 31, 2013 | Leadership Skills
To improve or enhance your personal skills and to help you understand the skills to seek in others that support effective change, you will find seven top skills for managing change.
Change Management
These skills are those most frequently identified by employers according to Syracuse University public affairs professor Bill Coplin, author of “10 Things Employers Want You To Learn In College.” With our focus on change and business process improvement, we have modified them and listed them in order of priority as they apply to facilitating and managing change:
1. Integrity—
“Do what you say you are going to do.” Without integrity and work ethic, all the other skills could be dangerous. Coplin includes self-motivation and time management.
2. Communications—
Because the greatest and most innovative ideas are impotent if they are not adequately explained to others. Coplin separates verbal or oral communications from written ones and also emphasizes editing and proofing one’s work.
3. Team Work—
Because change never occurs in a vacuum and effective change relies on distributed ownership. Stakeholders need to embrace the change or it will fail. Coplin mentions one-on-one, relationship building, and influencing people through leadership.
4. Infomediary—
Because effectively receiving, archiving, and distributing information that each stakeholder needs to plan, operate, and control the change effort to their level of satisfaction. Colin refers to gathering information and keeping it organized.
5. Measurement—
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” so become adept with quantitative tools, statistics, graphs, and spreadsheets. Know how to objectively measure why something is important.
6. Questioning—
Few skills are harder to teach and yet as important as knowing the right question to ask. Subject matter experts abound in most organizations, they need to be stimulated by the right question in the proper context, and they can deliver.
7. Problem Solving—
While Coplin emphasizes identifying problems, developing possible solutions, and launching solutions, we would add the importance of properly analyzing the problems as well. Do not leap from identification to solution without a thorough understanding of the implications of the problem.
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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.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.
Related articles
- What is Change Management? (catherinescareercorner.com)
by Facilitation Expert | Oct 10, 2013 | Meeting Structure, Meeting Tools
Facilitators rely on hundreds of tools to gather information, support decision-making, encourage innovation, build camaraderie, strive for higher quality, or guide a facilitator through an unplanned pathway. Therefore, your selection of the “best” structured facilitation tools depends on many factors.
A note of caution—Beginning facilitators often have a difficult time feeling comfortable because of the newness of the tools. Some experienced facilitators overuse a tool. They may forget that when you are comfortable using a hammer, not everything is a nail. Some guidelines to follow when using tools:
Overview of Helpful Structured Facilitation Tools
- There is more than one appropriate option. For example, we can capture initial input or meaning from participants through Brainstorming (i.e., narrative), Creativity (i.e., drawing), PowerBalls (i.e., iconic), or TO-WS (SWOT) (i.e., numeric).
- Only use a tool if it is correcting a problem or situation. The tool must add value or it distract from the method. For example, do not lead a team-building exercise if the team is highly functional.
- Do not ask the group permission to use a tool. You are the leader and need to set the method—so do it.
- Never present the tool as a game or a gimmick. This often leads to resistance. Discipline your rhetoric when explaining the Purpose tool. For example, do not ask about ‘today’s purpose’ since you are expected to know the purpose of the meeting.
- Except for team-building tools, explain the deliverable from each tool used and how it supports completing the deliverable.
- Do not be afraid to use a new tool—they have all been field-tested and work well when used properly.
- Build tool contingencies into your agenda—ie, plan to use a specific tool. However, if a problem arises, do not be afraid to substitute for something more appropriate.
- For tools designed to correct situations such as team dysfunction and lack of creativity, remember that most groups did not become dysfunctional in ten minutes and the situation will not be corrected through a ten-minute exercise. It often takes numerous exercises and a great deal of time to see a real difference. Do not give up and you will earn their respect for perseverance.
The “Right” Structured Facilitation Tool
Selecting the best tool to use by understanding the desired outcome. Avoid becoming so comfortable with one or two that those are the only tools you use. To select an appropriate tool:
- Identify the problem.
- Define the desired outcome.
- Review the tool selection chart below to help determine which tool helps achieve your desired outcome.
Team-Building Tools
Suggested steps for effective team-building exercises include:
- Prepare your materials in advance, along with prompts and assignments (e.g., CEO and team names), and rehearse new or complicated tools.
- Provide clear and explicit instructions, preferably posted or written down as handouts. Emphasize any rules.
- Monitor group activity closely, especially in the beginning, and make yourself readily available for clarifying areas of fear, doubt, or uncertainty.
- Compare the purpose with the output. Reinforce the learning and how it applies to accelerating the group’s performance toward your meeting or workshop deliverables.
Structured Decision-Making Tools
Use the following matrix to help guide you to the most appropriate decision-making tools based on the type of information
(i.e., qualitative or quantitative) and complexity of the decision
(i.e., concrete or abstract).
Decision-Making Matrix to Guide Selection of Structured Facilitation Tools
Additional Sources for Structured Facilitation Tools
Continue to add to your tool chest. When co-located in an enterprise with other facilitators, build a Community of Practice (i.e., CoP) that archives tools, visual prompts, and retrospective reviews. Strive to speed up selection and avoid repetition for your participants.
For additional exercises and tools for facilitators look at Games Trainers Play and More Games Trainers Play by John Newstrom and Edward Scannell, New York, McGraw-Hill Book Company, various. You can also order the IAF (International Association of Facilitators) Handbook of Group Facilitation and other resources at Amazon.com among others. There are thousands of tools and resources for facilitators and team-building tools in English and other languages.
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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.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.
by Facilitation Expert | Sep 19, 2013 | Managing Conflict
Individuals and groups can frankly be wrong when they think they are right. Professional facilitators get groups to focus on the conflict of the issues and ideas rather than the conflict between the people advocating those ideas. At the same time, they need to guard against meeting bias.
Guard Against Meeting Bias
The chance of error when making complex decisions is amplified by the amount of data required to support the decision Properly facilitated, groups of people can see through the fog clearer than those biased with the information they bring to a meeting or workshop.
Note the following impactful biases cited by the World Future Society in its March-April 2013 edition of “The Futurist.”
Bias Factors Affecting Group Decision-Making and Meeting Bias
- Confusing desirability and familiarity with probability
- Cost of detailed primary research, leading to shortcuts
- Distortion of data by media through selection and repetition
- Forecaster’s bias which involves a preference for change or patterns
- Homogenization of distinct multiple data sources (for cost savings)
- Lack of clear confidence intervals (how clean the data is)
- Mistaking correlation for causation (a very common error)
- Organizational biases
- Over-immersion in local social values or perceptions
- Political research sponsorship
- Preconceptions—framing complex issues in a skewed fashion (selective perception)
Professional facilitators help objectify the subject matter experts’ points of view with challenges and structured discussion. They help depersonalize issues from people, so that ideas can stand on their own merit and value, not inflated by the charisma of persuasive participants.
Guard against selective perception
As their session leader, remember that everything heard in a meeting or workshop is interpreted and filtered differently by participants. They will hear or see differently based on their individual biases, or colored lenses. To illustrate the point, the vastly different pictures below are all from the same area in space using different lenses including radio, infrared, visible light, x-ray, gamma ray, and others.
NASA Public Domain
Parallel or Sloped?
Or, consider the following where we discover the horizontal lines below are truly parallel and not askew. Some will claim that “no way” are the lines parallel, when in fact they are perfectly parallel.
Same Height?
Additionally, look at the people in the picture below and understand that they are the exact same height, although appearances deceive. Be on guard always against biases that disrupt consensus building, and embrace the effective presentation tips discussed elsewhere.
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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.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.
by Facilitation Expert | Sep 12, 2013 | Decision Making
If you or your group recognizes the opportunity to improve, you’ll benefit from Change or Die – The Business Process Improvement Manual (available on Amazon and other fine bookstores.) Co-written by Maxine Attong and Terrence Metz, it details a proven method, built upon proven examples of shared development and ownership.
Extracted from “Change or Die: The Business Process Improvement Manual,” published by CRC Press, the Taylor and Francis Group.
Change or Die captures the developments that occur during the planning phase of a Business Process Improvement project (BPI). The method described builds over time, upon multiple, facilitated workshops. For workshop agendas, tools, and details, refer to the book, pages 167 to 171, or other “Best Practices” articles at this MGRUSH site.
How to Facilitate Business Process Improvement
Business Process Improvement (BPI) Planning
Organizations make large investments in the development of their strategic plan. For example, the market rate for professional support services to help develop strategic plans may require four percent of the investment sums for consulting. Sometimes more. Over the years, we have also developed templates that we use over and over, to bring about consistent results. Hence, we use facilitated workshops to extract information and build consensus from senior management about their dreams and hopes for the organization.
The strategic plan reflects an understanding of why, what, and how. When the client wants to do it, how much it will cost, and the estimated return on monies invested. Overall, the strategic planning document provides a clear view of the organization’s intent and should be used to baseline performance.
The BPI strategic plan becomes clear during executive sanction. Following this, the BPI project can move ahead and transition from the process examination team to the implementation team. The process examination team’s plan provides clear communications to senior management about the team’s intention for the BPI. Specifically, they illustrate how it supports the organization’s strategic initiatives. Therefore, now is the time to sell the project to the executive team, receive their approval, and release the resources needed to complete a successful project.
Purpose of the Business Process Improvement Plan
BPI provides a reference point against which the process examination team will be evaluated. The BPI plan also provides a synopsis of what the BPI team(s) has been working on. Therefore, the document legitimizes the critical nature of the proposed BPI project.
Given the team’s first and foremost opportunity to sell the project, the team must:
BPI Phase One Check-Off
- Be prepared to defend the tables, statements, and figures presented.
- Document known assumptions.
- Ensure that others can audit their transparent methods and results.
- Establish the accuracy of the data.
- Include charts and tables.
- Plan carefully.
- Prepare an oral presentation with visual supplements for management.
- Sell the project—your organization’s future may just depend on it.
- Solicit support from the project sponsor.
Business Process Improvement Plan Elements
The BPI plan is the process examination team’s last action before the project transitions to the implementation team. As a result of the team’s findings and decisions, the BPI plan includes the following:
- Executive Summary
- The Problem
- The Solution
- Resources Needed
- The Process
- Vision, Goals, and Objectives
- SWOT Analysis
- Project Team
- Risks and Opportunities
- Resources
- Next Steps
- Conclusion
Executive Summary
Create a snapshot of the project that captures the imagination of the executives. Therefore, concisely state the results that will be created by its completion. Hence, include the project costs and expected return on the investment. Consequently, bear in mind that the executive summary may be all that an executive has time to read, so the summary serves as the deciding factor of whether the project gets approved or not.
The Problem
BPI responds to or anticipates a changing environment. The reader needs to identify with and believe that the problem is real and that the organization’s ability to meet its goals and objectives will be compromised if the problem goes unresolved.
State the pain that the process causes to the stakeholders and why it needs to be stopped. Process measurements and workflows provide evidence of what is wrong with the existing process.
The Solution
Develop a lofty purpose for the BPI. Therefore, state HOW and WHY the BPI project will resolve the problems identified.
Resources Needed
The project budget shows the investment needed by type of expense. Therefore, clearly state the return on the investment and the period for the returns. And for sure, including the assumptions that went into the number crunching.
The Process
Codify the reasons why you chose the specific process for improvement. Demonstrate that an auditable and transparent method was used for the selection of the process to be improved and include the results of the analysis.
Paint a picture of the future process; what it looks like, and how it assists the organization in achieving its strategic objectives. Therefore, include the vision, goals, and objectives of the BPI project and align them to your organization’s vision.
TO-WS Analysis
Strengthen the argument for the process vision, goals, and objectives by showing how strengths and opportunities relate to the vision. Consequently, determine how the weaknesses and the impact of threats might be reduced, converted, or removed by the project.
Project Implementation Team
Explain the implementation team and how and why the members were selected. Explain the selection criteria and present the implementation team charter.
Risks
The Risk Register highlights the risks with the highest probability of affecting the project. Explain the mitigation/ elimination strategies. Summarize the change management plan and the stakeholder analysis and include them with your strategies.
Opportunities
Highlight the opportunities that BPI presents. Therefore, identify any opportunities that have been taken advantage of thus far, such as the quick wins discussed earlier.
Resources
Include the updated project budget and highlight the critical costs. Hence, shows the basis of the project rate of return and the payback period.
Next Steps
Present an updated project plan and give an overall view of the next steps and the estimated dates. Highlight the key activities such as BPI plan acceptance by management, implementation team training, process design, project testing and implementation, and project completion.
Conclusion
Here provide a review and wrap-up of all the above. Do not introduce added information during the conclusion. All members of the process examination team and implementation teams need to sign off on the document (obtain signatures) showing commitment and buy-in of its contents.
Change or Die provides a life cycle approach on how to facilitate business process improvement within 250 pages of primary text. Hence, both print and electronic editions come with another 100 pages of workshop agendas, tools, and activities. The print edition contains a CD containing over 100 tables and templates in electronic form. Therefore, the nominal investment will pay for itself within the first hour or two of your perusal.
MGRUSH alumni will recognize some proven tools (eg, Guardian of Change) and some new activities to stimulate group performance. Consequently, the workshop agendas have been stress-tested with other clients and are proven to work.
Our publisher, Productivity Press, represents an imprint of the publishing house, CRC Press which operates as the science and technology book division of the Taylor & Francis Group. Established in 1783 in the United Kingdom, we are fortunate to be associated with one of the longest-established publishers in the history of printing. Taylor & Francis Group is now the academic publishing arm of Informa plc.
Maxine Attong (co-author, MGRUSH alumnae, and resident of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago) may be found around the world signing copies at various conferences. You can’t miss her world-class smile (if you are lucky). Terrence Metz (co-author, MGRUSH alumni, lead instructor, and Managing Director) may be found elsewhere hosting MGRUSH workshops. Hence. either will gladly sign a copy for you and discuss questions you may have about deriving value from our team approach on how to facilitate business process improvement.
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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.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.
by Facilitation Expert | Sep 5, 2013 | Leadership Skills
The discipline of structured facilitation differs from what we respectfully refer to as “Kum Ba Yah” or “warm and fuzzy” facilitation which frequently begins by co-creating ground rules.
Most corporate environments simply do not afford enough time to follow the slow but sure path of building trust and camaraderie among participants. The holarchy provides a good reason why structured facilitation accelerates faster.
Structured Facilitation Begins with Your Holarchy
Enterprise Alignment
Typical meetings involve report-outs and updates such as staff meetings (typically, loosely structured). Structured facilitation supports workshops and non-staff meetings that occur when report-outs and updates are complete. Frequently structured facilitation supports a specific scope of work we refer to as a “project.” The difference between a project and the program it supports is the same difference one finds between a process and an activity. Both an activity and a project have a discrete starting and stopping time. Programs and processes, however, are typically ongoing or sustaining. We could calculate how much time you invest per year in the activity of “paying bills”. Yet, the process of “accounts payable” never stops.
Why is this important? When active listening fails to reconcile different viewpoints, structured facilitation through a disciplined facilitator takes the team back to the project objectives or the reason for the meeting in the first place. Next, we can view the program goals to improve consensual understanding as to why the project was approved. Finally, we can appeal to the business unit and/ or enterprise objectives to see which argument best supports or aligns with our primary objectives, mission, and vision.
Appealing to Objectives
Appealing to the objectives to reconcile arguments underlies structured facilitation that is missing from many Kum Bah Yah settings. Notice, for example, to stimulate peace in the Middle East, the structured facilitation approach suggests reconciling arguments first with active listening and then by appealing to the objectives in the holarchy, shown in the diagram below. However, when there are no SHARED purpose, scope, and objectives, there is no ultimate appeal for resolving arguments.
In corporate environments, all arguments are best answered by which position most strongly supports the corporate objectives. With Kum Bah Yah, the objectives may be competing. Therefore we rely on a different tool set, than pure decision-making science. Both structured facilitation and unstructured facilitation have their time and place but do not confuse one for the other. No corporate culture can invest two or three hours to build ground rules at the start of meetings and workshops. We do need a clear line of sight, however, to the project, program, business unit, and enterprise objectives that our meeting supports.
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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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by Facilitation Expert | Aug 22, 2013 | Meeting Structure
To facilitate consensus around simple decision-making, consider the following scenario and do not forget to help the group articulate the purpose of the project your meeting supports.
Let us say for example that four of us are taking a trip from Minneapolis to New Orleans. Therefore, consider why we are going, the options, and how we might get there. Moreover, take into account the WHY WHAT HOW of any decision.
Options (HOW)
WHY WHAT HOW
- Airplane
- Automobile (motorized 4-wheel vehicle)
- Bicycle
- Boat (or, canoe)
- Bus
- Hitchhike
- Horseback
- Limousine rental
- Taxi cab
- Walk
- Etc.
Consequently, to decide among the competing options we would consider the constraints and requirements. Therefore, let us call those considerations, the decision criteria. Because they provide an understanding of WHAT we must consider in our decision. Additionally, consider some of the decision criteria, as follows:
Criteria (WHAT)
- Accessibility
- Comfort
- Cost
- Ecological impact
- Expected arrival date (if any)
- Fears or phobias
- Length of trip
- Quality of participants (e.g., physical vitality)
- Quantity of participants
- Time of year
- Etc.
Purpose (WHY)
To effectively build consensus around which option to select, the criteria are essential. However, we are missing a primary component; i.e., WHY are we taking the trip? Frequently, groups fail to understand or build the necessary purpose statement that underlies effective decision-making. As facilitators and participants, since the purpose may be clear in our own minds, we assume that everyone else’s purpose is the same as ours.
Prove it. Make certain you facilitate and codify a purpose statement, whether using the MGRUSH Purpose Tool or some other method; the purpose of the trip is essential to deciding HOW we are going to get to our destination.
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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.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.
