by Facilitation Expert | Mar 23, 2017 | Leadership Skills, Meeting Support
MGRUSH Certified, Professional, Endorsed Facilitators are truly special.
Thousands of alumni have earned promotions to executive positions, directorships, and C-level responsibility. MGRUSH facilitators lead groups ranging from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to greenfield initiatives about the genetic bar-coding of zebra meat to prevent illegal poaching. Furthermore, many alumni branch out on their own as independents, frequently providing pro-bono support for charitable organizations. While others contribute as valuable keystones, embedded in organizations for survival and growth. Here we provide you with some endorsed facilitators, that are as good or even better than you have ever experienced before.
Endorsed Facilitators
Since we are frequently asked for facilitator referrals, we thought it would be prudent to share some of the “best of the best”. As authors and instructors, our endorsed facilitators maintain high standards, while consistently generating results that clients need. Today, about five percent of our incoming students have their Ph.D. or Doctorate and more than half have advanced/master’s degrees. Most importantly, our alumni understand that galvanizing consensus and effective meeting management depend on integrating three components:
Integrating Leadership, Facilitation, AND Meeting Design
Meetings capture a huge investment of time. Unproductive meetings affect your profit and loss statement, morale, and potential growth of your biggest asset, your people. Many of us attend frequent and important meetings. However, little (if any) structured training has been provided to help us become better meeting participants, and more important, meeting leaders. More effective meetings for teams and groups are dependent on improving three areas of behavior, namely:
WHY —
Leadership training ensures that we begin with the end in mind. WHY we’re meeting equates with what DONE looks like. The best facilitators in the world will fail miserably if they don’t know where they are going. Yet the worst facilitators can still succeed when the deliverable is clear. Effective leadership draws a line of site about the impact of the meeting on the quality of life of its participants.
WHAT —
Once it has been made clear where we are going, facilitation skills make it easier to know WHAT to do to make a meeting successful. Unfortunately, we have developed poor muscle memory over the years. Some behaviors need to be ‘unlearned’ before new behaviors are embraced. The only way to change such behaviors is through practice and immersion. Talking heads (i.e., the instructor’s lips are moving) won’t do it. Only active participation and practice will work at instilling effective and facilitative behaviors.
HOW —
Even a great facilitator who knows where they are going (i.e., What DONE looks like) still needs help. They need to know HOW they are going to build consensus and get a group of people from the meeting Introduction to the Wrap. While the best meeting design or approach (i.e., Agenda) has more than one right answer, there is one wrong answer — if the meeting leader does not know HOW they are going to do it.
Our endorsed facilitators have proven themselves. Get to know them if you need a more effective enterprise, business unit, program office, or project direction. They will lead your group to new horizons. FIND OUT MORE
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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 daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
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by Facilitation Expert | Mar 16, 2017 | Facilitation Skills, Meeting Support
The lead article in the March-April (2017) Harvard Business Review reads like a promotion for our MG RUSH Professional Leadership, Facilitation, and Methodology training. The principal recommendations in Johnson and Christfort’s article, The New Science of Teamwork, have been a mainstay in our curriculum for over ten years now. With the research they amassed to support their thesis, our curriculum has become more valid than ever.
The New Science of Teamwork Personality Styles
First, they substitute the following four styles for similar styles found in Myers-Briggs, DISC, E-Colors, and others:
- Pioneer
- Driver
- Guardian
- Integrator
You should read the article to develop a richer understanding of the similarities and differences to other personality typing methods you know about. Our article follows their assumption, conclusions, and recommendations—plus a few they are missing.
Their assumption, a valid one, suggests that most teams fall short of their potential. They even find that dysfunction may cause some teams to regress rather than progress their organization. They suggest fostering “productive friction” which puts the term ‘argument’ in its proper and positive connotation.
Not surprisingly they find that cognitive diversity and a blending of all the styles will yield the highest quality decisions and group outputs. Further, their conclusions primarily suggest to:
- Pull opposite types closer together, and
- Seek input from people with non-dominant styles, paying attention to sensitive introverts.
For more than a decade we have been major promoters of “healthy dissent”. Their specific recommendations echo our own. However, they are missing a few important tips when leveraging personality types in a meeting or workshop environment.
The New Science of Teamwork Recommendations
For Guardians and Integrators (the two non-dominant styles) they suggest identical methods found in our curriculum such as (listed in the sequence found in their article):
- Allowing them more time to respond.
- Changing the group perspective to focus on input from the point-of-view found in the lens of Guardians and
- Encouraging non-dominant styles to contribute early (NOTE: We recommend that you always call on your virtual participants first, before allowing your in-person people to speak).
- Encouraging the use of whiteboards (or easels) to depersonalize their input.
- Keeping the pace brisk, but allowing time for non-dominant styles to consider the supporting details (e.g., separate ideation from analysis).
- Paying closer attention to introverts, who may be rarely heard.
- Relying on them to show up better prepared and thoroughly read with supporting details than typically found with the dominant types of Pioneers and Drivers.
- Requesting their input in advance.
- Securing their input in writing, rather than audibly.
- Using round-robin and brainstorming tools to gather ideas without judgment.
The New Science of Teamwork Omissions
They missed some tips particularly relevant to conducting more effective meetings. Additional suggestions to embrace include (also found in the MG RUSH curriculum):
- Interviewing participants in advance to emphasize the role of the facilitator is to protect the people in the meeting, giving them additional comfort to speak up.
- Establishing in advance that titles should be kept in the hallway and that all participant voices will be treated as equal, regardless of title and rank outside the meeting room.
- Pointing out in advance certain topics or questions where you, as meeting leader, expect them to take the lead based on their personal expertise.
- Never call on people by name (except virtual participants), beseech them nonverbally, and always give anyone the opportunity at any time to say “pass” and save face.
- Most importantly, use smaller breakout teams and sessions more frequently, especially when ideating and capturing ideas (without judgment). Assuredly, introverted people are more comfortable speaking within a small group than in a large group.
Their personality profiles are summarized effectively on page 57 of the article with an overview of the style factors and what both energizes and alienates each style. Give it a read if you want to get more productivity out of your groups and teams. Their discovery is old news for MG RUSH alumni but remains extremely valid if you want to become a more effective facilitator.
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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 daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.
by Facilitation Expert | Mar 9, 2017 | Analysis Methods, Problem Solving
Too often, we rush straight to asking for the deliverable. For instance, if the goal is to develop a plan to mitigate burnout in the IT Service Department, we tend to jump to ‘solving’ by immediately asking for ideas on what actions to take.
MG RUSH structured facilitation embraces an evidence-based management approach that says Y = f (X + X + x + x), where ‘Y’ is a function of ‘X’ and there are big ‘Xs and little ‘x’s. The following perspectives change the point of view of your participants and create higher quality big ‘Xs and little ‘x’s.
30 Questions to Transform Points of View Therefore, we are going to draw upon five established approaches to derive 30 different ways to refocus a point of view, namely:
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The 6 M’s
- Methods, Machines, Materials, Manpower, Measurements, and Mother Nature
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The 7 P’s
- Packaging, People, Place, Policies, Positioning, Price, Procedure[2], Product/ Service, Promotion
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The 5 S’s
- Safety, Skills, Suppliers, Surroundings, Systems
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Six Trends from the World Future Society (WFS)
- Demographic—covers specific population groups, family composition, public health issues, etc
- Economic—includes finance, business, work and careers, and management
- Environmental—includes resources, ecosystems, species, and habitats
- Governmental—includes world affairs, politics, laws, and public policy
- Societal—covers lifestyles, values, religion, leisure, culture, and education
- Technological—includes innovations, scientific discoveries, and their effects
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Six Purchasing Value/ Utility Levers and Potential Bottlenecks
Idea Generation
Use an idea-generating technique to identify the factors within each category that could cause the problem, issue, and/ or effect being studied. For example, to change the point of view, the facilitator could ask . . .
“What are our methods affecting/ causing _______ ?” or,
“What is the impact of convenience given _______ ?” or,
“How might our skills be leveraged against _______ ?” etc.
Changing Perspective or Point of View
The first eighteen above are frequently used when conducting root cause analysis (RCA). We’ve found them helpful in a variety of situations, enabling us to ask sharper questions. When you consider all 30 points of view collectively, it’s unlikely that any critical factor in your business situation would fall outside their scope.
While you may not use all 30 at once, focusing on a few of the most relevant perspectives will deepen your group’s understanding. This approach shifts the conversation from superficial ‘Y’ questions to the more essential ‘X’ factors. By identifying the key drivers in advance, you can also organize more effective breakout sessions that target the most important aspects of your situation.
[1] IT = Information Technology
[2] Potentially the same or certainly similar to ‘methods’ mentioned in ‘The 6 M’s’.
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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 and methods daily during the week. While some call this immersion, we call it the road that yields high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.
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#facilitationtraining #meeting design
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With Bookmarks no longer a feature in WordPress, we need to append the following for your benefit and reference
by Facilitation Expert | Mar 2, 2017 | Analysis Methods, Decision Making, Prioritizing, Problem Solving
TRIZ represents a methodology focused on innovative processes or product improvement. Use it when you need innovative thinking that extends beyond common process flow diagrams and requirements gathering. Look at further variations such as ARIZ, I-TRIZ, P-TRIZ, 40 Inventive Principles (with Applications in Service Operations Management), Reverse Fishbone, TRIZICS, USIT, SIT, and/or ASIT.
“TRIZ” is a Russian acronym for “Theory of Inventive Problem Solving” (Teoriya Resheniya Izobreatatelskikh Zadatch, pronounced trees). The inventor, Genrich Altshuller, patented an underwater diving apparatus and built a rocket-propelled boat by the tenth grade. He was later arrested and sentenced to the Gulag for 25 years. While Alex Osborn promoted his new ‘brainstorming‘ method, Altshuller performed hard labor in coal mines while refining an alternative hypothesis to innovation. Eventually, Altshuller studied over 200,000 patent files to identify patterns of technological innovation.
Altshuller discovered that the evolution of a process is not a coincidence. Rather it is governed by certain objective laws or “principles” suggesting that inventiveness and creativity can be learned. TRIZ is not based on psychology but on technology.
TRIZ provides a systematic and structured approach to thinking, supported by numerous tools. Based on patterns of invention and systems evolution, organizations using TRIZ obtain the ability to focus their knowledge and talents on the problem-solving process. TRIZ inspired Boeing designs, Ford solutions, Hewlett Packard projections, and Dow Chemical improvements.
Compare TRIZ to other diverse business process methodologies with symbolic notation and syntax, including, Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERD), ANSI standard flowcharts, data flow diagrams, Unified Modeling Language (UML), CRUD (create, read, update, delete) matrices, PAOC (plan, acquire, operate, and control), and many others. Unlike other more commonly used models, the TRIZ Matrix does not solve problems, it gives hints about where to look.
TRIZ – Fun Examples
TRIZ Founder Genrich Altshuller
This article seeks to inform you about TRIZ rather than providing a primer about TRIZ. There are numerous variations of TRIZ, as there are with Agile, SDLC, etc. The following examples demonstrate how TRIZ intends to go beyond the obvious by truly starting with the end in mind.
Note, for example, that the jack in your automobile makes it easier to access a tire, not simply to raise the vehicle. If your vehicle was on soft dirt in a rural area, it might be quicker to dig a hole. TRIZ might help the manufacturer develop a jack handle or bar shaped like a shovel at one end.
Another TRIZ example. . .
Currently, helicopter pilots are unable to escape the helicopter in case of technical problems. A good solution would be to eject the pilot upward before he parachutes down. However, then you expose the pilot to the danger of being hit by the rotor. (Solution: Remove the rotor before ejecting the pilot)
The men’s restrooms were not so clean at Schiphol Airport in Holland:
“Many men weren’t aiming very well and were missing the target…”
They solved the problem by drawing a small fly on the walls of the urinals to attract the attention of the men using the restrooms. It turns out that when a man concentrates on a certain spot, he naturally also aims in that direction. (During the European Soccer Championships that took place in Holland and Belgium, they replaced the flies at Schiphol airport with miniature orange plastic soccer goals!)
And our favorite TRIZ example . . .
A wise Chinese Emperor decided to divide his legacy between his two sons in an unusual way. He called his two sons, both excellent horse riders, and told them:
“One of you will inherit the largest portion of my legacy. You will both take part in a riding contest to determine who this will be. The winner will inherit the most. Oh… I forgot to tell you one of the conditions. The winner of this contest is the one whose horse comes last in the race. If a winner is not announced by the end of the day tomorrow, neither of you will get the inheritance.”
Both of his sons were utterly confused. “What kind of contest is that?” they thought. It was obvious to both that each would try to ride as slowly as possible, and this way the race would never end. They went to consult a wise old Chinese sage. (The old sage told the two sons to switch horses. By doing this, each of them would try to ride as fast as possible to make their horse come last.)
For more information on TRIZ, visit The TRIZ Journal at: http://triz-journal.com/
Some TRIZ research . . .
Genrich Altshuller started analyzing thousands of patents worldwide in search of trends, patterns, and evolution of technical systems. Research told him that know-how originates from knowledge-based tools because they support a systematic approach toward innovation when applied to technological or business challenges.
Technical systems include “everything that performs a function”, e.g., cars, pens, books, and knives. Lev Shuljak proceeds to explain TRIZ:
“These laws [which govern the development of technical systems] reveal that, during the evolution of a technical system, improvement of any part of that system having already reached its pinnacle of functional performance will lead to conflict with another part. This conflict will lead to the eventual improvement of the less evolved part. This continuing, self sustaining process pushes the system ever closer to its ideal state. Understanding this evolutionary process allows us to forecast future trends in the development of a technical system.”
TRIZ has evolved as well. After the “Classical TRIZ Era” (1946-1985), new advancements were pushed forward in the Kishnev Era (1985-1992). New concepts like Anticipatory Failure Determination (AFD), the Innovative Situation Questionnaire (ISQ), the enhancement of ARIZ (Algorithm for Inventive Problem Solving), and others were introduced. From 1992 to the present, TRIZ westernized and adapted to the U.S. market: marking the Era of Ideation-TRIZ (I-TRIZ). I-TRIZ brought not only further enhancements for IPS (Inventive Problem Solving) and AFD but also new concepts like Directed Evolution (DE). More details about the different Eras can be found at Ideation International.
TRIZ — Stop Doing Counterproductive Activities and Behaviors to Make Space for Innovation*
Liberating Structures (developed by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless) provides a 35-minute exercise using TRIZ to help groups let go of what they know limits their success by inviting creative destruction. In other words, they seek an understanding of what we might stop doing.
TRIZ makes it possible to challenge sacred cows safely and encourages heretical thinking. The question “What must we stop doing to make progress on our deepest purpose?” induces seriously fun yet very courageous conversations. Since laughter often erupts, issues that are otherwise taboo get a chance to be aired and confronted. With creative destruction come opportunities for renewal as local action and innovation rush in to fill the vacuum. Whoosh!
Their procedure provides five activities with clear instructions:
- Structuring the invitation
- Arranging the space and materials
- Ensuring distributed and equal participation
- Configuring the groups
- Sequencing five steps, ten minutes each
They also provide Tips and Traps, Riffs and Variations, and Examples as they do with most of their well-constructed tools.
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*This work is provided and licensed under a Creative Commons License.
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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 daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.
by Facilitation Expert | Feb 23, 2017 | Communication Skills, Meeting Support
Research by the National Speakers’ Association shows that becoming more facilitative (i.e., more interactive or service-oriented) is the single most important change a speaker or presenter can make. Following, you will find three powerful presenter tips to use before, during, and after presentations.
If you have not compiled a personal handbook with presenter tips about your personal approach, do so now. Consider keeping prior handouts and slides, agendas, a master glossary, and evaluation summaries. Continuously improve your agendas and capture detailed annotations for the agenda steps you frequently use in events, meetings, and presentations. Especially document complex challenges requiring brainstorming, decision-making, prioritization, and so on. Reflect on the speaking environment and organizational culture to determine when certain tools work best or fail. Your handbook ought to be dynamic, organized, and useful.
The use of interaction, discussion, and structure enlivens participants’ ideas and reactions. In the role of a speaker, embrace the following presenter tips to ensure your presentations shine!
1. Before TIPs
Take extra caution to precisely articulate your presentation’s purpose, scope, and objectives.
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- Do not rely on a vague and dull purpose statement such as to “educate” or “inform”. With instant, worldwide online access, there are far more effective ways to become informed and learn new material than to attend a live presentation. Presentations are normally intended to shape and guide behavior. WHICH behaviors and WHAT decisions need to be made that will affect or impact your audience?
- Stipulate the scope of your presentation to help manage time and keep your audience focused. What should be included and more importantly, NOT included? Scope represents the boundaries of your presentation and subsequent discussion.
- Consider your statement of presentation objectives as a discrete package you could document and hand off to somebody. If I was unable to attend your presentation but you could hand me the benefits, what would they be?
Provide a comprehensive pre-read that stresses the questions your presentation addresses. Add some structure including selective ground rules to get more done, faster. Consider an attractive presentation template. Specific participant behavioral guidelines you may want to encourage (listed alphabetically):
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- Caution participants about voice inflections that may indicate disdain or an otherwise counterproductive attitude
- Let each person respond without interruption
- Share in accepting post-meeting follow-up assignments
- Stay on topic and agenda, begin and end on time
- Welcome conflict but separate issues from personalities
2. During TIPs
Remember that the business audience for most topics (i.e., those more complicated than individual, private decisions) should consider three different perspectives, Each type of business participant needs their own scorecard or method of measuring the input received from your presentation. Most organizations operate with a solution sponsor, a financial decision-maker (accountable for final approval), and an operator (primary user of the product, system, or solution):
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Presenter Tips to Be More Effective: Organizational Decision-Making
The solution sponsor is held responsible for the identification of solutions and getting the results sought by executive sponsors. Sponsors may decide alone or with a project or product team. They frequently approve the solution concept, request funding, and make a commitment to the results and benefits that will be accrued. In a hospital setting, for example, the solution sponsors may be the directors of finance and/ or radiology.
- Executive sponsor(s} represent the person or group of individuals who authorize solutions. They really do not want to attend more presentations or view more data; they simply want results. For example, in a hospital setting, the sponsor might be the vice president of HIS (health information systems).
- Individuals who will operate the new solution (e.g., a new MRI system) and likely have a strong voice in the brand and model selected. In a medical setting, the operator may include radiologists or radiology technicians. They could be responsible for moving patients in and out of the MRI as quickly as possible while transferring patient images and information to the appropriate diagnostician.
Presenter Tips During Presentations
Especially when time-constrained, encourage audience participants to interact with you as if their message delivered results to someone’s voicemail. Alternatively, encourage responses that would fit on a single 4X6 notecard. Have participants use actual notecards for scripting their “voicemail,” stressing the main points. Encourage them to get to the question or main point by the second sentence.
3. After TIPs
When questions are asked after your presentation, be more facilitative by repeating the questions and comments loud enough so that everyone can hear and respond as appropriate. Use an easel or whiteboard to reflect the input of your participants so that everyone can absorb the comments provided by other participants. Visual reflection frequently outperforms auditory reflection for impact and memory retention.
Consider our Guardian of Change tool to build a consensual understanding of what the presentation means to everyone. Presumably, you want all the meeting participants to depart with a message that sounds like they were in the same presentation together. The Guardian of Change tool helps generate comparable rhetoric and harmonious actions. You certainly don’t want participants in the hallway to sound and behave as if they were in different meetings together.
Presenter Tips After Presentations
Consider some variant of a Plus-Delta or a more robust anecdotal evaluation template that assesses the effectiveness of you and the meeting. A tool that moderates between the two is shown below. It provides numerical feedback but relies on three questions and optional, anecdotal feedback. The questions shown are solid but also illustrative. Do not hesitate to substitute questions that provide you more value, yet rely on a similar format. With this template, you can print two per sheet, reducing the visual burden on your participants by keeping it small.
Moderately Robust Tool for Performance Assessment
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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 daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.
by Facilitation Expert | Feb 16, 2017 | Leadership Skills, Meeting Support, Meeting Tools, Prioritizing
Triple constraint theory suggests that it is not realistic to expect to build the fastest, the cheapest, and the highest quality. Something has to “give.”
Yet, most executive sponsors and product owners want all three at the same time. Triple constraint theory tells us that time, cost, and quality are the three most important considerations. However, we need to remain more or less flexible with one of them; either time, cost, or quality. To help your project team understand the tradeoffs that need to be made, consider building a Flexibility Matrix.
A Flexibility Matrix concedes that the three components of triple constraint theory include Time, Cost, and Quality, combined as risk. Consequently, the matrix format allows for differentiation by determining the most and least flexible factors of a product, project, or initiative. The result helps guide consistent decision-making among all team members.
Purpose of a Flexibility Matrix Makes the Triple Constraint Theory Sensible
All sponsors want the best, the fastest, and the cheapest but something has to give — triple constraint theory. You could never ask an executive sponsor ‘which is most important?’ because they would answer “All of them”. Therefore, concede that quality, speed, and price are all most important (i.e., factors of risk), but seek to understand where you have the most amount of flexibility, and conversely, the least amount of flexibility; ergo, a Flexibility Matrix.
Method for Building a Flexibility Matrix to Manage Around Triple Constraint Theory
Since the sponsor may not give you their preferences, have the team build one. Understand that the Flexibility Matrix captures assumptions that support decisions the group makes.
Build your definitions in advance and define or explain the terms time, cost, and quality for your situation. Be certain to work the bookends and ask the team where we have the most amount of flexibility. Then the least? You know the moderate box by default since it is the only blank remaining.
Importantly, after you have created the visual matrix, have the team convert each checkmark into a narrative sentence or statement, for example:
- The schedule is the least flexible because we must have the release ready by October 1.
- Quality (scope) is the most flexible because we can release an upgrade or modification after December 1.
- Resources and cost offer a moderate amount of flexibility.
Flexibility Matrix Allows for Triple Constraint Theory
Make sure you fully define time, cost, and quality in advance of the facilitated session. For example, if you are deciding on the criteria to support a decision about where to locate a landfill (i.e., garbage dump), you might define time as when the landfill opens, cost as the total cost of ownership, and quality as the impact on the environment. As such, the “answer” would likely be the opposite of the chart shown above. “Time” would represent the greatest flexibility and “quality” the least flexibility. Write us with questions you may have and we promise a prompt response.
Build the Flexibility Matrix into your product visions or product charters making it easier to determine work breakdown structure (WBS)
You can create additional time for yourself by facilitating product visions and team charters with members who build their own activities and support requirements to help you reach your objectives and key results. Thus, the Tools (below in italics) will help you build more robust product visions, team charters, and project plans. Additionally, for your benefit, each link takes you to more detailed explanations supported by a specific method including the activities that will deliver your desired output.
Facilitating Product Visions and Team Charters
Facilitating Product Visions and Team Charters Using the Triple Constraint Theory
Tools to facilitating product visions and team charters that generate the step-by-step deliverables for most planning efforts include:
- Business case, project purpose, or opportunity statement: Purpose Is To . . . So That
- Project scope or boundaries: Is Not/ Is (alternatively—Context Diagram Workshop, found in the MGRUSH Professional Facilitator Reference Manual)
- Triple Constraints (i.e.; time, cost, and scope/quality): Flexibility Matrix
- Success criteria: SMART Criteria/ Categorizing (through common purpose)
- Opportunity assessment: Situation Analysis (FAST Professional proprietary and quantitative SWOT analysis)
- Assigned activities (high-level): Roles and Responsibilities (e.g., RASI)
- Team selection: Interviewing Controls/ Managing Expectations
Project Plan — Work Breakdown Structure
The work breakdown structure follows a facilitative approach. Consequently, it supports a consensually agreed-upon plan of action:
- Target audience/ other affected stakeholders: Brainstorming
- WBS (work breakdown structure):
Moving from WHAT (i.e., abstract) to HOW (i.e., concrete)
- Detailed measure of success: Success Measures
- Assigned activities (detailed-level):
Roles and Responsibilities
- Budget, timeline, and resource alignment: Alignment
- Stage gates and milestones: After Action Review
- Risk assessment and guidelines:
Project Risk Assessment
- Communications Plan: Guardian of Change
- Open issues management: Parking Lot Management
- Issue escalation procedure: Issue Log
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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 daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.
by Facilitation Expert | Feb 2, 2017 | Managing Conflict, Meeting Support
Use ground rules to help manage individual and group behavior during meetings and workshops.
You can lead meetings and discussions without ground rules, but did you ever leave an unstructured meeting with a headache? The term “discussion” is rooted similarly to the terms “concussion” and “percussion.” A little bit of structure will ensure that you get more done, fast.
Primary Ground Rules
Consider a few, select ground rules for every meeting, regardless of your situation. We consider the following four ground rules so important we use them in every meeting or workshop. The fifth meeting ground rule shown below (“No Hiding”) has been added for online meetings.
1. Be Here Now
First and foremost, speaks to the removal of distractions and getting participants to focus. “Be Here Now” demands that electronic leashes be reined in—i.e., phones on stun mode, laptops down, be punctual after breaks, and pay attention. The hardest thing to do with a group of smart people is to get them to focus on the same issue at the same time.
Your job is to remove distractions so that they can focus.
2. Consensus means “I can live with it”
We are NOT defining consensus as everyone’s favorite or top choice. Nor are we suggesting that our decisions will make everyone ‘happy.’ We are facilitating to a standard that everyone can professionally support. Participants agree they will NOT try to undermine the results after the meeting ends. If so, they are guilty of displaying a lack of integrity. We strive to build an agreement that is robust enough to be considered valid by everyone. No one should lose any sleep over the results. Remember, however, it may not be their ‘favorite’ course of action.
3. Silence or absence implies consensus
This ground rule applies to structured, for-profit situations and NOT necessarily unstructured, political, or social meetings. During our standard business meetings, participants have a duty to speak up. It remains the primary responsibility of the facilitator to protect all the meeting participants. It is NOT their job to reach down someone’s throat and pull it out of them. If participants have information to bear in a discussion, then it is their responsibility to share it. Participant involvement is their obligation, not simply their opportunity. Their silence speeds us up since we don’t have time to secure an audible from every participant on every point discussed in a meeting. Their silence indicates two positions that need to be stressed by the facilitator, namely:
- They will support it, and
- They will not lose any sleep over it.
If either is not true, shame on them—they are being paid to participate. If they cannot accept their fiduciary responsibility, they should work somewhere integrity is not valued.
4. Make your thinking visible
People do not think causally. They think symptomatically. Two people eating from the same bowl of chili may argue over how “spicy” it is. Note, that they seldom argue about verbs and nouns. Rather they argue about modifiers (e.g., adjectives and adverbs). They subjectively argue about spiciness. To one, the chili is hot. To the other, it is not. They are both right. A great facilitator will get them to ‘objectify’ their discussion so that they both can agree that the chili is 1,400 Scoville Units. They don’t think Scoville Units however, they think ‘hot”. As facilitator you must challenge them to make their thinking visible.
5. No hiding
For video conferences, enforce a rule that prohibits people from turning off their live video stream. When hidden, no one has any idea what they are doing or if they are even listening. Dr. Tufte uses the term “flatland” to describe the two-dimensional view, such as the view of online participants on a screen. Working in flatland makes it difficult enough to observe nonverbal reactions. Culturally, you may need to get participants’ permission to use this rule but don’t back down. Enforce “no hiding.”
Be Here Now — Our Most Popular Meeting Ground Rule
Constantly Reinforce Be Here Now
Simply applying the ground rule Be Here Now won’t alone solve the problem, but it will help, especially if you take the time to explain everything it means to your participants.
Arrow—
- Post a visual agenda and put an arrow or other device on it to indicate where the group is on the agenda. Do not use the check box approach since it is never clear if the group is on the last checked box or the next unchecked box. Shopping mall signs indicate where you are, not where you were.
Consciousness—
- Ask participants to “be here now’ and strive to keep their consciousness focused on listening and contributing. Ask them to stay fresh, and if necessary, take more frequent breaks. Bio-breaks should be offered more frequently in the morning and with virtual meetings (e.g., video presence). Consider 30-second “stretch” breaks every thirty minutes; offering up quick deep knee bends or shoulder turns to keep participants awake and fresh. Some cultures refer to this as a 30-30, and if it is part of your culture, use a timepiece or timer to signal each 30-minute segment.
Leashes—
- Have participants disengage their electronic leashes and beware because the vibration mode does not mean silent, only lower tones. If participants cannot wait to address an electronic request, have them take it out of the room, but do not allow laptops, smartphones, and multitasking. Groups that claim to multi-task, perform mentally at the level of chimpanzees. Do you really want to facilitate a roomful of monkeys?
Punctuality—
- Participants should not arrive late, either at the meeting start or after breaks. Start meetings on time so that you don’t punish the people who attend on time. Use MGRUSH timers to ensure on-time attendance after breaks.
Updates—
- If participants are late or leave the room and then return, do not stop the meeting to give them a personal update. Personal updates penalize the on-time participants. Rather, refresh the tardy participants during the next break or pair them off with somebody and send them to the hallway for a one-on-one update, if the update cannot wait until the next break.
Consistently Demonstrate Be Here Now
To Be Here Now is infectious so lead the way. Arrive early and first. Watch your time closely and call breaks as needed. More is better so that participants can attend to their electronic updates. Most all agree that four 5-minute breaks during a morning session are better than one 20-minute break. Monitor them tightly however and do not allow leakage. Your group depends on you for their success.
Additional Meeting Ground Rules
We refer to other ground rules as ‘situational’. You will vary their use depending on meeting type, participants, deliverables, and timing. Some secondary meeting ground rules we have found particularly effective are shown below. We don’t have space to discuss them all, but our favorites, based on frequency of use, are italicized:
- Be curious about different perspectives
- Bring a problem, bring a solution
- Challenge (or, test) assumptions
- Chime in or chill out
- Discuss undiscussable issues
- Don’t beat a dead horse
- Everyone has wisdom
- Everyone will hear others
and be heard
- Focus on “WHAT” not “HOW”
- Focus on interests, not positions
- Hard on facts, soft on people
- It’s not WHO is right; It’s WHAT is right
- No “Yeah, but”—Make it “Yeah, AND…”
- No big egos or war stories
- Nobody is smarter than everybody
- No praying underneath the table (i.e., texting)
- One conversation at a time (Share airtime)
- Players win games, teams win championships
- Put on Your Sweaters (leave your egos and titles in the hallway)
- Share reasons behind questions and answers
- (or,) Share all relevant information
- Speak for easy listening—headline first, background later
- The team is responsible for the outcome
- The whole is greater
than the sum of the parts
- Topless meetings (i.e., phones on stun, no laptops)
- We need everyone’s wisdom
Brainstorming Ideation Rules
Here is an entirely different set of ideation rules that should be used during the Ideation step of the Brainstorming tool. While covered in detail in another article, we are providing the list below for your convenience. With these ideation rules or any of the above ground rules, do not hesitate to contact us for additional explanations:
- 5-Minute Limit Rule (i.e., ELMO doll — Enough, Let’s Move On)
- Accept the views of others
- All ideas allowed
- Be creative — experiment
- Build on the ideas of others
- Everyone participates
- Fast pacing, high-energy
- No discussion
- No word-smithing
- Passion is good
- Stay focused on the topic
- Suspend judgment, evaluation, and criticism
- The step (or workshop) is informal
- When in doubt, leave it in
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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 daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
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by William Malek | Jan 26, 2017 | Leadership Skills, Planning Approach
A.T. Kearney published the results of a 2014 Strategy Study with over 2,000 global executives on strategy trends, challenges, and opportunities. Here are some key findings worth highlighting that relate to the design of strategy execution.
Strategy Execution
1. 46% percent of global strategies fail broadly or don’t deliver
I have heard these kinds of stats for a long time now. I think it requires us to really understand “what is failing!” Many different executives, in many different cultures, define this in many different ways. Therefore, the opportunity here is that strategic outcomes may need to be defined more clearly. They need to include success criteria that reflect a range of probabilities versus a single-point estimate. Emphasis should be quantitative, especially with financial return targets. Think of the global economic drama right now with the price of crude oil falling!
2. 74% are spending more time on strategy development
More time is not required if performing the right kind of planning and engaging the right stakeholders. However, so much wasted time on strategies being formulated that have very little chance of being implemented. Approval challenges are driven mainly by the number of people and skill gaps. Other research (outside A.T. Kearney) points to the fact that much more quality planning time needs to be spent in strategic workforce planning for critical positions. Consequently, a major part of strategy execution is having the right people, with the right skills, working on the right work at the right time. The study states the impact of not doing strategic workforce planning…“This makes for bewildered, disenfranchised, overwhelmed, and under-supported deployments. As one manager admits, We underestimate the combined effects of overlapping initiatives on the same group of people.”
3. The average strategy lifespan is now less than 2 years
This lifespan cycle is getting shorter and shorter due to volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity (VUCA), and other factors. The impact of this is that you need to keep an eye on long-term patterns/trends more frequently (quarterly) but VUCA requires a whole different set of leadership agility skills and behaviors. The study shows little difference in the success rate (Total Shareholder Returns) between an Ad-Hoc approach to Strategy versus Planned Strategy Cycles for anything less than 5 years. This does not bode well for strategy development consultants!
4. The weak link in strategy is the HANDOVER between formulation and deployment/execution
I began teaching this concept in 2002 at the Stanford University Advanced Project Management Program; the primary risk of execution is a function of the interfaces in a process/system. Strategy Execution Risk (f) ~ Interface Management. One key process or function that is non-existent in many organizations is the enterprise portfolio office. It may be called other things like the Strategic Management Office or EPMO but the allocation and reallocation of critical resources to the top priorities of an organization needs a portfolio discipline and a resource allocation model. Hence, this is probably the hardest thing for senior executives to do and get it right. In the absence of this discipline, disorganized complexity is forced to be worked out by line managers and they, by default, determine the priorities of the organization – for good or bad!
5. Strategy Deployment Failure = 90% lack of internal understanding of strategy AND 90% lack of internal capabilities to execute strategy
I am still shocked by this long-standing stat that implies a 90% lack of understanding of a company’s strategy! Given how many books, consultants, and academic research go into this topic, you would think that most employees could understand their organization’s strategy. Perhaps the quote from the research “Strategic planning quite often occurs in an Ivory Tower by individuals who haven’t a clue about what happens at the implementation level” should include “…and most executives can’t tell a story anyone remembers!” I really need to question the effectiveness of the mainstream management gurus who talk about this topic because this issue has been around for a long time. The concept of Strategy Maps as an effective way to directly transfer “understanding” has somehow eluded us. I have always said that a fool with a tool is still a fool.
But, I think the big OMG moment from the research that executives need to pay attention to is – that a major cause of strategy deployment failure is 90% lack of internal capabilities to execute strategy. I had a Strategy Execution Planning Workshop on this very subject in January 2015 in Dubai. You have to know where to start based on your organization’s current capability maturity, your culture, and your actual business model. Current capability becomes the root cause of many of the challenges described in the study.
6. VUCA is driving the need for a balance between agility and strategy – the ultimate paradox
We are entering a period of unprecedented change and shift in geo-political, social, and economic systems. An organizational system and strategy should be designed to incorporate agility practices as well as traditional strategy planning. Agile planning is more of an ongoing dynamic strategic management process versus a planning event. The ability to stay agile and innovate with a little bit of Ad Hoc capacity and resources and still co-exist with a well-planned strategy is key. You have to know when, where, and how to embrace both within an organization.
7. Increased participation = increased success but complexity increases
Strategy Execution is planned and managed better with group collaboration planning processes because the complexity of cross-functional processes and relationships CAN BE FACILITATED! People help support that which they help create and working out all the risks and complexity at the interfaces is key! Understanding the interdependencies and relationships between the functions drives the success of work that demands execution first.
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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 daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
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by Facilitation Expert | Jan 19, 2017 | Managing Conflict
Most people associate shame or loss of power with being wrong. Ever felt yourself getting defensive? When your meeting participants turn defensive, especially when they feel they are losing ground, neurochemistry hijacks the brain. Because they are addicted to being right, the amygdala, our instinctive brain, takes over. With a focus on being right, participants are unable to regulate emotions or handle the gaps between expectations and reality.
“In situations of high stress, fear, or distrust the hormone and neurotransmitter cortisol flood the brain. Executive functions that help us with advanced thought processes like strategy, trust building, and compassion shut down.”[1]
Scientific studies suggest four responses that every facilitator should expect from meeting participants, namely:
- Fight (keep arguing the point),
- Flight (revert to, and hide behind, group consensus),
- Freeze (disengage from the argument by shutting up)
- Appease (make nice to your adversary by simply agreeing with him)
Addicted to Being Right: Restoring Balance
Addicted To Being Right Requires a Facilitator to Restore Balance
Without facilitation (especially active listening and challenge), the four responses lead to sub-optimal results because they prevent the honest and productive sharing of information and evidence-based proof.
Some suggest that “Fighting” is the most common and most damaging. Can you imagine a professional fight without a referee? Of course not, and the facilitator is the meeting referee. In humans, bio-chemicals drive the urge for “fighting”.
“When you argue and win, your brain floods with different hormones: adrenaline and dopamine, which makes you feel good, dominant, even invincible. It’s the feeling any of us would want to replicate. So the next time we’re in a tense situation, we fight again. We get addicted to being right.”
When these dominating personalities are allowed to take over a meeting, they become unaware of the impact on the people around them. While they are getting high from their dominance, others are being drummed into submission. Group dynamics undergo a strong diminishing of collaboration.
However, oxytocin can make people feel as good as adrenaline. Oxytocin activates connections and opens up the networks in our brains, driving from the prefrontal cortex. When participants feel connected, they open up to sharing and trust.
Addicted to Being Right: Facilitator Tips
Great facilitators seek to amplify the production of oxytocin while striving to avoid spikes of cortisol and adrenaline. Help others who display addiction to being right by embracing some or all of the following suggestions:
- Anticipate and provide appropriate ground rules: Remind everyone that they have a fiduciary responsibility to speak up to support or defend claims
- Avoid judging: focus on issues, not personalities
- Carefully manage scope creep: strongly avoid the tendency for the group to fall into a harmful conversational pattern
- Counteract the domineering: ensure that everyone contributes and consider going around in a circle (ie, ‘round-robin’) or demanding Post-It® notes from everyone with their point of view (again make sure you capture the perspectives visually and transfer small Post-It notes to large format display so that everyone can see all the claims)
- Focus on open-ended questions: Be careful to avoid close-ended questions and force a multitude of open-ended responses
- Listen with empathy: Strive to explore and understand everyone’s perspective as there can be more than one right answer
- Provide visual feedback: Highlight the evidence-based claims (i.e., objective support)
“Connecting and bonding with others trumps conflict. I’ve found that even the best fighters — the proverbial smartest guys in the room — can break their addiction to being right by getting hooked on oxytocin-inducing behavior instead.”
[1] See “Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build Trust and Get Extraordinary Results” by Judith E. Glaser
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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 daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.
by Facilitation Expert | Jan 12, 2017 | Analysis Methods, Decision Making
An After-Action Review (AAR) is an effective tool for debriefing projects, programs, or other initiatives. It may also be considered similar to a Hot Wash, After-Action Debriefing, Look Back, Postmortem, or, in the Agile community, a Retrospective. Regardless of the name, the primary purpose of an AAR is for participants to reflect on what transpired, extract key lessons, and identify opportunities to enhance future performance.
Purpose of an After-Action Review Session
An After-Action Review is NOT intended to critique, grade success, or failure. Rather, it identifies weaknesses that need improvement and strengths that might be sustained.
An After-Action Review answers four “learning culture” questions:
- (Purpose) What was supposed to happen?
- (Results) What did happen?
- (Causes) What caused the difference?
- (Implications) What can we learn from this?
The After-Action Review provides a candid discussion of actual performance results compared to objectives. Hence, the engagement participants contribute their input and perspective. They provide their insight, observation, and questions that help reinforce strengths and identify and correct the deficiencies of the completed project or action.
Learning cultures highly value collaborative inquiry and reflection. Therefore, the U.S. Armed Forces use After-Action Reviews extensively, relying on a variety of means to collect hard, verifiable data to assess performance. The U.S. Army refers to the evidence as “ground truths.”
Participants identify mistakes they made as well as mistakes made by others. They prohibit any other use of candid discussions, including performance reviews.
The U.S. Army’s approach may use five basic guidelines that govern its After-Action Reviews, namely:
Guidelines for an After-Action Review Event, Meeting, or Workshop
- Call it as you see it
- Discover the “ground truth”
- No sugar coating
- No thin or thick skins
- Take thorough notes
After Action Review Focuses on Listening
After-action reviews emphasize openness, candor, and transparency. While complete candor can be difficult for many groups, it’s essential to encourage full disclosure during the process. Participants should identify their own mistakes and share constructive observations about others. It is crucial to make clear that the discussions are confidential and should not be used for purposes like performance evaluations.
An After-Action Review workshop can range from part of a day to a full week, depending on the scope of the initiative. It may involve twenty to thirty participants or more, though not everyone needs to be present simultaneously, allowing for flexible participation throughout the workshop.
Agenda for an After-Action Review Event, Meeting, or Workshop
Begin with the MGRUSH introduction and emphasize the project objectives and expected impact of the project on the organizational holarchy. Carefully articulate and codify key assumptions or constraints.
Results are compared to the SMART objectives. Items that worked or hampered provide input for later discussion. Be immediately cautious about scope creep. Questions that may be out-of-bounds at this time include why certain actions were taken, how stakeholders reacted, why adjustments were made (or not), what assumptions developed, and other questions that need to be managed later.
Compare the project results to the fuzzy goals and other considerations. Be cautious to avoid scope creep. Manage other questions later such as why certain actions were taken, how stakeholders reacted, why adjustments occurred (or not), and what assumptions developed.
Results-focused discussion (or lack thereof) stimulates talk about options and conditions to leverage in future projects.
-
-
-
- How stakeholders reacted
- What assumptions developed
- What worked and hampered
- Why certain actions took priority
- What adjustments worked (or not)
- Other questions as appropriate.
Assess or build a risk management plan and other next steps or actions (e.g., Guardian of Change) based on actual results.
Use the four activities in the MGRUSH review and wrap-up
Special Ground Rules for an After-Action Review Event, Meeting, or Workshop
An AAR workshop can handle more than twenty people, with frequent use of break-out groups. Do not hesitate to partition the workshop so that participants may come and go as required. You may need to loop back, cover material built earlier, and clarify or add to it. Above all, the approach shifts the culture from one where blame is ascribed to one where learning is prized, yet team members willingly remain accountable.
Conduct After-Action Reviews consistently after all significant projects, programs, and initiatives. Therefore, do NOT isolate “failed” or “stressed” projects only. Additionally, ground rules and guidelines that have proven successful in the past include:
- Do NOT judge the success or failure of individuals (i.e.; judge performance, not the person)
- Encourage participants to raise any potentially important issues and lessons
- Focus on the objectives first
For learning organizations
For learning organizations, the following also supports cultural growth:
- Some of the most valuable learning derives from the most stressful situations
- Transform subjective comments and observations into objective learning by converting adjectives such as “quick” into SMART criteria (i.e., Specific, Measurable, Adjustable, Relevant, and Time-Based) such as “less than 30 seconds.”
- Use facilitators who understand the importance of neutrality and do not lecture or preach
- Teach the team to teach itself
Therefore, effective use of After-Action Reviews supports a mindset in organizations that are never satisfied with the status quo—where candid, honest, and open discussion evidences learning as part of the organizational culture. In conclusion, learning is everyone’s responsibility and it begins with hard data used to analyze actual results.
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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 and methods daily during the week. While some call this immersion, we call it the road that yields high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
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by Facilitation Expert | Jan 5, 2017 | Facilitation Skills, Meeting Support
To become an unconsciously competent facilitator, you first become conscious and then competent. As you progress and increase your abilities, you will note an evolution of competency, illustrated in the chart below. First, note that consciousness precedes competence. You do not achieve a consistent level of success until you have developed consciousness about what is required. Secondly, you will discover that the amount of time between each of the stages decreases as you make progress. Let’s look at each of the stages and the aphorisms offered up by John Maxwell that capture the sentiment of each stage.
The Four Stages of Consciousness, Becoming an Unconsciously Competent Facilitator
Unconsciously Incompetent
Before you undertake a complex activity, you slumber through an area of unconscious incompetence. You may linger at this stage for decades. Look at the amount of time it takes to discover the difference between well-run and poorly-run meetings. In this stupor, you “do not know what you do not know.” You lack both knowledge and skills and are unaware of your incapacity.
Consciously Incompetent
Yet another stage remains before you become competent. Here you develop increased consciousness. During this stage, you also develop aspirations and hopes. You begin to envision yourself as competent and contributory. You may linger in this state for a long time, depending on your determination to learn and the real extent to which you accept your incompetence. Most importantly, your consciousness enables you to observe and identify the characteristics of competency, typically in others, as you begin to “know what you don’t know.”
Consciously Competent
Cast into the role of facilitator, you find yourself slipping into and out of competency. You can increase the consistency of your competency by taking formal training, practicing, participating with others who aspire to be better, and obtaining valuable feedback. Developing competence occurs much quicker than developing consciousness. Practice, training, and feedback help because they increase your consciousness. You “grow and know and it starts to show.”
Unconsciously Competent
With repetitive practice and experience, you reach a point where you no longer need to think about what you are doing. You become competent without the significant effort that characterizes the state of conscious competence. You will drift in and out of unconscious competence, based on the skills you master quickly. It takes little time to become unconsciously competent, only practice. Here your services are requested “because of what you know.” Eventually, you know that it feels right and you do it.
Howell (1982) originally describes the four stages:
“Unconscious incompetence – this is the stage where you are not even aware that you do not have a particular competence. Conscious incompetence – this is when you know that you want to learn how to do something but you are incompetent at doing it. Conscious competence – this is when you can achieve this particular task but you are very conscious about everything you do. Unconscious competence – this is when you finally master it and you do not even think about what you have such as when you have learned to ride a bike very successfully”
— (Howell, 1982, p.29-33)
See also: Howell, W.S. (1982). The Empathic Communicator University of Minnesota: Wadsworth Publishing Company
Remember, consciousness precedes competence, and superb competence does not take much time, but it does take practice. We hope you are getting your fair share of challenges and seize the opportunity for more practice and feedback.
For a six-minute video presentation on The Four Stages of Consciousness, turn here.
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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 daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.
by Facilitation Expert | Dec 29, 2016 | Meeting Support
Don’t overlook the importance of your meeting documenter or documentation support. The document produced from an MGRUSH workshop provides the raw data for project deliverables. The meeting becomes a waste of time if meeting notes are not clear and accurate.
During lengthy, critical, and modeling workshops, you should solicit support to help with your documentation. It is important that your meeting documenter knows and agrees to their role, functions, and responsibilities.
Illustration by Julia Reich from Stone Soup Creative. A graphic recording approach by a meeting documenter. Role of Neutrality for a Meeting Documenter
Emphasize to every meeting documenter that they are to remain absolutely neutral—they are part of the methodological team (i.e., context) and are never to interfere with the content during or after sessions.
Co-Facilitating Rotation
If or when co-facilitating, consider sharing roles. Pre-assign select steps to facilitate for each leader. When NOT facilitating, the other person serves as the meeting documenter.
Responsibilities of a Meeting Documenter
The meeting documenter is responsible for ensuring completeness and accuracy. The meeting documenter is also responsible for:
- Ensuring the availability of proper tools and equipment.
- Providing documentation that is properly named, archived, and available for the project team upon completion of the workshop.
- Reading the documentation back to the group for clarification.
- Rehearsing the documentation method before the session.
- Transcribing the documentation with notes, decisions, charts, and matrices from the session.
- The documenter assists the facilitator by capturing participant input that is written on flip charts or whiteboards. Capture photographs of the printed versions to double-check documenter accuracy.
- Use the documenter to hang completed flip chart paper on the wall. This helps you to keep the session moving without distractions. Arrange before the workshop where you expect to hang different sections or deliverables within the agenda.
- When the group develops a definition or major decision during the session, ensure information is accurately and fully captured.
- It is important to note that the documenter copies what the session leader writes onto flip charts, a front wall, or overheads. The documenter does not interpret the discussion, capture complete transcription, or capture random notes.
- The documenter does not judge or evaluate what the group decides. If what they are hearing is unclear, the documenter must ask the session leader to ask the group for clarification and not intervene directly.
Who Makes the Best Meeting Documenter?
A meeting documenter should be easy to work with, willing to keep quiet (i.e., follow the role of content neutrality), have good handwriting, understand the situational terminology, be willing to work for you during the session, and understand the purpose and deliverable of the structured meeting notes. Good documenters can be found typically in three places:
Meeting Documenter
- Trained session leaders frequently make strong documenters. Supporting one another and experience numerous benefits from cross-training, especially for newer facilitators.
- Project members from other, especially related projects. These people understand the terminology and how notes get used (e.g., input to requirements or design specs). They must be chosen carefully because they need to remain quiet and cannot become involved in the discussions.
- New hire trainees or interns provide a win-win opportunity. These people tend to work hard at being good documenters. They frequently have enough background in terminology that they do not get lost in the discussions.
- For purely narrative capture, administrative assistants will work wonders because you have removed them from more mundane activities.
Plan Your Work, Work Your Plan
The relationship between you and the documenter is important because the session leader and documenter comprise the methodological team responsible for generating the final deliverable. Optimally, constant communication between you is essential. Keep the following in mind when working with a documenter:
How to Train Documenters?
The following steps provide a method for training documenters:
- Provide them with a copy of your annotated agenda. Walk through each of the agenda steps, their role, the volume of documentation you expect, and what to do with it. Provide them with examples from prior workshops or deliverables to illustrate how their captured input will be used. Examples can be from previous sessions or created by the session leader, preferably relying upon a metaphor or analogy.
- Documenters often feel intimidated when they see a bunch of templates and do not understand their purpose. Explain the purpose of the deliverables from each question you intend to ask in the workshop. Your MGRUSH Reference Manual includes descriptions of the deliverables from each step in the workshop of the Cookbook Agendas. Your note-taking tools should not get in the way of documentation. Let them modify the format of note-taking if it is appropriate.
- Develop a picture of the final deliverable of the workshop. You can use simple flow-chart or templates or arrows and icons to represent the final document structure. This helps the documenter to move the note-taking out of the abstract into something concrete.
- Walk through the technique and methods with the documenter prior to the session to ensure that that their role is clearly understood—address any questions they have.
- Training does not end with the start of the workshop. During the workshop, check with the documenter often to ensure that there are no problems and that the appropriate outputs are being properly documented.
Checklist for Meeting Documenters
Use this checklist with your documenter to prepare and review.
- Sit where you can see and hear the session leader and what the session leader is writing on visual aids. Preferably, position yourself on the U-shaped table close to the facilitator.
- Have all materials ready before the workshop starts.
- Clear your work area from any distractions.
- Neat handwriting is necessary if you are handwriting.
- Listen to, understand, and be alert for key ideas.
- Give speakers and session leaders careful attention. Do not change meanings to your own. Document the main ideas; the essence of the discussion as taken from the flip charts or other visuals that the session leader is using. Capture the results from the visuals—not complete transcriptions or word by word minutes of the meeting.
- Capture information first—grammar and punctuation later.
- Avoid abbreviations, key, or cue words. Do not change words or meaning.
- Stick to verbatim comments whenever possible.
- Accurately and fully capture the ideas, workflows, outputs, and other components of any models or matrices that are built.
- Seek clarification and review as soon as possible if unsure. Remember—if not documented, it did not happen!
- Control your emotions. If you are reacting to your surroundings or a group member, you cannot listen effectively.
- Stay out of the discussion. Stick to your role. Stay neutral!
Meeting Documenters’ Guidelines
Once you have the right tool and the right documenter, use them properly.
- Always take photographs of handwritten sheets as a back-up.
- Do not attempt to capture documentation real time with the screen displayed to the participants (eg, using a large screen projector hooked up to the terminal). This distracts the participants from the purpose of the meeting (they become enamored with the tool), it forces a low-light condition (which may put some people to sleep), and any mistake, confusion, or slowness of capture is both visible and out of your control (the documenter is doing it).
- Capture process flows or screen layouts and shows them to the participants. First, the session leader draws them on a whiteboard, flip chart, or another manual tool. The documenter captures the layout on a prototyping or mockup tool. When possible, project the finished illustration, diagram, or report on a large screen. If not, take a photograph of the original to re-create offline.
- If you are using a modeling tool (eg, VISIO), have the documenter run the analysis routines during breaks, lunch, or in the evening. Use the results to develop questions for the workshop to ensure completeness before the end of the workshop. Take advantage of the analysis capabilities of the tool, but do not run the analysis with the participants waiting for you to finish.
- Make certain that adequate backup is provided (both software copies and manual backup to cover the period of time since the last copy was made). Automated tools sometimes crash, or electricity sometimes goes out. Do not be caught losing documentation.
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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 daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
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by Facilitation Expert | Dec 22, 2016 | Facilitation Skills
Great Facilitators
Today we bring you twelve significant behaviors that define successful, professional facilitators. (i.e., GREAT Facilitators) Our scope focuses on structured facilitation (NOT Kum-Bah-Yah). Structured facilitation requires a balanced blend of leadership, facilitation, and methodology. (An alpha sort sequences the following, not order of importance).
The first three behaviors:
- 7:59 AM preparation and interviews
(i.e., managing expectations and ownership). Increased experience forces top-notch facilitators to value preparation more than ever. No class, certification, or silver bullets help facilitators who show up without preparation.
- Active listening
(i.e., seeking to understand rather than being understood). Of facilitation’s core skills, active listening remains the easiest to understand and the hardest to do.
- Annotated agenda
(i.e., visualizing everything the session leader does or asks in advance). Preparation or writing down what you intend to say and do remains critical. Therefore, Great facilitators don’t rely on memory, they write it down.
The next three behaviors:
- Common nouns and purpose give rise to natural categories
. A professional NEVER asks a group HOW they would like to ‘categorize a list.’ Common nouns are symptomatic of the likelihood of clusters. Normally categorizes arise from shared or common purpose.
- Holarchy
(i.e., interdependent reciprocities—contextual explanation of how it all fits together). When active listening fails to resolve conflict, appeal to the organizational objectives. They drive the determination of whose argument should prevail. Begin with the project, then the program, then the business unit, and if necessary, enterprise objectives. The holarchy provides the key to alignment and a professional knows how to apply it.
- “I” no longer
(i.e., the substitution of pluralistic and integrative rhetoric for the first person singular). Professionals avoid reference to themselves alone. Everything ‘we’ do is for the benefit of them and you, not ‘me.’ The least professional words a facilitator could utter — “Help me.”
Three more behaviors:
- Life Cycle: Plan ☛ Acquire ☛ Operate ☛ Control (i.e., great tool and inherent rationale behind all life cycle methodologies). It matters not whether building requirements or an action plan. Blue-chip facilitators explore at least four activities (likely more). They ensure at minimum one activity within each of the four primary life-cycle stages.
- Numeric SWOT leads to consensual actions (i.e., Easily the best way to prioritize hundreds of items and build consensus around “WHAT” needs to be done to support the purpose). So many untrained facilitators build four lists, hang them on the wall, and ask “Now what?” Traditional SWOT remains an awful method for galvanizing consensus. Outstanding facilitators consider the MGRUSH quantitative approach instead.
- Right-to-left thinking or, focus on the deliverable first (i.e., starting with the end in mind—forcing the abstract into the concrete). Leadership demands understanding what ‘DONE’ looks like. Top-flight professionals constantly apply a ‘DONE’ consciousness against the meeting deliverable, agenda step, supporting activity, and even specific questions. Always start with the end in mind.
The final three behaviors:
- “The Purpose is to . . . So That . . . “
(i.e., an amazing tool to extract the “strategy” behind something too small for a
“strategic plan”). The professional facilitators’ ‘screwdriver.’ is known simply as the Purpose Tool. Use it repeatedly to first build consensus around WHY something exists before discussing WHAT can be done to make it better.
- Trivium
(i.e., the natural force behind the structure of movement and progress). Plato called it Logic, Rhetoric, and Grammar. Our sixth-grade teachers called it WHY, WHAT, and HOW. Project life cycles are called Planning, Analysis, and Design. We call it Will, Wisdom, and Activity. The Trivium represents the nature of structured facilitation as superb facilitators help groups transform from the abstract to the concrete.
- Website resources
(i.e.,” You get to ride all the rides, as many times as you want.”). You will find many of the finest facilitators in the world among the thousands of MGRUSH alumni. Therefore, use online access to agendas, templates, and other meeting support tools to make your life easier.
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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 daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
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by Facilitation Expert | Dec 15, 2016 | Managing Conflict
Group decision-making, when not transparent or properly facilitated, can lead to awful decisions. The Abilene Paradox captures why four intelligent adults would agree and decide to do something that none of them wanted to do in the first place.
It may sound absurd that four intelligent adults would agree and decide to do something that none of them wanted to do in the first place, but it is effectively found in a small but well-received story. I first learned of Harvey’s article while receiving my MBA at Kellogg, and was recently reminded of it during a discussion with a student after class, who was in the process of earning her own MBA.
The Abilene Paradox Background
Based on a story that starts in the remote town of Coleman, Texas, four adults travel in a dust storm and 104 degrees (Fahrenheit) heat in an un-air-conditioned ’58 Buick to a cafeteria in Abilene. After returning, the story covers their conversation which could be summed up with the comment “ I didn’t want to go.” Of course, none of them did, so why did they go?
Jerry B. Harvey’s Abilene Paradox tale can be found sourced in the October issue of the Organizational Dynamics journal, 1985. Its message is timeless. He identifies the inability to manage agreement as a major source of organizational dysfunction. He never mentions the need or value of a professionally trained facilitator. Rather, he describes the caller of the meeting as the “confronter.” A professionally trained facilitator provides a more effective term as they should challenge participants (rather than “confront” them).
Therefore, in his article, Harvey covers six issues.
Six Abilene Paradox Lessons
The Abilene Paradox
- Symptoms of the paradox (arguably the most important of the six)
- People in organizations shave private conversations . . .
- . . . and make private agreements as to the steps to “cope” with the situation or problem they face.
- They fail to communicate their underlying desires or beliefs to one another leading to a misperception of the collective reality.
- Members make collective decisions that lead them to take actions contrary to what they want to do, and thereby arrive at results that are counterproductive to the organization’s intent and purposes . . .
- . . . resulting in frustration, anger, irritation, and dissatisfaction with the organization that causes blame toward “other” subgroups.
- Since they are unable to manage agreements (rather than conflict), the cycle repeats itself with greater intensity.
- How they arise in organizations
- The underlying causal dynamics
- Implications for organizational behavior
- Recommendations
- Views toward the broader existential issue
The Abilene Paradox provides fun and enjoyment because his thesis asserts that the failure to communicate effectively runs rampant throughout most large organizations. Facilitated decision-making provides a dependable answer or alternative to absurd decision-making. Why? Because people speak symptomatically. Without proper challenge, they do not think clearly nor do they articulate the driving cause or rationale behind their beliefs.
The Watergate Paradox
Also citing the “Watergate” fiasco that brought down President Nixon, Harvey notes that . . .
“ . . . the central figures of the Watergate episode apparently knew that, for a variety of reasons, the plan to bug the Watergate did not make sense.”
Avoid your own Watergate, or an exhausting 106-mile trek by embracing the value of a trained, professional facilitator.
Remember that two people arguing about the spiciness of a chili or curry are both right. By title, they are called ‘subject(ive)’ matter experts. Your role as the facilitator through the method of the challenge will get them to agree that regardless of spiciness, the chili or curry measures 1,400 Scoville Units.
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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 daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
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by Facilitation Expert | Dec 8, 2016 | Leadership Skills, Meeting Structure, Meeting Support, Meeting Tools
Here’s how to create a project plan or RACI chart (or RACI matrix) when your discussion or meeting deliverable includes assignments for actions that have been built or identified.
As a result of capturing the additional inputs below, you develop a consensual understanding from your group’s roles and responsibilities chart (RACI chart).
(1) WHO will take responsibility (the keystone of a RACI chart or RACI matrix) for
(2) WHAT needs to be done (ranging from simple activities to comprehensive strategies) and
(3) WHEN the assignment(s) may be completed, given resources such as
(4) HOW MUCH extra money (approximate cash or assets) required and
(5) HOW MUCH estimated labor (FTP, or full-time person) is required to complete the assignment?
RACI Chart – Roles and Responsibilities Method for Building a Roles and Responsibilities Matrix[*]
The WHAT group of actions or assignments may take the form of strategies, initiatives, programs, projects, activities, or tasks. They should already be identified before beginning your RACI or RASI assignments. Furthermore, as you increase the resolution from the abstract (eg, strategy) to the concrete (eg, task), expect to increase the resolution of the role or title of the responsible party. For example, strategies may get assigned to business units while tasks get assigned to individual roles such as Business Analyst or Product Owner.
Remember that the WHO dimension might include business units, departments, roles, or people but be consistent and match closely to the appropriate level of responsibility for WHAT needs to be done. Define each of the (five) areas of responsibility—note that each implies the others that follow. For example, the Authorizer is also Responsible. Hence, because they Support the effort, they need to be Informed about it as well.
- A = Authorizes—approves or signs off on the method or results of a given task
- R = Responsible—is held responsible for the success and completion of a given task
- S = Supports—provides assistance, information, etc., in the completion of a task—if requested
- C = Consults—provides consultation as required
- I = Informed—is kept informed of the progress or results of a given task.
- L = Lead (a surrogate or substitute for R)
Rules to Follow When Building a Roles and Responsibility Matrix
Especially relevant, note that C, or Consults has been de-emphasized with a blue font because “consults” can be a nebulous term. Our advice suggests substituting the S because it implies both Supporting and Being Informed.
Consider building your RACI chart or matrix using a large sheet of paper. Use a bright color marker, red is optimal, to document the R. Go back and complete the other relationships as appropriate.
- Portrait view—When using an easel or flip chart, write the people involved (units, job names, etc.) across the top (the WHO) and the tasks, jobs, projects, etc., down the left-hand side (the WHAT).
- Landscape view—Build a matrix on a whiteboard or other large writing area with the tasks, jobs, projects, etc. (the WHAT) across the top and the people involved (units, job names, etc.) down the left-hand side (the WHO).
- One and only one R per row (i.e., for each activity)
- At least one A who is not the R—may be more than one
- When this role requires only to be informed
- S for those supporting the R
NOTE:
- A implies R, S, I
- R implies S, I
- S implies I
Because this approach develops input for a Gantt chart, you also build consensual understanding and shared ownership. Furthermore, a facilitated effort captures the group’s personality, not a lone myopic view from one person’s office or cubicle. A generic and illustrative Gantt chart follows, displaying activities and assignments supporting a faux product development project:
An Infographic GANTT Chart
How to Build Roles and Responsibilities for Multiple Sites
Here is a roles and responsibilities matrix that can help you manage multiple sites. The following supports more complicated situations than the traditional RACI chart (or RACI matrix or its equivalent) discussed above.
Roles and Responsibilities for Multiple Sites
Using the table above as an illustrative template, preview the content you need to facilitate and develop. The content is coupled with additional explanations of the column headings below that support multiple sites.
Activity or Task[*]
The first section provides details about the Activity or Task that needs to be assigned and completed. Since the details will not fit comfortably into a spreadsheet cell, code the cell and refer to another document with additional details. As the details may or may not be complete at the time of the assignment, there may be a separate individual or group who takes on the role of author and provides the details. When initially logged, the details are either complete (y for yes) or not (n for not).
Location
Since identical tasks may be carried out in multiple facilities, code the facilities in the Location section. There could be more than two facilities of course. If more than two, you might substitute “A” for all instead of “B” for both.
Who Does What
The WHO section captures who will be responsible for the activity or task at each respective location. If necessary, you can add an additional column indicating their backup or who may be supporting them.
Frequency
The Frequency section refers to how often the activity or task needs to be performed. The due date represents the completion of the activity or task. For repetitive activities or tasks, the coding shown suggests the following:
- W = weekly
- M = monthly
- Q = quarterly
- A = annually
- V = variable or ad hoc
FTP or Full-time Person
The last section captures the intensity or concentration of effort required to complete the task. While frequently shown as hours per month, you could substitute FTP (i.e., full-time person-equivalent) or whatever measurement works best in your culture (aka FTE or full-time equivalent).
Finally, append the table with a resource column that estimates how much financial capital or currency will support the activity or task. This is a tool that you can modify to your situation, cultural expectations, and terms—so experiment freely.
A Roles and Responsibilities Matrix (RACI Chart) Captures WHO Does WHAT By WHEN
We have discovered at least twenty (20) different varieties of the Responsibility Matrix. While methodologically agnostic, we support any method your culture uses. However, be careful with the “C” as in ‘consult’. Because one can never be certain if an assigned “C” provides you something or you provide them something. Below you will find 20 documented types of roles and responsibilities, and undoubtedly there are others:
Transform Roles and Responsibilities Into a GANTT Chart
Click here to see a recorded demonstration of how to transform your roles and responsibility matrix into a Gantt chart.
- ARCI
- RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consult, Informed)
- RACIA (Approve)
- RASI (Supports)
- RASCI
- PARIS
- ALRIC
- RASCIO (Omitted)
- LACTI (Lead, Tasked)
- AERI (Endorsement)
- RACI-V
- CAIRO
- DRACI (Drives)
- DACI
- DRAM (Deliverables Review and Approval Matrix)
- RACIT
- RASIC
- RACI+F, where F stands for Facilitator
- CARS (Communicate, Approve, Responsible & Support)
- PACSI (Performed, Accountable, Control, Suggested & Informed)
[*] Moreover, for a thorough primer and clear discussion on RACI, see “RACI Matrix: How does it help Project Managers?”
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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 daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
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Related video
by Facilitation Expert | Dec 1, 2016 | Meeting Support, Problem Solving
Decision quality increases with the number of available options. The MGRUSH technique has long promoted the concept of team diversity to improve decision quality. Most understand that properly facilitated teams are smarter than the smartest person on the team, especially when you increase team diversity.
- Teams create more options than aggregating individual inputs.
Dial-Up Decision Quality with More Diverse Teams
Diverse teams push even higher, why?
A 2015 McKinsey study found that among nearly 400 public companies in the top quartile for ethnic and racial diversity in management, they were 35% more likely to have financial returns above their industry mean. An additional positive factor was found for gender diversity as well. Credit Suisse found among 2,400 global companies that “organizations with at least one female board member yielded a higher return on equity and higher net income growth than those that did not have any women on the board.”[1]
In addition to decision quality mentioned above, a November 2016 HBR (Harvard Business Review) article by David RockHeidi and Grant Halvorson provides three additional reasons to promote diversity within your teams:
- Assuredly, diverse teams rely more on facts,
- Diverse teams process facts more carefully,
- Consequently, diverse teams are more innovative
With some strong research to back them up, the rationale for each follows.
Diverse Teams Rely More On Facts
When teams and groups are stirred up with heterogeneity, they find common ground in facts. Ethnically diverse groups make more accurate predictions than homogeneous groups. Because they focus less on the subjective feelings of individuals, they present arguments that belie the objective nature of the group at large. Therefore, by mixing up groups, participants become more aware of their own biases and heuristics.
“Diverse teams are more likely to constantly reexamine facts and remain objective. They may also encourage greater scrutiny of each member’s actions, keeping their joint cognitive resources sharp and vigilant.”
Diverse Teams Process Facts More Carefully
Increased diversity forces teams to take a more disciplined approach to analyzing information. Referring to a study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin by Katherine Phillips of Northwestern University, groups with ‘newcomers’ were more likely to make accurate decisions than those without.
“Remember: Considering the perspective of an outsider may seem counterintuitive, but the payoff can be huge.”
Diverse Teams Are More Innovative
Innovation drives superior profits and customer lifetime value. The authors refer to a study of over 4,000 companies published in Innovation: Management, Policy & Practice.
“ . . . they found that companies with more women were more likely to introduce radical new innovations into the market over a two-year period.”
Separately, a study of nearly 8,000 firms in the UK indicates clearly that diverse leadership teams are more likely to develop new products. Therefore, according to RockHeidi and Halvorson:
“Hiring individuals who do not look, talk, or think like you can allow you to dodge the costly pitfalls of conformity, which discourages innovative thinking.”
While the HBR article emphasizes the enrichment of employee pools by varying gender, race, and nationality, you should aspire for heterogeneity among your teams and meetings. Divers teams monitor personal bias and validate assumptions more thoroughly. As you facilitate and lead meetings with higher-quality decisions and output, your projects will and programs will more likely succeed as well.
______
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 daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
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by Facilitation Expert | Nov 17, 2016 | Communication Skills
Not all situations are covered by cookbook agendas or avail a methodologist to help. The facilitator must develop their approach another way. Therefore, use the Single Question Approach to develop new questions that lead to a meeting method complete with a detailed agenda.
The Single Question Approach breaks down the big question that analyzes the primary problem by breaking it into detailed supporting questions. Focused questions provide groups with traction and are much easier to answer.
The Single Question Approach
Method for the Single Question Approach
The Questions
What is the single question, the answer to which the group needs to know to accomplish its purpose?
Example: A workshop to design a newsletter could begin with the single (and broad) question, “What is the content and format of this newsletter?”
Sub-Questions
What sub-questions must be answered before we can answer the single question we just formulated? While preparing, talk to participants and find out what questions they suggest we answer during the meeting. Test your questions prior to the meeting for clarity, precision, and completeness.
Example: Our newsletter workshop question can be answered when the following sub-questions are answered.
- Who is the newsletter audience?
- What is the purpose of the newsletter?
- What are their interests?
- Why would they read a newsletter?
- What do they already know?
- What do they want to know?
- Which media would they prefer?
Sequencing
Sequence them in an appropriate order—which needs to be answered first, second, and so on. Sequencing creates topical flow—facilitators lead with coherent agenda steps, not a laundry list of questions. The order is based on which answers help in answering subsequent questions.
Example: For our newsletter, the questions might be answered in the following sequence.
- What is the purpose of the newsletter?
- Who is the newsletter audience?
- Why would they read a newsletter?
- What are their interests?
- Do we know what they want to know?
- What do they already know?
- Which media would they prefer?
Organizing
Next group the questions. We could just leave them as is and step through the questions in this order, but it doesn’t clearly provide us with our deliverable. Participants think better when we categorize information to create natural breaks. Group the questions into a single, definable product at the end of each set of questions—or question.
Example: In our newsletter example, we might have four key categories; Newsletter Purpose, Audience, Content, and Media.
- Question 1 defines the Newsletter’s Purpose.
- Questions 2 and 3 define the Audience.
- Questions 4, 5, and 6 define the Content.
- Question 7 defines the Media.
Agenda
What are the best descriptors and sequence of the categories?
Example: Our newsletter workshop simple agenda might be . . .
- Introduction
- Purpose of the newsletter
- Audience
- Content
- Media
- Review and Wrap up
Comments
- Advantages—Good if under time pressure and you need a
quick agenda. Forces a decision. Include within other agendas.
- Disadvantages—Very difficult in conflict-ridden or very
complex situations.
______
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 daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
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by Facilitation Expert | Nov 10, 2016 | Analysis Methods, Meeting Tools
Force Field analysis modifies and improves upon a similar approach called “pros & cons.” Force Field analysis helps groups identify and prioritize actions and opportunities for improvement, especially among product and project teams.
This approach to Force Field analysis makes it easier for groups to organize their thinking while encouraging thoughtful exploration. Once supportive and hindering forces are identified, the group analyzes the impact, leading to actions that reinforce the positive and mitigate the negative forces.
Procedure to Facilitate Force Field Analysis
Force field analysis begins by identifying the objectives, or CTQs (Critical to Quality), or targets. First, facilitate clear understanding of WHAT needs to change. Next, for each discrete objective (typically built in advance of a meeting or workshop and provided in a pre-read as a slide or handout), ask the following questions, ONE AT A TIME:
- What is hindering us from reaching this target (negative, or forces hindering change)?
- Environmental Forces
- Structural/ Organizational Forces
- Technological Forces
- Individual Forces
- What is helping us move toward this target (positive, or forces supporting change)?
- Environmental Forces
- Structural/ Organizational Forces
- Technological Forces
- Individual Forces
The responses will generate two new lists (ie, positive/ supporting and negative/ hindering forces). Adapt the Peter Senge philosophy that it is easier to remove obstacles (the hindrances) than to push harder (supportive forces). Focus discussion on what we can do differently to overcome the hindrances or obstacles. Facilitate the discussion on one obstacle at a time. For each obstacle, consider at least one action and perhaps more.
Once all actions have been clarified and understood, it may be necessary to prioritize them. When you have more than a one dozen actions, consider the Pareto Principle (ie, 80-20 Rule). If so, use MG RUSH’s PowerBall, Perceptual Mapping, or Decision-Matrix tools to facilitate consensual prioritization.
Notes about Force Field Analysis
See how the first list of objectives generates two lists (i.e., supports and hindrances) that lead to one consolidated action list, as shown in the diagram:
Transform Force Field Analysis into Actions
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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 daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
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by Facilitation Expert | Nov 3, 2016 | Analysis Methods, Decision Making, Meeting Structure, Prioritizing
Quantitative SWOT analysis contrasts the internal, controllable aspects of the organization (i.e., Strengths and Weaknesses) with external, uncontrollable situational factors (i.e., Opportunities and Threats) to create consensus around potential actions an organization might take to reach its goals and objectives.
Qualitative situational analysis[1] provides a poor method for building consensus. In what Dr. Tufte refers to as ‘flatland’, answers pop out at people, but not consensual answers. Therefore, consider using quantitative SWOT analysis, developed by Terrence Metz while attending the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Traditionally, SWOT provides a narrative description of the current situation. We encourage a quantitative approach whenever you are faced with prioritizing a complex situation involving dozens, or even hundreds of options.
TO-WS (SWOT) QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS (Current Situation or Situation Analysis)
This activity describes the current Situation by developing a shared understanding to support WHAT Actions a group should embrace so that they reach their Key Measures such as objectives (SMART), goals (fuzzy), and considerations (binary).
A quantitative view of the Current Situation displays the foundation for justifying Actions. Consequently, Actions that currently work well are potentially reinforced and renewed alongside new Actions that get approved and developed.
The term used to describe Actions will change depending on your level in the holarchy. For example, an organization will refer to Actions as strategies, a business unit may use the term initiatives, a department or program office may call their Actions new products or new projects, and a product or project team may call their Actions, activities, or tasks. For each group, the term used represents WHAT the group is going to do to reach its Key Measures that were established to ensure that the group achieves its Vision.
The Current Situation provides consensual descriptions of:
- Current environment (TO-WS)
- Threats (externally uncontrollable, frequent trends)
- Opportunities (externally uncontrollable, frequent trends)
- Weaknesses (internally controlled, as viewed by competitors or competitive forces)
- Strengths (internally controlled, as viewed by competitors or competitive forces)
- Assumptions made in developing analysis
- Model representing how stakeholders view the business or organization
WHAT Actions the group foresees, given their Current Situation, to help reach or exceed their Measures in support of achieving their Vision
General Questions, Which . . .
- threats are most worrisome and justify defense?
- opportunities provide a real chance of success?
- weaknesses need the most correction?
- core competencies or strengths should be leveraged?
Blank TO-WS Scoring Sheet
Procedure
- Have people prepared to share their TO-WS factors in advance but keep them private. Let them reference their notes as we proceed.
- Develop consensual lists and complete definitions (use Definition Tool) for each Threat, Opportunity, Weakness, and Strength. If necessary, reduce each list to the top four to six factors (see Categorizing logic and then use PowerBalls for prioritizing, along with Bookends to prevent wasting time).
- As you build four different lists, describe each entry clearly and carefully. Threats and Opportunities are externally uncontrolled and frequently represent trends. Weaknesses and Strengths are internally controlled as viewed by competitors and outsiders.
- Build and enforce strong definitions and potential measurements behind each TO-WS. For example, the strength of ‘Brand’ could be measured as market share among target customers or the threat of ‘Transportation Costs’ could be indexed to the cost of a barrel of oil or the price for a liter of diesel.
NOTE: Reverse the common SWOT sequence to TO-WS because it’s easier and more effective to deal initially with external factors, especially Threats. Technically, there are only two lists, both with a plus and minus end of their continuum. If the factor is external and you do not control it, by definition it must be a Threat or an Opportunity (TO). Therefore, if the factor is internal and you control it, by definition it must be a Weakness or a Strength (WS).
REMEMBER: NEVER allow a group to define an internally controllable Weakness as an Opportunity for improvement. If it is controllable, by definition it is a Weaknesses and NOT an Opportunity.
We call it TO-WS because most experts agree this is the best sequence to consider:
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- External Threats: It’s easy to imagine what could go wrong.
- External Opportunities: Since Threats come more easily, remind participants to refer to their list of prepared factors.
- Internal Weaknesses: Participants are usually more sensitive about things going wrong than to what is positive.
- Internal Strengths: Begin by referring to their notes.
NEXT
- Create a definition package so that each of the characteristics scored is based upon an agreed ‘operational definition.’
- Convert your four lists into a matrix (usually a spreadsheet) with Threats (-) and Opportunities (+) on the horizontal axis and Strengths (+) and Weaknesses (-) on the vertical axis (because it is easier to visually focus on columns rather than rows).
- Remind participants that they are on the inside looking out and have them score, using instructions that follow later.
- Aggregate the individual scores into a collective score. If you are using the spreadsheet, it will automatically calculate a group total.
- Review with the group to identify the most impactful Actions—strategies, initiatives, products, projects, or activities.
CRITICAL NOTE:
Carefully enforce the operational level in your holarchy and meeting scope because the Strengths and Weaknesses MUST BE within the control of THIS group, NOT simply the company or organization. For example, a department may not control its budget so financial resources may be viewed as a Threat to the group because they do not control the budget or financial assets.
Sample Questions to Generate Threats:
- What is your competition doing much better than you?
- What regulatory issues could stop or hinder progress?
- Which trends are a real threat to your organization/ project?
Some Questions to Generate Opportunities:
- What are you not doing yet but could easily see yourself doing with the right momentum?
- Name a political policy that might help.
- Which trends provide a new opportunity for you?
Sample Questions to Generate Weaknesses:
- What could you improve?
- Detail something not working so well.
- What do others outside do poorly and so do you?
- What should you stop doing?
Some Questions to Generate Strengths:
- How do you currently achieve success?
- What do you do better than others?
- What do others outside view as your strengths?
PARTICIPANT SCORING INSTRUCTIONS
- Working within each column (i.e., external factor), one at a time ask: “What am I suggesting we do (to take advantage of this specific opportunity) or (to defend us against this specific threat)?”
- As you decide on WHAT to do, write down your most important ideas on a separate piece of paper to bring with you to the next meeting.
- You have nine points to be used in each column. Within each column, distribute the nine (9) points according to the impact or perceived value of each proposed Action (i.e., WHAT we should do to seize an opportunity or defend ourselves against a threat).
The total for each column should equal nine (9).
- Avoid assigning one point to multiple items by awarding the most significant items three, four, or more points.
- Strive to assign points to three cells at most in each column. Assigning nine points to only one cell is okay. Another tactic might be to assign five (5) points to the most important, three (3) points to the next important, and one (1) point to the third most important cell, with the balance of the cells kept blank.
- Use your business understanding—a blank cell does not mean it is unimportant. Rather, it means it is less important than others that offer more impact or leverage. If you are compelled to assign similar values to everything, the results will be watered down and provide less value for developing Actions than if you focus on the most compelling Actions.
One Person Scoring Sheet
NOTE: Participants should think about each cell in a column carefully when asking “WHAT can we do to seize this opportunity?” or “WHAT do we need to do to defend against this threat?” They might write their thoughts on a separate sheet of paper and when they have completely analyzed a column, go to the cells that represent the most important ideas and put the most points in those cells.
Scoring Tabulation
- Collect the scoring. Using a spreadsheet, compute the final scores for each cell intersection, each column, each row, and each quadrant.
- Review the scores with the group and highlight the rows and quadrants with the most significant (i.e., highest) scores.
- Immediately move to the next step in the agenda to convert the results into narrative Actions. Anticipate the ‘law of large numbers’ as people speaking early will defend themselves with the ‘large numbers’ from the spreadsheet.
Scoring Aggregated for Eleven Participants
Riffs and Variations
Using Bookend rhetoric, force rank each Strength or Weakness specific to each external factor. For example, if there are twelve combined Strengths and Weaknesses, we would support the following analysis for each column:
-
- Instruct each participant to ask: “Of these twelve controllable factors, which has the greatest impact on (taking advantage of this opportunity) or (defending us against this threat)?” More is better so assign the answer a twelve (12).
- Now instruct each participant to ask: “Of the remaining eleven factors, which has the least impact on . . . ?” Assign a one (1).
- Continue using Bookends, which is next most, next least, etc., until all have been assigned a rank.
- Aggregate scores and continue to convert them into Actions described in the next Agenda Step.
You might conduct a Quantitative TO-WS for the current date and situation, and then conduct another Quantitative TO-WS for some agreed-upon date in the future. Encourage participants to unveil the strategy by determining what Actions will get us from the current date to the future date.
To support change management, you could also conduct Quantitative TO-WS at varying levels within the organization. Contrasting the Current Situation at the C-Suite, Director, and supervisory levels provides interesting and compelling evidence as to WHAT “Actions” need to occur that will get us from where we are to where we would like to be in the future.
______
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 daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
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by Facilitation Expert | Oct 20, 2016 | Analysis Methods, Meeting Structure
When making decisions, consider testing for decision quality (DQ)[1] so that you can avoid having another meeting. A quick method involves testing your options against your purpose to gauge alignment and support. However, this DQ Spider offers a more robust method.
First, remember that the MGRUSH technique defines consensus as a decision good enough that it ‘will be supported’ (not thwarted in the hallway or uprooted in the board room) and not cause anyone to ‘lose any sleep’ rather than being anyone’s ‘favorite’ or making them ‘happy.’ Hence, this is NOT Kum-Bah-Yah, rather we are relying on the prowess of structured facilitation.
Decision Quality Spider Chart
How to Begin Using the DQ Spider
When either comparing decisions or testing for the quality of a single decision, the method remains the same. Therefore, plan on scoring and discussing six vectors that impact decision quality:
The Six Vectors[2] and Some Supporting Questions of a DQ Spider
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Appropriate Context (Frame)
- Do you have an articulate problem to address?
- How clear is the background, context, and impact of the decision?
- How well do stakeholders commonly understand the problem?
- To what extent do stakeholders commonly prioritize the problem?
- To what extent has the decision been quantified for its impact, typically in dollars or FTP (full-time person)?
-
Options Development (NOTE: some call these ‘alternatives.’ but strictly speaking, in the English language, an alternative is one of two there are more than two, and they are called options)
- What are the possible solutions (decisions)?
- What potentially critical options are missing?
- Which inconsequential options be eliminated?
- With remaining options:
- To what extent are they realistic (doable)?
- If the option is selected, to what extent will we win?
-
Meaningful & Reliable Information
- To what extent do we know what we need to know?
- To what extent do we NOT know what we need to know?
- How trustworthy are the sources of our information?
- To what extent will this be a fact- or evidence-based decision?
-
Clear Decision Criteria (aka Values, Trade-offs, etc.)
- To what extent have we identified and clarified the most important criteria?
- How well have the criteria been prioritized to reflect our internal value drivers?
- How comprehensive are the criteria to help measure success against the project or organizational goals and objectives?
-
Logic and Reasoning
- How solid are our research, logic, and findings?
- How well can we explain our choice for and choices against our options?
- To what extent have we applied appropriate tools and rigors to evaluate this option?
-
Action and Commitment
- How confident are we projecting the outputs or outcome of this option?
- How ready are we to commit ownership and resources to this option?
- To what extent have we missed anything substantive that could impact the quality of this decision?
How to Complete the DQ Spider?
Consider this quick and simple method to capture scoring, using a low of one (1) and a high of five (5).
- Instruct each team member or stakeholder to generate their scores for the six vectors above. Thus they attribute an individual score against all remaining options.
- Using a spreadsheet or simply drawing it on a large format Post-It® paper or whiteboard, put a dot on the average value. Also place a dot for each outlier, the lowest and highest score, along each of the six vectors.
- Discuss the outliers so that everyone can support the original average, or move the average value either lower or higher based on the discussion and consensual understanding.
- Facilitate discussion around comparing the results and consider the following questions:
- To what extent are the values defensible?
- Which scores appear too high or low relative to the project or initiative they are supporting? (adjust the score if necessitated)
- To what extent do the differences represent real risk or simply differences of opinion?
- You may want to force rank the six vectors if some are more important than others. Consequently, tell the group to consider the ranking during its assessment, and if necessary, change the values based on a permutation of the reduced or increased weight of each vector.
- Therefore, in our illustration above, stakeholders would favor Option 3 if Ownership and Commitment are substantially more important than logic or reliable information.
- Likewise, stakeholders would favor Option 1 if Context and Logic become more important than Criteria and Information.
NOTES:
[1] NOTE: Microsoft Excel refers to this chart as a “Radar” Chart. However, various terms are used by other consulting firms as well.
[2] A ‘dimension’ or ‘factor’ captures a single measurement while a ‘vector’ captures multiple dimensions or factors. Additionally, vectors normally capture many more than two measurements.
______
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 daily during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.
Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)
Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a free timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools.
