POSTS

How to Build a Consensual Message for Project Updates in 30 Minutes

by Facilitation Expert | Aug 15, 2013 | Meeting Tools

Purpose of 30-3 Project Updates: Time is precious. Stakeholders want and need project updates. But, do not want to over-invest. Dashboards are a fine example, relying on green lights, yellow lights, and red lights to highlight the status of project activities.

Project Updates Method

Project Updates

You may choose to build the following on your own. In the spirit of Sprint Reviews and Daily Scrums, you can easily use a similar method. With a group of people, build a consensually agreed-upon message. It’s a good thing when it sounds like we all attended the same meeting.

Project Updates Audience and Message

Either start with a list of the primary (and perhaps secondary) stakeholders or build one. For each, ask the group what they would tell that stakeholder if they were asked at the water cooler, coffee pot, or on an elevator ride. Secure agreement from your group especially, on specific words or terms that should or should NOT be used. Amazingly, when you ask a group of people to update the same project, you will discover disconnects about the shared knowledge and perspective that are best repaired while you still have the team at your disposal.

Project Updates Benefit

Having agreed on what to say and what NOT to say, you have built-in a measure of quality control for your meeting output or messaging. When a coherent and cohesive team of talented people is marching in unison, there is no end to what they can accomplish.

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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.

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Effective Facilitators Remember to Remove Distractions to Provide More Focus

by Facilitation Expert | Aug 8, 2013 | Facilitation Skills

Getting participants to focus on the same thing at the same time represents one of the hardest thing to accomplish with a group of people. Therefore, learning to remove distractions reflects a core skill and primary responsibility of the meeting leader.

Your Rosetta Stone: Remove Distractions

Remember that all questions you have about what you can or should do may be answered by the question, “Is it a distraction or not?” If it is not a distraction, then it should be acceptable. If it is a distraction, then it is your responsibility to remove distractions so that your group can remain focused on the topic.

For example, if you put your hands in your pocket to rest for a few minutes, it is probably OK. However, if you start juggling your keys or coins, the distraction is unacceptable. If a participant closes their eyes, let them rest. If they start snoring, then intervene to remove the distraction.

Core Skills Where You Need to Remove Distractions

Remove the Electronic Leashes

As a facilitator, you need to manage four core skills including presentation, active listening, questioning, and observation/ neutrality. For these to be effective, you must reduce or eliminate distractions so that the group can stay focused.

These four core skills are critical to effective facilitation.

Presentation skills are necessary for effective communication
Active listening is a tool for effective understanding
Questioning is a tool for effective information-gathering
Neutrality is a tool for balance and integrity

Removing distractions is an essential discipline for core skills and may guide all of your behavior.

Note for example the challenges that correspond with the four skills:

Verbal disfluencies and fillers such as saying “Uhm” too often
Observing something else when the meeting participant is talking
Providing answers rather than method
Making judgments or using the word “I” too often

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15 Facilitation Guidelines Followed by Professional Facilitators

by Facilitation Expert | Aug 1, 2013 | Facilitation Skills

Turning Facilitation Guidelines Into Gold

In the role of facilitator, you can be worth your weight in gold by following these fifteen simple, yet critical facilitation guidelines.

15 Facilitation Guidelines

Session leaders must observe and listen to all that the group says and does. Be there! Immerse your body, mind, and spirit in the method of the group.
Recognize all group input and encourage participation. Your ability to convey interest and enthusiasm in the group about the importance of the deliverable will be critical to your success as a session leader.
Scan the group for nonverbal responses (including observers).
Facilitation represents a helping mechanism. Ask questions rather than lecturing the workshop participants. Listen and keep your group involved.
Stay on the task. Never lose sight of the holarchy. Avoid straying to other topics no matter how informative the topic may be or how much it may interest you or the group. Let the participants help keep the group on course if you are a weak process policeman.
Of all the facilitation guidelines, the most important may be to stay neutral. Do not lose your neutrality. Eliminate your personal bias and opinions from the discussion. The goal remains for the participants to provide answers or options, not you.
Learn to expect hostility, but do not become hostile with your group or any participant. You must develop an attitude of acceptance. You may not agree necessarily with what is being said, but you can listen, accept, and record their answers and opinions. Let the group evaluate the content.
Avoid being the expert authority on the subject. You can be an authority figure, but your role is to listen, question, enforce the method, or offer tools and options.
Put the participants on break at no longer than 90-minute intervals. Be specific about the length of breaks, typically ten minutes. Adhere to your times and always be punctual.
Use breaks to free a discussion when it is deadlocked. Breaks give the participants a chance to clear their minds and come to a new understanding.
Do not let your prejudices interfere with your role as a session leader. Let go of the need to win everyone over to your point of view. The group will do the work. You are there to serve the group. Assist them in reaching the outcome.
During breaks, arrange the flip chart pages, taped on the wall, to build a histogram of progress made in the workshop.
During transitions and before you break for lunch or the end of the day, summarize the workshop progress and next steps. Give the group a thought to ponder and commend them for the amount of work they have completed.
Do not keep people too long (eight to nine hours are about as long as people can remain productive).
Stop a workshop if the group is sluggish and difficult to control, even if they wish to continue. Explain that, when people are burnt out, no progress occurs.

Additionally, there are three guiding principles of effective facilitation.

The fifteen guidelines above may come and go, taking breaks for example. Throughout any ceremony, event, meeting, or workshop, however, the following principles stay in place from start to finish. They include:

First and foremost the principle of No Harm, and where used, explaining the purpose behind Safety Moments. For diversity and other messages, some embrace OE Moments as well (i.e., Operational Excellence).
The second is focus and staying vigilant to remove distractions.
The third is managing and stressing perspective or point of view and leaving egos in the hallway.

No Harm Demands Collaboration

NO HARM

The principle of No Harm provides an essential basis for a group of people coming together to work and decide collaboratively. The facilitator must be both conscious of the principle and its enforcement in the role of process policeman. Nothing is more important to encourage full participation than having the feeling (from a participant’s point of view) that you will not be harmed by what you say.

Let us never forget that the reason for meetings is to generate deliverables but the reason for deliverables is to serve the people. People always come first.

FOCUS

It is virtually impossible to get a group to focus by telling them to focus. We must be wise enough, as facilitators, to remove all the distractions. By removing distractions the only items remaining are those that demand the group make traction and progress to get DONE.

Distractions come in many varieties including physical (e.g., temperature), emotional (e.g., job security), intellectual (e.g., future impact), intuitional (e.g., impact on others), etc. Removing distractions is the biggest hurdle faced by facilitators. Doing so creates traction.

Traction cannot be developed by telling a group to focus. Facilitators must remove distractions so that the only thing remaining for the group is to focus on the issue at hand. Scope creep occurs when discussion advances beyond the scope of the deliverable, and frequently becomes a distraction, causing non-productive meetings.

PERSPECTIVE

When working for a company, organization, NGO, or other entity, participants must be reminded that they represent others through their role. Roles dictate diverse types of behavior and mannerisms. For example, most people treat a parent differently than a child or a cousin. Because they are in different roles, facilitators must remind participants about their role and the duty (fiduciary responsibility) to speak on behalf of others, whether current or future stakeholders.

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Facilitators’ Overview of the HBR Book Executing Your Strategy

by Facilitation Expert | Jul 11, 2013 | Planning Approach

Executing Your Strategy was published by Harvard Business School Press and written by two MGRUSH alumni.

This tightly woven book provides a formula and clear instruction on how to transform strategy into projects and activities. Authors Mark Morgan and William Malek (both ex-professors of Stanford University), spoke with us about the importance of professional facilitation to helping groups “plan your work” (strategy) and “work your plan” (project).

The INVEST Imperatives of Executing Your Strategy

Strategy Execution Framework

They frame a strong argument for their six INVEST imperatives (or, domains). You will find their phases quite valuable when managing your own program portfolios:

Ideation—communicating purpose, identity, and intent
Nature—aligning strategy with culture and structure
Vision—clarity of goals and metrics
Engagement—portfolio management
Synthesis—program and project execution
Transition—benefit to mainstream operations

From an our selfish perspective, they highly recommend building a Center for Strategic Excellence. The Center would anchor itself upon effective, neutral facilitators and structured meeting design. We hope you are doing your best across your departments to nurture facilitative leadership around you, your staff, and your program office. Their INVEST approach will help.

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Three Precise Questions that Improve Group Clarity and Build Consensus

by Facilitation Expert | Jul 4, 2013 | Communication Skills

We have learned during facilitated meetings and workshops, that it’s not easy for participants to respond to broad questions like “How do you solve global hunger?” While meaningful, the question’s scope is too broad (and perhaps vague) to stimulate specific, actionable (ie, SMART) responses like “We could convert eight abandoned mine shafts in Somalia to create temperature controlled food storage areas.” To improve group clarity, use the following.

Extemporaneous leaders have a tendency to transition during meetings with broad questions like, “Are we OK with this list?”, “Can we move on?”, or “Anything else?”. Facilitate with structure and precision by modifying your transitions with these three questions, adapted to your own situation:

Do we need to clarify anything? (scrub for clarity)
Do we need to delete anything? (scrub for relevancy or redundancy)
Do we need to add anything to this list? (scrub for omissions)

The three detailed questions make it easier for meeting participants to analyze, agree, and move on.

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Don’t ruin your career or reputation with bad meetings. Register for a workshop or forward this to someone who should. MGRUSH professional facilitation workshops focus on practice. Each participant thoroughly practices and rehearses tools, methods, and approaches throughout the week. While some call this immersion, we call it the road to building impactful facilitation skills.

Our workshops also provide an excellent 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 individual class descriptions for details.)

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Punctuation Precision, Humorously Proven by “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” (mgrush.com/blog)
40 Proven Questions to Determine and Mitigate Meeting or Workshop Risk (1 of 5) (mgrush.com/blog)
You Can Effectively Facilitate a Group of People With These Three Principles (mgrush.com/blog)
SCAMPER is a Mnemonic to Prompt for Excellent, Impromptu Questions (mgrush.com/blog)

Punctuation Precision, Humorously Proven by Eats, Shoots and Leaves

by Facilitation Expert | Jun 27, 2013 | Communication Skills

Eats, Shoots and Leaves

Our bias about the importance of rhetorical precision has been discussed and emphasized in other blogs. Hard to believe it took us almost ten years to read Lynne Truss’s book, “Eats, Shoots and Leaves”. Her primary chapter topics include the use or abuse of apostrophes, commas, dashes, and other. To understand the title, note the implied humor that follows “A panda walks into a café . . .” Here are some of our favorite examples, copied dot for dot from the book, to prove the importance of a single dot of ink and how it could affect building consensus.

A woman, without her man, is nothing.

A woman: without her, man is nothing.

“A re-formed rock band is quite different from a reformed one. Likewise, a long-standing friend is different from a long standing one. A cross-section of the public is quite different from a cross section of the public.”

Is it extra-marital sex or extra marital sex?

Is it a pickled-herring merchant or a pickled herring merchant?

If you are sensitive to details, you will enjoy this book, light reading or reading under a light. As Joseph Robertson wrote in 1785,

This is one self-help book that gives you permission to love punctuation.

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Learning to Use Punctuation (emilyjanuary.wordpress.com)
Beguiling Grammar (writeatyourownrisk.wordpress.com)

Estimate and Mitigate Meeting Risk — A Proven Formula

by Facilitation Expert | May 16, 2013 | Analysis Methods

The MGRUSH meeting risk assessment method comes from answering a series of questions about a project, its stakeholders, and meeting participants. Our meeting risk assessment method is based on project risk assessment work completed by F. Warren McFarlan and James McKenney of Harvard Business School.

Meeting risk should be assessed for every major session. Use the MGRUSH Meeting Risk Assessment tool during your preparation activities.

What is Risk?

Risk derives from exposure to the following:

Failure to achieve benefits
Higher implementation costs
Longer implementation time
Performance that is less than expected

While risk is not “bad” — failure to manage risk becomes dangerous.

Meeting Risk Defined

Meeting risk appears at three layers:

Business — Project — Technique

Business risk represents the exposure to an incomplete or late project.
Project risk represents the likelihood of missing timelines, falling short of delivery standards, or grossly exceeding cost estimates.
Technique risk represents the potential for major problems caused by a specific procedure or tool (ie, meeting design).

Meeting Risk Components

The Meeting Risk Assessment tool provides a method of measuring meeting risk using four vectors:

Size — Politics — Complexity — Diversity

Size—

. . . indicates the overall project size measured by effort, scope, and quantity of meetings and workshops. Project size affects planning and coordinating the required information needed to support the project. Questions cover work hours, duration, the number of sessions, the number of different types of sessions (i.e., how many different agendas are required), and whether you are located at high-level planning or detailed design in your life cycle. Therefore, the larger the project, the greater the potential risk when holding group meetings or sessions. Consequently, you need to know that size can be a significant driver of risk and thus structure your sessions appropriately (such as assigning a more experienced session leader or a team of session leaders).

Complexity—

. . . is an indication of the structure of the business and the volatility of the information required to support the deliverable. Therefore, it measures how difficult it will be to specify and organize the information exchange. Questions cover the newness of the topic, whether the solution is a replacement or new (i.e., evergreen), engineering or process complexity, the extent of changes required for both internal and external customers, environmental changes required, and acceptance of the methods. Because the more complex an existing system is or the newer a business is, the more difficult it is to specify its requirements. Complexity and newness often lead to incomplete or vague requirements. Consequently, adjustments may include building more thorough agendas or using prototyping for some of the needs and requirements gathering.

Politics—

. . . is an indication of the political and personality climate of a project. Therefore, highly political groups tend to cloud the issues at hand and make sessions more difficult. Questions cover rating the attitudes of customers (internal or external), management, and participants; commitment of upper management; the level of controversy; past cooperation between customers and staff; the amount of flexibility allowed the participants; and stability of the organizations involved. Because highly political organizations or unstable organizations (i.e., numerous reorganizations) can make gathering requirements difficult (cutting through the ‘unknowns’) or short-lived (the participants won’t assume ownership when finished). Consequently, political risk is reduced by using the MGRUSH Professional Facilitation technique. The solution requires a politically savvy session leader and extensive planning to gain management commitment and proper resources.

Customer Organization (ie, heterogeneity)—

. . . is an indicator of the nature and familiarity of the organization. Furthermore, diversity looks at the participants’ ability to cooperate with each other and the logistics involved in getting everyone together. Questions cover the number of departments, the number of participants, the location of participants (geographical, domestic, and international), their prior experience working together (if any), and the knowledge of both the participants and the project team. Because, if an organization is cooperative and has few political axes to grind, yet is located around the country and the world, it will be more difficult to prepare for the sessions as well as to schedule everyone for the workshops. Consequently, it becomes expensive to bring people from many sites to one location—especially if the estimated workshop duration is incorrect. Therefore, this type of risk calls for a session leader who has experience with logistics and estimating meeting duration.

When To Assess

Assess meeting risk for every important session. Complete the assessment as part of your initial preparation. Then reassess meeting risk for each stage or phase gate meeting, decision review, or look-back. If meeting risk is not going down as you move through the project life cycle, your meetings may become trouble.

Mitigating Meeting Risk

Discovering that a meeting is high risk alone is insufficient. You must do something to manage the risk. Here are some tips:

High Complexity

Have a speaker (not you) stimulate the participants with ideas to drive creativity and inspire innovation.

High Politics

Develop consensus by building vision with leadership. Conduct a leadership workshop to write down the purpose, scope, objectives, and vision for the new business, product, or process.

Large Project

Conduct four to five requirements gathering workshops. Then conduct a review with senior management to see what needs adjustment.

Diverse Organization

Schedule numerous face-to-face visits or conference calls during your preparation.

Meeting Risk Factors Estimation

With Excel, we use 38 questions to assess risk which creates a score from 1 to 100 (high risk). Contact us for details and the scales for each question. We can also send you the risk analysis file to conduct your own calculations.

Project Size

Size factors measure the overall project size of effort, scope, and number of workshops. Therefore, helps determine risk due to the complexity of planning and coordinating large projects and the resources they consume.

1. Work Hours: Total work hours (1,000s) for the project?

2. Duration: What is the project’s duration?

3. Number Projects: Number of other projects supporting the program?

4. Dependency: Is there another project on which this project is likely or totally dependent?

5. Stakeholders: How many stakeholder types will use the new solution?

6. Workshop Quantity: Estimated number of workshops for the entire project?

7. Workshop Types: How many different types of workshops will be held?

8. Beginning Phase: In which phase are you starting?

Complexity

Complexity factors measure the structure of the business, its volatility, and requirements. Therefore, this measures how tough it will be to understand the requirements.

1. Project Type: The project may best be described as (i.e., a planning session), a replacement for a process or product, a change to an existing process or product, or a new process or product.

2. Replacement Percentage: What percentage of activities can be replaced on a one-to-one basis?

3. Project Complexity: From an engineering point of view, what is the degree of complexity of the project?

4. Changes: How severe are the changes with the project?

5. First Time: Are the proposed methods the first of the kind for the project team?

6. First for Business: Are the proposed methods the first of the kind for the business?

7. Business Acceptance: Will the business accept the new methods for developing the requirements?

8. Team Acceptance: Will the project team readily accept the new methods for developing the requirements?

9. New Technology: Is new or unfamiliar technology needed?

10. Success Dependent: Does the project’s success depend on new technology?

12. Outside Purchase: Are purchased or outside sources being used?

13. Vendor Support: How solid is vendor support with the outside purchases?

Political Factors

The political factors show the personality and climate around the project.

1. Business Attitude: What is the mindset of the business?

2. Management: How committed is upper management to the project?

3. Controversy: What is the level of controversy around the requirements?

4. Participant Level: What is the job level of the participants?

5. Cooperative Users: How cooperative are groups with each other?

6. Flexibility: The participants have how much flexibility in making the final decision?

7. Processing Flexibility: The participants have how much flexibility in making the process design?

8. Design Flexibility: The participants have how much flexibility during detailed design?

9. Stability: How stable is the organization?

Heterogeneity

The heterogeneity factors show the diversity and nature of the business. These factors look at the ability of the business to cooperate in coordinating all the stakeholders.

1. Number of Units: Number of departments (other than the project team) involved with the project?

2. Participants: Number of participants?

3. Locations: Number of geographical sites?

4. Multinational: What is the range of multinationals?

5. Prior Experience: Have the participants ever worked on a project together before?

6. Business Change: Must the business change to meet the requirements of the project solution?

7. Project Knowledge: How knowledgeable is the business in the area of the project process?

8. Business Knowledge: How knowledgeable are the subject matter experts in the process?

9. Team Knowledge: How knowledgeable is the project team about the solution?

Meeting Risk Summary

Of the four areas, Size and Politics provide the most concern, and then Complexity and Diversity.

Meeting Risk Assessment supports understanding the sources of risk. Contact MGRUSH for a quantitative Meeting Risk Assessment tool. We developed it in along with Dr. Howard Rubin (developer of ESTIMACS). Or, see your MGRUSH alumni links to access the EXCEL file that speeds up calculations and risk estimates.

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SCAMPER is a Mnemonic Prompt for Excellent, Impromptu Questions

by Facilitation Expert | May 2, 2013 | Meeting Tools, Problem Solving

SCAMPER provides a ‘hip-pocket’ tool; i.e., an unplanned method of developing appropriate questions on an impromptu basis.

With SCAMPER, you may also take raw input (i.e., first-cut ideation lists) and challenge participants to calibrate their raw input into something closer to the form of the answer being sought. Use the questions prompted by SCAMPER to stimulate more ideas quickly. For example, “How might we combine ‘A’ and ‘B’?”

SCAMPER Method

SCAMPER is a Mnemonic Prompt

Select appropriate questions offered through the mnemonic known as SCAMPER and challenge some of the raw data or initial input to help the group build and understand additional options.

SCAMPER — Similar Perspectives

In addition to SCAMPER, consider changing perspective to capture new ideas. For example, assign analogies of famous people, organizations, or entropic situations. Ask—“What would (insert blank from below) do in this scenario?” Or, compare and contrast results through break-out groups, such as:

Steve Jobs and Apple versus Bill Gates and Microsoft
A monastery versus the mafia (organized crime)
A university versus the military
An ant kingdom versus the weather system (ecosystem), etc.

Nobody is smarter than everybody because groups create more options than individual ideas that are aggregated. SCAMPER or changing perspectives makes it easier to create new ideas during the meeting that did not exist prior to the meeting. Any group or individual is known to make higher quality decision when provided with more options.

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How to Facilitate Vision Using the Creativity and Temporal Shift Tools

by Facilitation Expert | Mar 21, 2013 | Planning Approach

It’s hard enough to get a family of four to agree on where to go out to eat much less getting a group of executives/ managers to agree on where they want to take their organization. To facilitate a vision for an organization—where it wants to go, appeal to both the head and the heart, supporting the question, “Why change?”

A clear vision statement of the future state helps to gain genuine commitment. Therefore, define vision first.

Relationships

Facilitate vision to drive the objectives and define where the organization is going. A defined vision enables you to define key measures and more detailed objectives. Lay them out en route to ensure obtaining the vision.

Deliverable

When you facilitate vision, you create a clearly defined statement between 25 and 75 words in length.

Options

Use one of three methods:

Define the vision statement by having your group use the Creativity Exercise (in MGRUSH Tools) to draw and illustrate where they are going. Have each breakout team describe their picture to the others and then capture an integrated vision statement, converting the pictures into narrative.
Or, prepare a draft vision statement (frequently gathered from the senior manager of the group) and write it on a flip chart. Define a vision statement then review this with the group and have them modify it to meet their needs.
Or, using the Temporal Shift tool below, have the group develop a newspaper or magazine headline that they would like to see in a major newspaper on the date of the vision—e.g., “What would the newspaper headline read on January 15, 20xx?” Next, have them embellish the headline with the story behind the headline. Hence, this headline and story support the vision.

TEMPORAL SHIFT TOOL

Purpose

Helps facilitate vision by getting groups to agree on where to go or be at some point in the future.

Rationale

Have you ever had a problem getting a group of friends or family to agree on where to go to eat? Now try to get a group of bright professionals to agree on where they are headed! It is much easier to ask and build consensus around “Where have you been?” or, “What type of legacy have you left behind?”

This step defines the specific vision of the organization—where it wants to go. Projects, initiatives, activities, and organizational effort are directed toward attaining the vision. Vision drives objectives and other key measures, not the other way around.

Method

Hand out recent copies of an appropriate industry organizational or trade magazine or periodical familiar to the participants. Turn them to a specific page (could be the front cover) or column that is frequently read. The Wall Street Journal could be a default publication that you use, but decide which section will display the headline based on the type of group you are working with.

Have each group develop a newspaper headline that they would like to read on the date of their vision—e.g., “What would the headline read on January 15, 20xx?” Have them embellish the headline with the 250-word story behind the headline.

Bring the groups together to compare and contrast. Work the Bookends looking for similarities and differences. First, convert the headline. The story items supporting the headlines can then be used to add detail to the vision.

NOTE: Pretend they are on a beach in the future and pick up this periodical, what you are really asking them is “What is the legacy you have left behind as a result of the effort at hand?” Establish the time in the future based on when this group has disbanded.

Suggestion

See the following website for headlines from around the world:

http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/ or

http://www.pressreader.com.

Timing

Facilitating vision typically takes from 30 minutes to two hours.

Closure

This step is complete when you have a statement (not necessarily grammatically pure) that the group believes captures the target or vision of where they want to go. Check with them to see if they can recognize the target defined by their vision and would agree if they get there.

Reply with any questions you might have by commenting below. For additional methodology and team-based meeting support for your change initiatives, refer to our store http://mgrush.com/shop/ or consider the book “Change or Die, a Business Process Improvement Manual” for much of the support you might need to lead more effective groups, teams, and meetings. Don’t forget to illustrate using your metaphor, as a metaphor is worth a thousand pictures.

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16 Valuable Tips and Considerations when Chairing Meetings

by Facilitation Expert | Mar 7, 2013 | Meeting Agendas

Chairing meetings requires many of the skills to facilitate effectively

Success begins with vision and meeting vision comes alive by articulating the purpose, scope, and objectives in advance. Other considerations that support successful facilitating or chairing rely heavily on people skills such as:

Leadership when Chairing Meetings

Ability to trust in the good nature of the human spirit, even in high-risk situations
Accepting participants for what they are and not what you wish they were
Capacity to approach people for their present value rather than past performance
Embracing human nature that does not require approval or recognition
Willingness to treat everyone, even casual acquaintances, with common courtesies and kindness

Flexibility when Chairing Meetings

Effective leaders when chairing meetings also remain flexible. Ironically, the best-prepared and fully structured plans afford the most freedom and flexibility because they provide a backup plan if ad hoc or spontaneous discussions prove fruitless. As emphasized in other posts, communicating clearly is important to any leader, facilitator, or chair. Beware of participant biases and tendencies including:

Missing the context through which a claim may be valid
Overgeneralization that causes lost or misinterpreted meaning
Presumptions that everyone is thinking what the subject matter expert is thinking
Primacy and recency effects—whereby the first and final arguments carry more weight
Use of terms that are unclear or ambiguous

16 Tips When Chairing Meetings

Additionally, and specifically when chairing meetings, as opposed to workshop facilitators, here are seventeen additional and valuable tips:

Always know your deliverable is the same as the meeting objective and logically identical to starting with the end in mind. In the world of Lean Sigma, this is called “right to left” thinking.
Always strive to separate facts and evidence from beliefs and opinions.
Arrive first and prepare your physical space for optimal seating arrangements.
Clarify frequently so that everyone is offered an opportunity to question and challenge. They will find it easier to challenge you as chair, than the original speaker who may own the content.
Consider posting the deliverable visually on a large sheet of paper, and restate periodically to reinforce the purpose of the meeting.
Explain your role and aspiration to embrace the people and communication skills mentioned above.
Help manage conflict and do not simply ignore it. Some of the best ideas and strongest solutions result from getting conflict out in the open where everyone can understand.
Limit the size of the meeting by keeping representation between five and nine participants, known to be the “sweet spot” for optimal decision-making. The Agile mindset calls this seven, plus or minus two.

Additionally . . .

Manage housekeeping (administrivia) such as bathroom locations and safety procedures during your introduction.
Manage transitions carefully by reviewing a closed agenda step and clearly moving on to the next open agenda step.
Prepare, presell, and at the start of the meeting review the meeting purpose, scope, objectives, agenda, and estimated duration. Because participants should own the meeting output, they have a right to influence how the output is built.
Protect your participants but realize that it is not your job to reach down their throat and pull it out of them. As employees or associates, they have a fiduciary responsibility to speak up when they can offer value.
Remain impartial during arguments, or at least demonstrate the appearance of impartiality so that participants can arrive at their own conclusions.
Restrict discussion to agenda items or you will subject yourself to scope creep within the meeting, and risk not getting done on time.
Seek contributions from everyone but do not embarrass anyone by forcing them to speak.
Start on time and police and breaks carefully as well. Do not penalize participants who are on time by starting late.
Take breaks when necessary, likely more than traditional. A five-minute break every 40 minutes may be better than a fifteen-minute break every two hours.

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8 Meeting Purposes and Five Reasons to Host Facilitated Sessions

by Facilitation Expert | Feb 14, 2013 | Meeting Agendas, Meeting Structure, Meeting Support, Meeting Tools

Effective meetings are first based on a clear line of sight to an end result, preferably something that can be documented.

Yet, frequently meeting purposes rely on determining WHAT deliverable or result to create. Consequently, using meeting time to determine the meeting output indicates unclear thinking and weak meeting design. Avoid wasting time by knowing your purpose in advance. The eight most common meeting purposes and benefits and problems include the following.

Eight Meeting Purposes

Analysis

Highly complex situations may require multiple subject matter experts. Frequently, experts have their own vocabulary and a meeting helps to clarify understanding and agreement about terms and definitions. Have you ever run a meeting with Ph.D. engineers and creative marketing folks together? As a result, sometimes it sounds like they are from different planets. Carefully document operational definitions that arise during analysis sessions. You may discover people violently agreeing with each other. Unfortunately, they use different words to describe the same thing or define the same thing differently.

Assignments

Structured meetings or workshops provide an excellent means of building agreement around roles and responsibilities. Furthermore, when using a structured method, you can leave the meeting with a consensually built GANTT chart, estimation of resource requirements, and approximation of budget needs. Because “WHO Does WHAT by WHEN” captures the primary reason behind a planning session, focus on the actions first before you make the assignments.

Decision-Making

Since resources typically fall short of the demands, prioritization remains critical for high-performance groups. As a result, no teams possess the time or resources to do everything. Consensual understanding around prioritization provides a compelling reason for hosting a meeting or workshop. Since items that need to be prioritized range from the simple to the complicated through the complex, identify the most appropriate tool for prioritizing, before the meeting starts. Then, prepare a backup approach as well.

Idea Generation

Because groups create more options than simply aggregating the input of participants, groups are smarter than the smartest person in the group. Many of the best ideas did not walk into the meeting because they were created during the meeting, based on stimulation provided by the input from others. Use SCAMPER or Changing Perspectives to drive more ideas, thus increasing your likelihood for applied creativity, innovation, or breakthrough.

Information Exchange

By far and away the most common reason for meetings may also be the worst possible reason for justifying a meeting. With instant access and electronic filing cabinets, coming together face-to-face is a very expensive way to exchange information (albeit potentially quicker and less costly when conducted online). A better justification would be to address questions about clarity, agreement, and omissions of information that has already been exchanged. Alternatively, use meeting time to explore the impact the information might have on the plans and behavior of meeting participants and related stakeholders.

Inspiration and Fun

Use meetings to reward, incentivize, and incite because they can be effective at motivating others. They are usually hosted on a large scale and include complimentary events or sessions that may advance learning and improve teamwork. Therefore, anticipate using breakout sessions by creatively preparing activities appropriate for your participants and the situational constraints. The quality of group output increases tremendously when you contrast and compare input from different teams. Plus, with breakout sessions, you are giving quieter people permission to speak freely. Participants afraid of speaking up in a group are less reticent to make contributions to the conversations that occur with a few people in a breakout session.

Persuasion

Persuading and convincing others to agree with your argument or decision represents the worst possible reason for holding a meeting. Consider the three primary forms of persuasion, namely: identification (e.g., advertising), internalization (i.e., long-lasting), and forced compliance (i.e., “gun to the head”). Because meetings display ineffectiveness using any of the three primary forms of persuasion, they rarely succeed at convincing others. In fact, they can backfire. When the leader appears to have already made up their mind, participants wonder why they had to waste their time in a meeting. If you have the answer, tell them, and do not conduct a meeting. Meetings represent a highly expensive forum for information-sharing.

Relationships

Simply bringing together people face-to-face provides the glue that pulls people together and gets them to work more cooperatively. Frequently venting, or managing conflict, results in increased effectiveness. When people don’t agree with each other and need to reconcile their points of view invest in face-to-face meetings. Arguments are rarely settled by text messages and PDF documents. Many times, conflict and arguments also require a referee, the perfect time to engage a facilitator.

Five compelling reasons to host facilitated sessions

Why host facilitated sessions? Making choices represents the most important actions people take every day, to decide. Properly made decisions amplify productivity. Choose wisely when to work alone, speak with another person, or call for a team meeting. The advantages of a structured meeting or workshop include:

Host Facilitated Sessions

Higher quality results: Groups of people make higher quality decisions than the smartest person in the group. Facilitated sessions encourage the exchange of different points of view. Structure enables groups to identify new options. In fact, any person or group with more options at its disposal makes higher-quality decisions.
Faster results: Facilitated sessions accelerate the capture of information. Faster output results when meeting participants (aka subject matter experts) arrive prepared. Participants arrive with an understanding of the questions and issues at hand.
Richer results: By pooling skills and resources, diverse and heterogeneous groups develop more specific details and anticipate future demands, subsequently saving time and money in the project or program life-cycle.
People stimulate people: Properly facilitated sessions lead to innovation and the catalyst for innovative opportunities because many perspectives generate a richer (360-degree) understanding of a problem or challenge, rather than a narrow, myopic view.
Transfer of ownership: Facilitated sessions motivate further action by creating deliverables that support follow-up efforts. Professional facilitators use a method that builds commitment and support from the participants, rather than directing responsibility at the participants.

To Host Facilitated Sessions

Conducting facilitated sessions includes preparatory time, actual contact time during the session, and follow-up time as well. Therefore, successful sessions depend upon clearly defined roles, especially distinguishing between the role of facilitator and the role of methodologist (that are also discrete from the role of scribe or documenter, coordinator, etc.). To ensure getting done faster, carefully managed sessions embrace ground rules.

Thorough preparation and advance effort before the session ensures higher productivity:

Researching both meeting design options and content to be explored
Review and documentation of minutes, records, findings, and group decisions that affect the project being supported with this particular meeting or workshop session
Completion of individual and small group assignments prior to sessions

Incite Involvement, Incent Ownership

Professional and structured facilitation generates high involvement among all participants. Therefore, appropriate terms for describing them include workshops or workouts. Consequently, avoid an overly ambitious agenda and plan for at least two, ten-minute breaks every four hours. Use our MGRUSH ten-minute timers to ensure that breaks do not extend to eleven or twelve minutes. Strive to provide dedicated resources, such as a facilitator professionally trained in structured methods.

Discourage unplanned interruptions, especially with phones and laptops. “Topless” meetings are increasingly popular, meaning no laptops or devices (e.g., smartphones). Allow exceptions for accessing content needed during the session. “No praying underneath the table” is another rule used to discourage people from using gadgets on their laps, presumably beyond the line of sight of others. In fact, everyone can see what they are doing anyway. For serious consensual challenges or multiple-day sessions, conduct sessions away from the participants’ everyday work site to minimize interruptions and everyday job distractions.

Chief Collaboration Officers

Granted, much of the material above becomes the responsibility of the facilitator. But if they won’t do it, you better. Remember, collaborative work replaces thousands of dollars lost in poorly run meetings. Harvard Business Review (HBR) states further that collaboration answers many of the business challenges. HBR encourages leaders to promote collaborative work and teamwork, and suggest . . .

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9 Tips Proven to Increase Meeting Competence and Output Quality

by Facilitation Expert | Feb 7, 2013 | Facilitation Skills

Without effective leadership, you can win the agenda but lose the meeting. Meeting competence demands that you take responsibility to prevent collective incompetence.

For example, do not allow ‘showboating’ and meetings within meetings. Additionally, consider the following suggestions to improve meeting competence.

Meeting Competence Considers . . .

Meeting Competence Derives from the Discipline

Acronyms and BuzzWords—Create a visual legend for cryptic terms. Participants assume that others understand everything they say. We may not but we do need a facilitator to help validate acronyms and buzzwords.
Competition—do not allow participants to play political games. Keep them focused on the deliverable of each question, agenda item, and meeting result.
Different Agendas—Ensure participants that you know where you are and where you are going and do not permit competing agendas that cause scope creep and meetings that go out of control.
Distractions—The guiding principle for every facilitator is to remove distractions so that the group can focus on the issue at hand. Distractions range from creature comfort (e.g., temperature) to cultural (e.g., electronic leashes such as smartphones).
Impotent Members—Many meetings involve people who are brought in to observe, rather than contribute. If so, separate them physically by seating them in the back or around the perimeter.
Miscommunications—listen, observe, clarify, and confirm. Need we say more?
Outside Pressures—Get to know your participants and some of the issues that drive their thinking and behavior. Complete your assessment before the meeting begins. You cannot conduct personality profiling during a meeting and be an effective listener at the same time.
Personal Feelings—As a neutral facilitator, depersonalize issues that arise and have others focus on performance, not the people.
Triviality—Do not allow your participants to dive too deep into the weeds and talk about HOW when most discussions should focus on WHAT needs to be different. If strategic issues (i.e., WHY) arise, set them aside for a different forum.

Meeting Competence May Demand that Less is Better

With meetings, less can be more. Holding unnecessary meetings can undermine your reputation. Do not confuse or substitute meetings for work. As a meeting participant, never attend to yourself without knowing what you want to accomplish during the meeting and what you need to take out of it. As we say repeatedly and illustrate as the title of the MG RUSH meeting competence holarchy, know what “DONE” looks like. Your meeting competence will follow.

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How to Facilitate Decision-Making Using Pros and Cons

by Facilitation Expert | Jan 24, 2013 | Communication Skills, Decision Making, Facilitation Skills, Managing Conflict, Meeting Tools, Planning Approach, Problem Solving

First, here is the traditional Pros and Cons method according to its creator, Benjamin Franklin:

How to Facilitate Group or Team Decisions Using Pros and Cons

Modern Franklin Pros and Cons

This updated Pros and Cons tool supports decision-making for a group of people. Use it as a proxy for Benjamin Franklin’s Pros and Cons method. His approach is better suited for an individual than a group of people. Especially with controversial issues, it is always helpful to consider multiple points of view.

Method for Modern Franklin Pros and Cons

To safely argue a controversial issue, carefully (and with advanced forethought about the options for either a homogeneous, heterogeneous, or hybrid blend of teams) separate your participants into three teams: Affirmative, Dismissive, and Observer. Give the affirmative and dismissive teams every fifteen minutes to develop their arguments, respectively supporting or refuting the issue. The observer team drafts criteria by which it may evaluate and assess the issue. Have the teams present their arguments to the observer team formally—as if it were a debate or court of law. Next . . .

Affirmative and dismissive teams prepare for two-minute rebuttals to defend their positions.
The observer team then describes the criteria they recommend using to help decide the issue, based on arguments presented by both affirmative and dismissive teams.
Teams take another five minutes to revise their arguments based on observer criteria and the discussion sequence described above repeats.
After round two, teams reform as one to discuss the issues. If the discussion reaches an impasse, switch members among different teams, carefully placing louder voices on the teams opposite of their apparent voice, so they are forced to represent the “other” side.

Do not intentionally polarize participants. Ensure that your teams comprise participants who hold a variety of views. As session leader (i.e., both facilitator and meeting designer), select the teams—do not allow the participants to choose. In most debates, the side one takes is not known until minutes before the debate, so that all debaters prepare to argue both sides of an issue.

Benefits for Modern Franklin Pros and Cons

The benefits realized include:

Amplifies, expands, and stretches the issues, criteria, and perspectives.
Allows the group to build an integrative view of all sides of the issue.
Provides more robust and coherent arguments, issues, and criteria.

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Facilitated Meetings Help Overcome 7 Common Product and Project Pitfalls

by Facilitation Expert | Jan 17, 2013 | Facilitation Skills, Meeting Support, Problem Solving

Facilitative leadership provides the best assurance that team leads/ project managers can overcome project pitfalls.

Borrowing from the PMBoK (i.e., Project Management Institute Body of Knowledge) and other published sources, the following are seven of the most common project pitfalls. Meeting leadership comments about each follow.

Using Facilitative Leadership
To Overcome Project Pitfalls

7 Project Pitfalls

Abandonment of Planning
Feature (Scope) Creep
Omitting Necessary Tasks
Overly Optimistic Schedule
Suboptimal Requirements Definition
Underestimating Testing
Weak Team

Abandonment of Planning

Do not abandon your plan or the planning effort. No matter how proactive you are, some contributors will underperform, customers will request changes, and technical issues will prevent you from delivering some features on time. It’s not a question of “if” but “when”. As soon as you start to deviate from your plan, intelligently refactor, but stick to it. Never abandon your plan.

Feature (Scope) Creep

As time goes on, customers learn more about their needs and they come up with new features and ways of improving existing ones. Don’t let these changes throw your project plan out of control. Gather the feedback, analyze it, prioritize it, document it, and schedule the changes as mutually agreed upon. You’re not going to build the perfect product in one release. Deliver on your existing commitments, and try to facilitate a deeper understanding of many of the change requests. Omissions can be quite costly, so don’t immediately discount the value of understanding.

Omitting Necessary Tasks

A project schedule should not simply comprise the tasks required to develop product and process features. It should also include other derivative activities, such as interacting with customers, writing detailed functional specifications, and receiving technical training. Team-support activities cannot be skipped and therefore should not be ignored when baselining a project schedule.

Overly Optimistic Schedule

Meeting schedules should be aggressive, yet realistic. Demanding an overly optimistic schedule greatly reduces your chance of completing a project on time. Be aggressive with your plan, but remain realistic.

Suboptimal Requirements Definition

While showing illusionary progress, coding before requirements gathering actually delays project completion. Spending time early refining requirements can save weeks later on.

Underestimating Testing

Projects tend to underestimate how much effort is required to test a major release. As a rule of thumb, one-third of the entire project should be spent testing and fixing defects for major releases. A consensual understanding of test results and implications is key to stakeholder ownership.

Weak Team

Various resources claim that there is as much as a ten-to-one efficiency ratio between top performers and mediocre ones. Second-rate members contribute to project failures in many ways. They deliver late, do stuff that doesn’t support the project, and allow defects in their work that lack the level of quality deemed acceptable by you and other stakeholders. Select your team members carefully. At the end of the day, even the best project manager can’t succeed with a weak team.

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15 Quick Tips to Help You Become a More Successful Facilitative Leader

by Facilitation Expert | Jan 10, 2013 | Facilitation Skills

Here are 15 quick tips to help you become a more successful facilitative leader.

“The wisdom of the crowd” effect has long been recognized, but scientists have gone further by showing that the strategy works even when the crowd consists of one person (Scientific American Mind, pg 14, Oct-Nov 2008).
Fun Facts
Brain research on Buddhist monks seems to indicate that “HOW” you think, not “WHAT” you think about, improves brain activity (The Futurist, pg 36, Sep-Oct 2007).
Decision-making is important because making a decision signifies the beginning of an activity, and the value of consensus derives from harmonized activities.
Everest in Tibetan is Qomocangma (pronounced, CHO MOL UNG MA), and in Nepalese is Sagaratha.
Extract more value from interactions: Companies have been automating or offshoring an increasing proportion of their production and manufacturing (transformational) activities and their clerical or simple rule-based (transactional) activities. As a result, a growing proportion of the labor force in developed economies engages primarily in work that involves negotiations and conversations, knowledge, judgment, and ad hoc collaboration—namely, tacit interactions.
Facilitating through video or telepresence involves three considerations not found when facilitating audio-only meetings, namely:
a. Clothing; for example, stripes or patterned shirts are not recommended during a videoconference and may not display well at the remote site(s).
b. Plain-colored shirts and pants/skirts are optimal. Also, avoid wearing white and red.
c. Restrict movement as much as possible. Excessive movements are disruptive to viewers at the far site(s). Have a backup plan for your meeting or class in the event of connection failures or equipment problems.
Howard Gardner (Harvard University) has introduced two more types of innate intelligence, bringing his documented total to nine:

a. Existential Intelligence—Sensitivity and capacity to tackle deep questions about human existence, such as the meaning of life, why we die, and how we get here.
b. Naturalist Intelligence (“Nature Smart”)
Instead of de Bono’s Thinking Hats approach, consider assigning people or groups to emulate other famous people (e.g.; Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mahatma Gandhi, Michelle Obama, etc.) or collections (e.g.; ant colonies, weather, monastery, mafia, etc) and ask the group—“How would this person or collection address the problem at hand?”
Marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of his seminal work on the theory of evolution, we are reminded NOT the strongest of the species survives, NOR the most intelligent; rather, “the one most responsive to change.”
Note the irony: “I’ll see it when I can believe it.”
Parsimony: The Golden Rule is only 11 words
Research shows that innovation won’t happen without a diverse workforce. So, don’t clone yourself.
The only qualification for innovation is having been five years old. On average, a five-year-old laughs 100 times per day while the 44-year-old laughs only eleven times per day.
The original Palm Pilot had only four features: tasks, calendar, contacts, and memos.
The single most powerful word in negotiations is “HUH?” It says, “Tell me more”, without offering rejection or objection.

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“Brainsteering” Recommends 5 Activities to Improve Brainstorming

by Facilitation Expert | Jan 3, 2013 | Problem Solving

Through more robust planning and preparation, the facilitator and methodologist can do much to amplify the brainstorming tool. Here are five activities to help you. The Harper-Collins book “Brainsteering: A Better Approach to Breakthrough Ideas” written by the brothers Kevin and Shawn Coyne reinforces these five, highly practical considerations to facilitate effective innovation sessions.

Brainsteering

Develop Optimal Questions

If the deliverable is the marketing plan, you cannot ask, “What is included in the marketing plan?” The question is so broad as to be meaningless. Break it down. Mathematically, “Y” is a function of multiple “X”s and there are big “X”s and little “x”s. Draft, shape, and sharpen your questions in advance of the meeting, and then share them with your participants. Some of the big “X”s of a marketing plan include segmentation, targeting, positioning, messaging, media, etc.

The Coyne brothers emphasize that loosely managed sessions are inferior to approaches that provide more structure. Remember as well to sequence your questions. The target audience, for example, should be identified before discussing the messages to send. As consultants, we discovered that providing clients with answers is not as valuable as helping them focus on the optimal questions.

Select a Variety of Participants

If you want the same old answers, then clone yourself. If you want something new, then stir up the pot. Invite roles normally excluded such as customers who have terminated our services, employees who departed for other opportunities, or simply a diversity of departments and roles within your organization. Breakthrough ideas are dependent on “stirring up the pot.” Arm them with the questions in advance.

Lock in Your Analysis Method

Once ideas have been generated, they must be analyzed and frequently prioritized. Prepare yourself in advance (see MGRUSH ‘s Definition and Simple Prioritization tools). Any known constraints such as eliminating ideas that require regulatory approval need to be identified in advance. Do not permit a wasted session where the highly prioritized ideas are denied because they fail to comply with some internal standard or governance issue.

Break into Sub Teams

Encourage high-energy, no-discussion break-out sessions to generate lots of ideas quickly. This gives quiet people permission to speak freely and invigorates a group rather than keeping them locked down in a traditional meeting. We agree with the Coyne brothers that sub-teams sized from three to five people each provide an excellent forum for conversation and opportunity for breakthroughs. Appoint a CEO for each team (chief easel officer) and have them report back to the group at large when your analysis begins. (see How to Manage Breakout Sessions).

Police Your Sub Teams

Make sure they stay on topic and focus on the precise question(s). Do not allow them to drift and analyze their ideas. Rather, enforce their responsibility to make their ideas clear so that they can present their ideas with confidence. Instruct them on building a separate list of ideas worth capturing that do not answer the question precisely. We do not want to lose any good input, but we do not want to over-invest by spending time on the answers to questions other than those we want them to focus on.

The Coyne brothers fail at this point to advance the hardest step within Brainstorming, the analysis. Not surprisingly, this is where most leaders, groups, and methods are frail. Analysis is a major priority of our focus and curriculum. Continue to fortify your skill set with tools and improvement suggestions available with the hot links above.

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Are we brainstorming the wrong way? (holykaw.alltop.com)
Generate Great Ideas by Connecting with Customers (seomoz.org)

Use a Professional Meeting Wrap-up Because Most Meetings Don’t End, They Stop

by Facilitation Expert | Dec 27, 2012 | Meeting Agendas, Meeting Structure, Meeting Support, Meeting Tools

Daniel Pink’s book When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing stresses the importance of the meeting wrap-up. He calls it “ending on a high note.” Others refer to the power of the recency effect. Below find four critical activities needed to facilitate clear and actionable results during your meeting wrap-up. The result from many productive meetings can be summed up with four words: “WHO DOES WHAT & WHEN.“

#1-Review, #2-Next Steps, #3-Communications, and #4-Assessment.

Do not skip any of these four activities but expand and contract your treatment of them based on your situation and constraints.

For an Effective Meeting Wrap-up, End Your Meetings – Don’t Let Them Stop

Meeting Wrap-up #1 – Review

Do not relive the session, but do review the outputs, decisions, assignments, and so on. Focus on the results and deliverables from each Agenda Step, not on how you got there. Participants do not need a transcript. They need to be reminded about significant takeaways and offered the opportunity to ask for additional information or clarification before the session ends. Be prepared to use the Definition Tool to address uncertainties or disagreements about the meaning of something.

If possible and practical, use the documentation generated during the session to structure a quick walk-through. During the walk-through, include real-life examples for participants to see how well the deliverable performs. Next, assign responsibility to “Parking Lot” items (i.e., Open Issues) that remain valid and unresolved.

Meeting Wrap-up #2 – Next Steps

Click here to see a brief video demonstration of the Meeting Parking Lot method.

Two types of action items are developed during meetings: items within the scope and required to complete the deliverable and items out of scope but too important or opportunistic to disregard.

Assignments Within the Scope of the Deliverable

During the meeting, record open issues as they arise. Various terms describe open issues that develop during meetings, most frequently called a meeting parking lot.

Have your group list the action items that they have already agreed to or will undertake—starting tomorrow. List the items, clarify them, and have someone take responsibility. Assign a deadline (month, day, year) for a status update.

Consider applying the RASI tool (Transform Your Responsibility Matrix Into a GANTT Chart) to convert your action items into a project plan. Remember, absence or silence is unacceptable during assignments. Therefore, do not permit making assignments to someone who is not attending the meeting, either live or virtually.

Assignments Out of Scope of the Deliverable

Facilitate your meeting parking lot activity after you have completed closed issues and assigned other action items that are within the scope of the deliverable. Then, review each open issue. Make sure the open issue remains valid. Over the course of meetings, some open issues are no longer “open”. If so, delete them or mark them accordingly (e.g., OBE = Overcome by Event, or taken care of).

Standard Activities for Managing a Meeting Parking Lot

Append each open issue using the following sequence:

- The issue is more fully defined—a complete, coherent statement of description
- Note the single individual responsible for communicating back to the group on the status of the open issue (frequently viewed as who ‘will do’ or complete the open issue)
- Expected completion or progress update (month, day, year)
- How progress or completion will be communicated to your group of participants
- If follow-up requires a file, give the file a name to make future ‘searches’ easier
- Consider email size limitations, file naming conventions, and file-server security restrictions

Alternative Methods for Managing a Meeting Parking Lot

We call a simple method for managing meeting parking lot issues a “2 by 4.” Meant to connote a standard piece of lumber, the method suggests a quick, three-question approach—namely:

To – By – For to Manage Meeting Parking Lot

To: Do what?
By: Who and when?
For: What purpose or benefit?

Steve Jobs, ex-CEO of Apple Inc., called this assignment activity essential, the heart of a meeting. He called the person assigned a specific task the DRI (“Directly Responsible Individual”). For each project, and every task in that project, he wanted someone accountable. Their congratulations or blame depended on how they did.

For complex open issues, or big hairy audacious goals (BHAG) that might constitute major or multiple new products or projects and cannot simply be assigned to someone, use the Content Management Tool. Use the output from this meeting (what) as input for a future meeting when the time, place, and people are available to conduct further analysis and make appropriate decisions or assignments. In that next meeting, begin with this open issue as input by asking “So what?” or “Why do we care?

Once the next steps and assignments are clear, your meeting is nearly over, except for . . .

Meeting Wrap-up #3 – Communications

Here you lead the participants to agree on what they will tell other stakeholders was accomplished during the meeting. Additionally, you get your group to agree on how it will communicate results to others.

At a minimum, team members need an “elevator speech” that can deliver an effective synopsis of the meeting results. At the other extreme, if the meeting is strategic, there could be numerous audience types such as the investment community, suppliers, trade personnel, etc. If so, identify the key audience members before discussing the message, medium of communication, and frequency of communication for each.

When it is important that it sounds like the participants attended the same meeting together, consider agreeing on the rhetoric used to describe the meeting. Typically, the two major audiences are:

What do we tell our bosses or superiors?
What do we tell people dependent on our results (i.e., stakeholders)?

Take a few moments to homogenize the rhetoric and help them agree on what they will tell people who ask. More importantly, agreement on what NOT to tell others. At a minimum consider two audiences and record the bullets or sound bites for each. Separately consider, for example, participants’ superiors and other stakeholders (e.g., peers or customers). See STOP! Were We Even In The Same Meeting? for detailed instructions.

If necessary, discuss HOW TO communicate with the target audience such as face-to-face, email, etc. For complicated communications plans, further, discuss frequency or how often to set up regular communications. It may be necessary to schedule the communications so that the superiors are informed before other stakeholders. Failing to plan suggests planning to fail. Meeting participants will use separate methods and discrete rhetoric that may generate different understandings among stakeholders who are expected to share similar understandings.

Meeting Wrap-up #4 – Assessment

Get feedback on how well you did and what you can do to be better. Set up or mark a whiteboard by the exit door and create two columns, typically PLUS and DELTA (ie, the Greek symbol ∆ or “change”) but also known as OFI (Opportunity for Improvement), “Benefits & Concerns” (also known as the “B’s & C’s”), “Star/Delta”, and Appreciative (+) or Opportunistic (-). Have each participant write down on a small Post-it® note, at least one thing they liked about the meeting (+) and one thing they would change (∆). Ask them to mount each note in its respective column as they exit.

Effective leaders will not let their meetings wrap up until participants have been offered a final opportunity to comment or question, action steps have been discussed, messaging has been agreed to, and feedback for continuous improvement has been solicited. Continue to fortify your skill set with additional tools and improvement suggestions available in our Facilitation Best Practices.

One way to stir things up in meetings would be to begin calling the Parking Lot a Meeting Refrigerator. Here is why.

Other terms used by organizations include Issue Bin, Coffee Pot, Water Cooler, Elevator Speech, Limbo, Chestnuts, Popcorn, and our favorite, Refrigerator. (Refrigerator reflects a term used in the Middle East because the items temporarily stored there can be preserved and cooked up later). Regardless of the term you use, open issues need to be managed properly rather than left unassigned as a list of items without context or assigned next steps.

Changing an organizational culture provides as many challenges as you can imagine, typical of mergers and acquisitions. Without some patience, time, and more patience, most efforts fail. Meanwhile, change itself faces so much resistance that it will not happen ‘overnight.’

We can however take little stabs at calibrating, modifying, and shifting behaviors. For example, calling the Parking Lot a Meeting Refrigerator. Eventually, change occurs once it hits an inflection point.

The term Parking Lot connotes a place of rest, where no progress is made, and stuff begins to rust. Sometimes, people forget or ignore items left in the parking lot. Therefore, they might rust or accumulate a lot of dust (or snow) before we manage them.

Click here to see a recorded demonstration of the Refrigerator (aka Parking Lot) method.

Place items in a Meeting Refrigerator (instead of a Parking Lot) to preserve and protect them. In addition, some things we take out of a Meeting Refrigerator can be re-cooked to provide an entire meal(s), where our business meals are frequently called projects. So call the ‘Parking Lot’ a Meeting Refrigerator because your open items are worth preserving and protecting, rather than ignoring.

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Leadership Style and How to Improve Yours Quickly

by Facilitation Expert | Dec 6, 2012 | Leadership Skills

Leadership style depends largely on the flow of content: Directive—one-way, Consultative—equal partner in content, and Exploratory—facilitative, not adding content.

Directive

A leader who predominantly gives direction and guidance with little participation or content added by the group characterizes this leadership style. Directive leadership is appropriate when the purpose is to share information quickly and clearly, such as briefings, staff meetings, symposiums, etc.

Consultative

This leadership style is characterized by consulting with colleagues and subordinates in an open and respectful, not manipulative manner, during the meeting. Consultative leadership is appropriate when the purpose is to have the group make decisions with contributions and equal participation from the leader.

Exploratory

This pure and optimal facilitation style should be the predominant approach used for task-building and assignment meetings. In an exploratory approach, the leader is neutral in terms of contributing content to the meeting but is responsible for providing and managing the technique and agenda. In many task-related meetings, an outside facilitator is used to provide exploratory leadership while the business owner participates with a consultative leadership style.

No One Style

There is neither a single ‘right’ answer nor one right leadership style. The appropriate style is dependent on the particular type of meeting situation and the nature of the group. Leaders of teams that work well together can use the exploratory style more frequently. Leaders with contentious groups either need to be directive or employ a neutral facilitator for their meetings. Managing meetings is much like managing people—be flexible and use the most appropriate style depending on the situation.

Guidelines

Strolling and Smiling Makes You More Likable

The same skills are required to lead a meeting as are required to facilitate a meeting. Keep the following guidelines in mind, especially when leading:

Plan and choose to use the most appropriate leadership style before you get into the meeting. For leading without facilitation, you will probably be either directive or consultative. If you are a facilitator, be consistent with being exploratory.
Let the group know at the outset of the meeting which style of leadership you intend to use. They will respond positively if they know how to work with the style and role that you have chosen.
If you are being consultative, use facilitation skills to get the group to participate as much as possible.
Be aware of the influence you and your ideas have on the group. When you are not neutral, as when you are voicing an opinion about content, the members listen to your ideas. If they are dropping out, back off and become more exploratory.
A good meeting leader may be a good facilitator with an opinion, but be careful. When leading content is appropriate, follow the guidelines above as well as general guidelines for managing people. Lead, but never continually remind the group that you are the leader.

Regardless of Style, Increase Your Leadership Likability By Strolling and Smiling More

Some of the best meeting designers are also capable of facilitating complex topics requiring much pre-thought and structure. However, sometimes they fall flat on the personality factor, coming off as dispassionate, aloof, or insensitive.

Most facilitators default in the other direction, they are typically warm and possess leadership likability but are frail when it comes to workshop breakdown structure and asking precise questions. It is frankly easier to teach a meeting designer or methodologist how to warm up to an audience than it is to teach people how to think—that is, how to think clearly. Simply start strolling and smiling more.

As most North Americans are afraid of public speaking, the worst thing they could do is hide behind a podium to protect themselves. The separation amplifies the ‘me’ versus ‘them’ space, causing them to become fearful and underperform. In the role of facilitator, soften the edges by integrating yourself. Do not speak AT the participants; rather have a conversation WITH the participants.

Strolling Helps

Increase Friendliness by Avoiding Podiums

Becoming conversational and more natural increases likability. One solution involves getting closer, measured in terms of physical proximity, to your participants. The easiest way to achieve closeness without violating personal space is to stroll closer to them.

When stuck in a small conference room with a big table or a huddle room with no perimeter, the strolling is difficult but can be managed by walking around the table, and around the room. The U-shaped seating arrangement however makes it much easier to stroll around, get closer to participants, and therefore be more conversational.

Use your space wisely. If participants are vibrant and need a documenter, then stay at the easel as a scribe, while their energy remains high. But when uncertainty or disagreement arises, begin to slowly step forward to make it easier to demonstrate active listening, and to display a sense of respect and importance toward the participant who is speaking.

In the case of an argument, make sure that evidence and claims to support the participants’ positions go through you, and not around you. There is probably no better time to be in the middle of the U-shaped seating environment than when participants are arguing. They need a referee, and serving as a referee is part of the role of facilitator.

Smiling Helps More

The two universally accepted non-verbal gestures are open hands and smiling. Open hands signify culturally that you have no weapons and will not harm the participants. Open hands are far more welcoming than the opposite, pointing.

Smiling is also accepted throughout all cultures. A genuine, smile is found appealing and increases the likeliness that your participants will warm up to you. We must be careful however not to smile too much, inappropriately, or to laugh too loud.

Please smile occasionally, even with serious topics. If the facilitator remains too stern and sober, the participants will tense up, reducing the likelihood of collaboration and innovative thinking. If you need further help to learn to smile, practice. Use your introduction material to practice and ask a co-worker or family member to observe and comment on the appropriate timing for a warm smile.

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When To Get All Bossypants (inc.com)
Every Leader Is an Artist (blogs.hbr.org)

Meeting Boundaries to Closely Manage: Directed or Facilitated

by Facilitation Expert | Nov 29, 2012 | Meeting Support

While there are three primary types of business meetings: information-sharing, instructional or directional task-related meetings, and facilitated or developed task-related meetings, an effective leader must closely manage the meeting boundaries to prevent scope creep and get done on time.

Information-Sharing Meetings

Control Meeting Boundaries

Information-sharing meetings primarily capture one-way communication with the information presented by the speaker to the group. Furthermore, this type of meeting includes symposiums, instructional groups, staff meetings, and other presentations that attempt to communicate essential information to a group. Interaction from participants with the meeting leader normally gets limited to questions and comments.

Task-Related Meetings

Task-related meetings use the knowledge and experience of group members to accomplish a work task, such as problem-solving, decision-making, fact-finding, planning, etc. These meetings are highly interactive and involve two-way communication between all participants. Task-related meetings also tend to fall apart more quickly with poor meeting management. The two differences include:

Directed—the leader runs the meeting and controls the agenda. These are the most common types of meetings.
Facilitated—an impartial facilitator runs the meeting and controls the agenda and technique. These are the least common but are growing in use, as they are the most effective for decision-making and building consensus.

The Model Meeting

To effectively manage a meeting, a meeting leader must pay attention to the dynamics of the group. Having a model to work from helps the leader understand the group’s behavior to keep meeting dynamics in balance. This enables the leader to sort problems from non-problems and respond appropriately.

Why a Model?

Looking back on the list of the 14 most frequently mentioned problems in meetings (see “Some of the Challenges and Costs Associated with Hosting Meetings”), we can attribute all of them to one primary cause; a lack of structure. If this sounds like an oversimplification, it is, but only partially. You may be asking yourself, “If structure has been the only problem with meetings, why are meetings in corporate America a waste of money?” It seems like unstructured meetings are the effect of meeting dementia. Take a closer look at the components of the model meeting.

Meeting Boundaries

Meeting boundaries provide the limits or scope, which separate the meeting and its components from the external environment. Clear and unbroken boundaries are essential to good meeting management. It is the meeting leader’s responsibility to keep the boundaries from being violated (broken) resulting in a breakdown in structure. Therefore, consider both types of meeting boundaries:

Time boundaries
Physical boundaries

Time Boundaries

Time boundaries govern the start time and stop time of the overall meeting, as well as the length of the meeting. Meetings starting late seem to be an accepted norm. All meetings should start at their scheduled time and not exceed the stop time.

Barring a major catastrophe, every meeting must start precisely on time. Meetings that start late are in trouble right from the start. The delay starts to send a message to the participant that degrades the perceived importance of the meeting. The meeting is taken less seriously and sets the stage for additional boundary violations.

If the meeting begins late because the leader is not ready, he or she loses credibility which is hard to recover. Meetings that start late because the leader is waiting for latecomers are just as bad. This communicates positive reinforcement to the latecomers, while negatively reinforcing those that came on time.

Running overtime must be avoided at all costs. In cases where the discussion is crucial, continue only after obtaining consensus from the group. Otherwise, summarize and reschedule another meeting to conclude the discussion.

How many meetings extend beyond their useful length? The meeting duration should never exceed 45 to 50 minutes unless it is a facilitated workshop. By setting up your meetings for 45 or 50-minute increments, you provide a courtesy to the participants, affording them time to refresh between meetings.

Meetings more than one hour long take too much energy and have the opportunity to drag. Workshops, properly facilitated, can last for a number of days, but the rationale for the extended duration generates a deliverable. Standard meetings taking longer than one hour should be broken into multiple sessions of fifty minutes.

Physical Boundaries

Physical boundaries separate the meeting space from the rest of the outside world. The physical environment impacts the psychological environment. Most noteworthy, studies show that a formal atmosphere inhibits the mood of both groups and individuals. The best meeting results occur when people feel comfortable. When informality balances with focus on the work task. Psychologists refer to this as a state of “relaxed concentration”. The meeting leader’s responsibility ensures that proper physical boundaries are established and maintained.

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Related articles

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Fix Meeting Challenges that Remove Energy from Meetings

by Facilitation Expert | Nov 22, 2012 | Managing Conflict

Amazingly, talented people who care can come together and yet fail demonstrably in a ‘meeting.’

Meetings fail because the participants do not know HOW TO succeed. Meeting challenges include anything that takes the energy from meetings. To deal with low energy, first understand the causes of meeting challenges.

Chaos  Without Structure

To contend with difficulties, take a closer look at how a normal business meeting processes information. Like all other forms of energy, unless you harness and manage meetings within a structured environment, chaos will result. The structure takes the creative energy generated in a group and converts it into something productive. The creative energy available to any group comes as ideas and information. When information and ideas are processed in business meetings, it is usually done without adequate structure.

Information Problems

Meeting Challenges

The following information processing problems occur because of unstructured meetings:

Disruptive interruptus—limits the continuity of the group’s ideas.
Inconclusive progressions—moving on to another topic and not adequately concluding or summarizing the previous topic.
Information queuing—mentally storing comments while waiting for an opportunity to speak. When the time comes, the timing is inappropriate and the discussion gets derailed.
Mixing abstractions—two people talking at different perspectives and levels of detail, different wavelengths, or different levels of resolution.
Solution jumping—prematurely discussing solutions before the problem has been adequately defined.
Topic jumping—inappropriately changing the topic. (In the average unstructured meeting, groups change topics every minute and a half.)

Complicating Factors

Complicating even further are the tactics used by meeting leaders to deal with information-processing problems. Three common and unsuccessful approaches:

Heavy-handed control—overreaction that results in the inhibition of creativity and analysis.
Symposium style—speaking one at a time in sequence. Eliminates the advantage of spontaneous interaction.
Withdrawal—results in no direction at all.

Decision Problems

Decisions are made generally by:

Default (that’s the way they wanted it anyway)
Dominance (the squeaky wheel syndrome)
Groupthink (no one disagrees or questions the decision because all assume someone—usually a strong leader—has the right answer. This is one of the explanations for the “Bay of Pigs” incident—no one argued with the decision).
Sheer exhaustion (we give up—do what you want)

Decision Styles

In response to the problems of decision-making, some leaders have adopted tactics such as:

Authoritarian (good control and quick, but is often wrong and creates low morale)
Consensus (encourages participation/ unanimity, but is slow without someone to facilitate it through discipline and structure)
Majority rules (very democratic and participative, but allows tyranny of the majority and is slow)
Minority rules (permits persuasion, but creates political resentment)

Underdevelopment

Remember, while the number of meetings is growing, the mismanagement of meetings is costing a substantial amount of money each year. Wasted time equals wasted resources. Meeting leadership is an underdeveloped management skill, but it can be learned.

Meeting Types

There are as many types of meetings as there are meeting leaders. Most meetings, however, fall into three general categories:

Information sharing meetings
Task-related meetings—directed or instructional
Task-related meetings—facilitated or developed

Loss of Creative  Energy

Session leaders typically use more than 60 percent of the communication time available in a meeting, leaving at most 40 percent of the talk time for participants, or 24 minutes in a one-hour meeting. Unequal distribution means much of the creative energy located within the group is not being tapped, decreasing the productivity of the meeting. Hence, it’s no wonder meetings fail because of low energy.

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Related articles

3 Ways to Keep Meetings Short (Every Time) (inc.com)
How to Design Culture: 16 Patterns to Build Adaptive Learning Organizations (emergentbydesign.com)

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Purpose of 30-3 Project Updates: Time is precious. Stakeholders want and need project updates. But, do not want to over-invest. Dashboards are a fine example, relying on green lights, yellow lights, and red lights to highlight the status of project activities.

Project Updates Method

Project Updates Audience and Message

Project Updates Benefit

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Getting participants to focus on the same thing at the same time represents one of the hardest thing to accomplish with a group of people. Therefore, learning to remove distractions reflects a core skill and primary responsibility of the meeting leader.

Your Rosetta Stone: Remove Distractions

Core Skills Where You Need to Remove Distractions

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In the role of facilitator, you can be worth your weight in gold by following these fifteen simple, yet critical facilitation guidelines.

15 Facilitation Guidelines

Of all the facilitation guidelines, the most important may be to stay neutral. Do not lose your neutrality. Eliminate your personal bias and opinions from the discussion. The goal remains for the participants to provide answers or options, not you.

Additionally, there are three guiding principles of effective facilitation.

NO HARM

FOCUS

PERSPECTIVE

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Executing Your Strategy was published by Harvard Business School Press and written by two MGRUSH alumni.

The INVEST Imperatives of Executing Your Strategy

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Related articles

Eats, Shoots and Leaves

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What is Risk?

Meeting Risk Defined

Business — Project — Technique

Meeting Risk Components

Size — Politics — Complexity — Diversity

Size—

Complexity—

Politics—

Customer Organization (ie, heterogeneity)—

When To Assess

Mitigating Meeting Risk

High Complexity

High Politics

Large Project

Diverse Organization

Meeting Risk Factors Estimation

Project Size

Complexity

Political Factors

Heterogeneity

Meeting Risk Summary

Of the four areas, Size and Politics provide the most concern, and then Complexity and Diversity.

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SCAMPER provides a ‘hip-pocket’ tool; i.e., an unplanned method of developing appropriate questions on an impromptu basis.

SCAMPER Method

SCAMPER — Similar Perspectives

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Relationships

Deliverable

Options

TEMPORAL SHIFT TOOL

Method

Suggestion

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Chairing meetings requires many of the skills to facilitate effectively

Flexibility when Chairing Meetings

16 Tips When Chairing Meetings

Additionally . . .

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Effective meetings are first based on a clear line of sight to an end result, preferably something that can be documented.

Eight Meeting Purposes

Assignments

Decision-Making

Idea Generation

Information Exchange

Inspiration and Fun

Five compelling reasons to host facilitated sessions

To Host Facilitated Sessions

Incite Involvement, Incent Ownership

Chief Collaboration Officers

“. . . we believe that the time may have come for organizations to hire chief collaboration officers.”

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Without effective leadership, you can win the agenda but lose the meeting. Meeting competence demands that you take responsibility to prevent collective incompetence.

Meeting Competence Considers . . .

Meeting Competence May Demand that Less is Better