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Estimating Workshop and Meeting Duration — Tips and Guidelines

by Facilitation Expert | Oct 13, 2016 | Meeting Agendas, Meeting Support

Accurate estimating for meeting duration helps optimize the schedules and expectations of your participants. Therefore, stay vigilant. When estimated incorrectly, your sessions risk the worst deliverable from any meeting — another meeting.

Poor estimating also leads to poor-quality deliverables. Additionally, if your meeting duration expands, expect scheduling challenges from people and facilities (room availability) and critically — erosion of your facilitator’s credibility.

General Guidelines for Estimating Meeting Duration

Complete meetings within fifty minutes unless your meeting focuses on information updates, such as a staff meeting or daily scrum — then limit the meeting to fifteen minutes, standing up. Time limits ensure that participants do not become frustrated or exhausted. Likewise, consistency encourages more reliable and prompt attendance for the meetings you facilitate.

Estimating Meeting Duration

Schedule your meetings to begin at five past the hour or half hour. Conclude within fifty minutes, typically five minutes before the hour or half-hour. In other words, be the one session leader courteous enough to allow your participants time between meetings (i.e., back-to-backs) to check their email, grab some coffee, etc.

Estimating Workshop Duration

As a general rule, schedule workshops for no more than two (or three) days in length, although Design Sprints and Hot Washes (aka Lookbacks or Post Mortems) will run up to five days.

The workshop is the ultimate time-box—that is, work expands or contracts to fill the time allotted. Therefore, Guesstimate how long each agenda step takes. After that, add up your times. When they total between sixteen and twenty-five hours, make it a three-day workshop. If less, make it a two-day (or partial) session. If more than thirty hours, you are better off scheduling two sessions (unless participants are subject to substantial travel time and costs).

Office politics, poor workshop environment (physical), lack of clear workshop definition or meeting purpose, and characteristics of the project all affect the risk of on-time completion.

12 PMI (Project Management Institute) Planning Steps Applied to Managing Multiple Workshops

Define the scope and list project phase deliverables needed
Identify checkpoints in the process
Determine business function and personnel involvement
Identify workshop deliverables and agendas
Identify approaches and procedures required
Schedule opening and closing sessions
Develop schedules and organize sessions so they feed information properly
Schedule participants
Match facilities and session leaders
Schedule preparation time
Finish schedule and apply calendar dates
Adjust as needed

IDENTIFY PRODUCT OR PROJECT DELIVERABLES

The purpose of this step is to identify the products produced by the project. Product or project deliverables define the expected output of the workshops—the session deliverables. Consequently, the project deliverables indicate the needed type of workshop and who participates.

List the project deliverables (e.g., requirements document) needed for the phases included in the facilitated efforts.
Organize these chronologically and into logical groupings.
Define or obtain an example of what the session deliverable should look like to support the project deliverables.

ID CHECKPOINTS

The identification of checkpoints is often the easiest way to partition workshops and their session deliverables. This partitioning helps you schedule workshops based on the output expected rather than forcing a workshop based on a methodology or life cycle. Therefore, this second step of partitioning often defines the number and types of workshops required.

Identify logical checkpoints in the process.
Often these checkpoints include a walk-through or phase review. These identify when to review deliverables.

DETERMINE BUSINESS FUNCTIONS

This step adds the second of four variables—participant resource availability—to the planning process. It validates the groupings completed in steps one and two as well as provides a functional partitioning for the identification of workshops.

Identify the business areas, functions, and people (potential participants) required to or involved in producing each of the session deliverables.
Group the participants by function.

DEFINE WORKSHOP DELIVERABLES

This step breaks down the project deliverables into various components built in each workshop—further defining the output of each workshop. It builds on the required project deliverable, the organization, and the personnel involved and identifies what to produce in segmented pieces and what those pieces look like.

Build a hierarchical chart as the one illustrated in the sample (at the end of this section) organizing the boxes by the deliverables identified in step one.
Indicate the checkpoints identified in step two.
Follow the guidelines in the next steps identifying three- to four-day efforts.
Identify the session deliverable of each.

ID APPROACHES

This step identifies the necessary approach and workshops required to produce the workshop deliverables and uses or modifies the results from step four. Therefore, you develop a sense of the draft agendas.

Identify the appropriate approach for each group of session deliverables and functions identified in steps three and four.
Review to ensure that each workshop covers only three or four days—adjust the sub-boxes of step four accordingly.
Identify which sessions will require multiple workshops (i.e., two or three, three-day workshops for one session).

SCHEDULE OPENING AND CLOSING

This step ensures that you do not forget to kick off or close with a structured technique. Subsequently, this step establishes the calendar dates. For large projects, a general opening session avoids many small opening sessions.

Schedule at least one half-day beginning workshop (opening kickoff) overall.
Schedule one half-day review session for each checkpoint identified in step two.
Identify any pre-session education required (e.g., packages, technology, etc.) that aid the process. Schedule these accordingly.
Schedule the wrap-up session—This can be a structured walk-through at the end of major project deliverables.

ORGANIZE FEEDS

This step verifies a correctly scheduled third variable—information needs and feeds. If the flow of the workshops is incorrect, there will be a great deal of retrofitting. Therefore, perform this step with great care.

Review the flow of work and information from one functional area to the next.
Review any information models and data flow diagrams that exist that identify how one function feeds another.
Organize the workshops so that the information (output) from one workshop feeds the next workshop—not the other way around using the information gathered as part of the reviews above.

SCHEDULE PARTICIPANTS

This step assigns participants to workshops and ensures that critical resource problems do not occur. Consequently, the remaining steps schedule the dates and facilities.

Build a schedule or hierarchy of the workshops.
List the names of the participants in each workshop.
Adjust the schedule to avoid over-scheduling any participants or creating critical resource problems (i.e., one or two critical people involved for too long a time in consecutive workshops).

MATCH FACILITIES AND SESSION LEADERS

This step applies workshop resources—the fourth variable defined (rooms and people) to the workshops defined earlier. It uses the risk assessment process defined in Risk Analysis to provide the proper session leaders, schedule facilities, identify parallel sessions, and correct critical session leader resources. Additionally, this step iterates with the next two steps.

Assign each workshop to any available rooms.
Review the schedule to determine possible parallel sessions.
Schedule a session leader for no more than ten workshop days  in a month.

SCHEDULE PREP TIME

This step schedules the preparation time for each workshop. It accomplishes the scheduling of session leaders and parallel sessions. After that, you can compare your workload capacity with resource availability.

Schedule appropriate preparation time for each workshop.
For single workshop projects, preparation requires from one to three days for every workshop day. Schedule preparation for one to two weeks ahead of the workshop.
For large projects, with multiple workshops, preparation is one to four weeks of effort scheduled two to five weeks before the first workshop. Adequate coordination and agenda preparation requires an additional day per workshop. See the sample project plan at the end of this section.
On large projects, schedule enough time between sessions to ensure that the participants have an opportunity to review previous documentation (i.e., prepare themselves) so that they are ready to attend the upcoming workshops.
Adjust the schedule as necessary to ensure proper preparation and non-workshop review between sessions.

APPLY CALENDAR

The purpose is to apply calendar dates to the proposed schedule. It also adjusts for holidays and other days off work by taking the proposed logical schedule and applying physical attributes to it (calendar dates). Therefore, the schedule from this point on becomes more commitment.

Apply calendar dates to the workshops.
Apply the calendar dates so that at least one week out of four  is spent in non-workshop activities such as reviewing  previous work.
Adjust the schedule as necessary depending on holidays, management directives, project goals, or personnel vacations.

SCHEDULE AND ADJUST

This step of the planning process turns the plan into a schedule. Above all, this step must not violate any of the flow or resource guidelines stated in steps seven through ten.

Schedule the workshops with the participants involved. This may be by a meeting or a memo.
Adjust the schedule as needed to ensure that the participants attend.

Estimating Meeting Duration for Specific Deliverables

If a business is not clearly defined or widely differing opinions exist among the business people about the process they do or should go through, then schedule one high-level session to further scope the business (Context Diagram workshop) before defining what and how many detailed sessions to hold.
Define a discrete purpose for each multiple-day session. If the session appears to have two or more major reasons for existence, then it probably ought to be two or more sessions.
Participants for high-level workshops (Project Planning, Activity Flows, Context Diagram, Logical Modeling) come from diverse work backgrounds. However, for detailed workshops, the participants may work in only one or two areas. If it appears that there are many areas represented in a detailed session, the scope is probably too broad and you should break it into further and discrete sessions.
A two-day detailed Activity Flows workshop provides enough requirements for numerous Detailed Design approaches.
Adjust your estimates based on project or technique risk (see  Risk Management). Low-risk results shorten times. High-risk results extend times.
A two- or three-day Activity Flows workshop provides the following:
- Definition of a business process for a given area (specified scope).
- Problem identification and high-level requirements for a major portion of any project or initiative.
A two- or three-day Activity Flow combined with a two- or three-day Logical Modeling workshop covers the following:
- Requirements for a new product or a software package that automates a focused business area (e.g., forecasting).
- Redefinition of a business (e.g., redefining an existing process; e.g., insurance agent commissions).
Planning sessions require two for Project Planning and three days for Organizational Design. The sessions may conclude quicker if you and your participants prepare thoroughly.

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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.

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Meeting Graphics — Increasing Complexity from Posters and Lists Through Matrices and Mandalas

by Facilitation Expert | Oct 6, 2016 | Meeting Support, Meeting Tools

Meeting graphics such as illustrations capture concepts and ideas that substitute for words. Why should we care about meeting graphics and illustrations?

Meeting graphics can substitute for words. Illustrations, icons, and symbols make it easier to capture complex ideas and concepts. Hence, making it easier to build consensus and get meeting participants to . . .

Agree on concepts
Create a memorable strategic plan for vision, mission, and objectives
Explore complex ideas
Find common ground and overcome communication problems
Identify key problems
“See” what we mean
Visualize the scope of issues

We typically depend on the written or spoken word to express our ideas. Professional facilitators extend beyond narrative. Thus they enable groups to better and more fully express themselves.

Facilitator’s Role

The facilitator’s role makes it easier for groups of people to communicate effectively. Participants use all of their senses to communicate, not solely sound. We interpret what we see and hear—but each one interprets it differently. When one person has a vision of the business, that vision is buried in the back of the mind. They hold an image that is different than the image in the back of the mind of the next person.

For example, if you heard the term “building,” what pops into your mind? Is it a verb? Does it represent a noun? Is the building two stories, a skyscraper, or a house? Words leave much to the interpretation of the person hearing them. If we draw pictures to support words, we embrace more senses and increase the precision of the message.

Why are Graphics Important?

Graphics leverage the logic that “Pictures are worth a thousand words”. Images help us communicate and cross cultural boundaries. Notice that international road signs are symbols—not words. The terms “house,” “casa,” or “Maison” are less important than understanding what we are talking about a . . .

Meeting Graphics

Hence, other graphic examples include blueprints, maps, process flow diagrams, and analytical models. Most of these can be described using words. However, few narratives are as clear as ideas supported with the appropriate graphics.

Seven Graphic Formats

Seven different graphic formats are useful at differing stages of meetings and workshops. The seven formats, from least complex to most complex, are:

Poster—a central theme
List—a sequenced list of ideas
Cluster—an arranged collection of ideas
Matrix—a forced comparison of ideas
Diagram—a model of an idea
Drawing—a metaphor or image of the idea
Mandala—a unifying, centered image

Each graphic format provides an increasingly complex layer to help the group’s understanding and commitment.

Application

Designing a workshop requires understanding and coordinating several issues and people. Stepping through the seven formats, we may use a . . .

Poster—to announce the workshop, date, time, and place.

Poster

List—the items that must be available for the workshop.

List

Cluster—to organize items into appropriate groups, such as roles, logistics, and actions.

Cluster

Matrix—to associate a role to the action or logistics for which the role is responsible.

Matrix

Diagram—to lay out the workshop room in two dimensions.

Diagram

Drawing—to illustrate a three-dimensional view of the workshop room to help us visualize the environment.

Drawing

Mandala—to pull all of the elements together illustrating how each relates and how each contributes to the overall success of the workshop.

Mandala

Roadblocks

Many facilitators are afraid to use graphics because:

“How do I turn them into words or actions?”
“I’m not artistic enough.”
“The participants don’t think they are artistic enough.”
“The participants won’t like it.”
“When do I use them?”

Unfortunately, we have been taught to “stay within the lines.” In workshops, drawing a stick figure is just as effective as drawing a well-proportioned figure. The idea is to communicate. Take confidence that content is more important than presentation. Facilitators need to become comfortable with both drawing images and using graphics in gathering ideas. They should also feel comfortable asking their participants to draw out their ideas. Learning some simple approaches and becoming comfortable drawing simple lines and circles helps us find the “child within” that encourages using graphics.

In Workshops

Therefore, it is not enough to be comfortable drawing pictures. One key problem with graphics and workshops is “When do I use them and how?” Knowing ‘which graphic format to use when’ is important for a facilitator. Using a matrix to define a vision is ineffective. Using a drawing to identify roles and responsibilities becomes too complex. The graphic is the means to an end. Knowing the end and finding the appropriate means makes for a more effective workshop. Realize that graphic formats help people think through a problem when developing consensual solutions.

Use different graphics at different points to help an organization develop a strategic plan—a vision of where they are going. Drawings help with vision and mission (The ‘Coat-of-arms’ tool works wonderfully for a mission). Listing supports objectives, strategies, and critical success factors. As a complement, illustrate your entire strategic plan as an evolving mandala. Create your mural with the various elements as you develop them.

Do’s and Don’ts

The following provides basic guidelines for using graphics during meetings and workshops:

Do make graphics a means to an end. Don’t make them the reason for the effort.
Don’t worry about content. Don’t worry about “artistry”.
Do explain instructions clearly. Don’t be vague or too restrictive.
Do let them know that this is important—part of the process. Don’t let them think that this is “just fun stuff”.
To learn if it doesn’t work. Don’t get worried if it doesn’t work. Fail fast.

Summary

Facilitators need to use more graphics in their workshops. More than creating presentations, our responsibility makes it easier for people to communicate. Verbal/ language communication is one of the vaguest tools we have as people. We should support the narrative with graphics. As session leaders, we should prepare the right tool for the right problem. Often, facilitators get a new hammer and everything looks like a nail. To avoid that, develop a clear understanding of which format to use. Determine what it does for the group and where to take it next to get DONE.

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5 Tips on How to Facilitate Board Meetings (or Committees)

by Facilitation Expert | Sep 29, 2016 | Leadership Skills, Meeting Agendas, Meeting Support

You may effectively facilitate Board Meetings by relying on Robert’s Rules of Order, however, blend in facilitative leadership skills to improve your decision quality.

In 1876 General Henry M. Robert wrote the rules of American Congress (Parliamentary Procedure) for all citizens and societal groups with his publication of Pocket Manual of Rules of Order. Nearly 150 years later, his grandson, Henry M. Robert III, was living with a FAST alumnus (a priest and rector) in the rectory at St Mary’s parish, Annapolis. They frequently argued at dinner time over the value of “voting” compared to “building consensus.” There is a time and place for both methods of decision-making. Never forget, however, that voting may not yield a better decision, only a bigger number.

With traditional Board Meetings, Parliamentary Procedure expedites the meeting and provides enough structure to ensure that the entire scope is covered properly. Specifically, embrace the following facilitative tips:

When You Facilitate Board Meetings, Include Ground Rules

Start every Board or Committee Meeting with a solid, well-prepared introduction. Get your meeting off to a solid start. Cover the seven required activities quickly, but thoroughly. In sequence, the Introductory activities ought to:

How to Facilitate Board Meetings

– Reinforce your role as facilitator and tiebreaker and their roles as equal voices

– Provide one statement that covers the purpose of the meeting

– Stipulate the scope of the meeting

– Codify one statement that distills the meeting deliverable

– Cover any administrative or non-content issues

– Quickly review the Agenda

– Provide Ground Rules to ensure the group gets more done, faster

2. When You Facilitate Board Meetings, Sustain an Upbeat Tempo

Your best meetings will conclude ahead of schedule. Do not over-invest in early topics and shortchange the value of later topics. New Business often follows Department Reports, and arguably remains the most important topic of the meeting. Get to it.

3. When You Facilitate Board Meetings, Do NOT Allow Scope Creep

Do not allow your participants to wander, ramble, and extemporaneously talk too much. Keep them on point. Focus on WHAT has transpired, NOT HOW they are accomplishing stuff. Most importantly, do not deviate from the agenda by jumping around to the topic of the moment. Cut people off if necessary with the caveat that their content will be covered in a later agenda step.

4. When You Facilitate Board Meetings, Focus on Output NOT Outcome

Satisfying the legality of required meetings should never be the deliverable. Focus on change and what actions transpire as a result of shared learnings, experience, and suggestions. Carefully record and separately document decisions, actions, and other inflection points. Visualize your deliverable for every step in the agenda. What should we do now? What should we do differently? If nothing changes, we probably waste our time.

5. When You Facilitate Board Meetings, Manage Open Issues and Next Steps

Make yourself comfortable with some method or tool for managing your Parking Lot and making follow-up assignments. If learnings need to be analyzed further, make your output clear so that your written statements remain as clear input when the issue is brought up again in a different forum. Conclude with any reminders that help participants show up better prepared for the next meeting. And remember, strive for consensus, rather than relying on voting as a simple way out. Likely a more sophisticated ‘way out’ will generate higher returns on the investment of your money and time.

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Tips on How to Back up Meeting Output from Whiteboards/ Easels

by Facilitation Expert | Sep 8, 2016 | Meeting Support

Using your telephone or a separate camera to record and back up meeting output will help you avoid losing valuable information.

You will capture various benefits with very little time or resources required. Back up with a digital camera to provide a feeling of security from the potential loss of information created during your meetings and workshops.

Back up Meeting Output from a Whiteboard or Easel for Later Transcription

When you back up meeting output from easel paper and whiteboards, you have made the information portable. Photographic or video recordings also free up the whiteboard space for additional writing. Recordings allow you to complete your transcriptions and meeting notes “offline.”

Backup Meeting Output

Photographic recording is particularly useful when meetings are impromptu and the whiteboard is the only practical tool for capturing notes. Typically we always take digital pictures or video at the end of every session and the end of each day during a multi-day workshop, regardless if we still have the paper rolled up or not.

Tips and Tricks

Download the photos quickly to your PC so that the information is fresh, should any portion of the photos be illegible.
Work in a room that is lit well enough to help you avoid the need for a camera flash. If you have the option of disabling the flash and have sufficient natural lighting, turn the flash off to avoid the problem mentioned in the next point. .
Be careful to avoid the distortion of an electronic flash. Take the photo at a slight angle. If you are using a flash (or it operates automatically), do not shoot your photo straight at a perfect, perpendicular angle. Rather, skew your angle a few degrees to avoid the bounce of the flash back into the lens.
Be sure that the entire span of the whiteboard or easel paper is captured in the photo(s). Even if you intend to capture the board/easel in sections, the big view provides a valuable reference later. Alternatively, use the panoramic setting or take a video of the entire room as well.
Having advised you to capture all of the writing in the room, zoom in on narrative sections so that you can record text that has legibility challenges. Capture photos of the board in sections—just in case—to ensure legible images for later transcription.
Preview the digital photos that you’ve just taken to assure yourself of:
- the field of view that you intended,
- the legibility of the sections of the board/easel that you’ve captured, and
- that you’ve captured ALL the information you intended.

Please note that some cell phone cameras are insufficient for the task due to low picture resolution and lower quality lenses, but they are improving with each new generation of handheld devices.

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Lead and Facilitate Root Cause Analysis that Leads Directly to Innovation

by Facilitation Expert | Sep 1, 2016 | Decision Making, Prioritizing, Problem Solving

By using root cause analysis, you can develop Critical to Quality (CTQ), Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and Objectives/ Key Results (OKRs). Sometimes referred to as Ishikawa or “Fishbone” diagrams, the procedure builds a visual mind map that identifies possible causes. By applying various perspectives and asking sharper questions, you can lead a team to innovation.

Named after Professor Kaoru Ishikawa (University of Tokyo), he developed the root cause analysis method in 1945 to resolve steel production problems. Also known as “Fishbone” diagrams, they support analysis, identify gaps, and provide insight into possible SMART criteria (i.e., Specific, Measurable, Adjustable, Relevant, and Time-Based). Consequently, clear and simple output makes it easier to assign follow-up activities that lead to innovation and proactive changes.

How to Facilitate Root Cause Analysis

Also referred to as a Cause and Effect Diagram, here is how to facilitate root cause analysis. As you begin to facilitate root cause analysis, the illustration will resemble the skeleton of a fish with large bones (i.e., perspectives) and small bones (i.e., specific causes within each perspective).

Facilitate KPI or Root Cause Analysis Through an Illustrative Fishbone Diagram

The Fishbone Diagram

The fishbone diagram helps categorize the potential causes of problems using a structured manner so that the team can identify and focus on root cause analysis. Therefore, the workshop steps to facilitate root cause analysis (or KPIs) and build a simple cause and effect diagram include the following:

In advance, prepare a blank fishbone drawing (devoid of content) using either multiple sheets of paper or some professional drawing tool.
Use the objectives of the project to identify the “primary effect” or result that needs to be changed or accomplished. Decide on a phrase or a one-word label that captures the meaning of the end state. For example, the term “CHANGE” captures the ‘effect’ being analyzed in the drawing above.
Based on importance and time limitations, constrain the total number of primary “causes,” between eight and twelve total. However, as a practical activity, you may also focus on fewer, even one or two primary perspectives, or four as illustrated above.
Alternatively, you may launch a brainstorming activity of all possible causes, and then utilize a common purpose to help the team categorize them. Considering the Pareto Principle, many leaders approach their cause-and-effect diagrams with four high-impact perspectives. Therefore, study the perspectives below to isolate the ones most likely to have an impact. Four perspectives in the illustration include:

- Tools: Traditionally seen as the technology or equipment that leads to error, but could also reflect tangible resources that provide possible causes
- Method: Isolates the activities or tasks that might be the source of concern or the opportunity for improvement
- People: Intends to capture the group relationships and quality of decisions made
- Data: Traditionally seen as the information required by the causal element to create the desired effect

Use Breakout Teams for Root Cause Analysis

You might consider using breakout teams and assigning one or more primary perspectives or potential causes to each team. Strive to confirm the most likely cause as a large group before breaking out. Then assign different causes or perspectives to each team, or have them work offline for detailed development.

During a break, lunchtime, or evening, create an illustration of your diagram. Additionally, provide your workshop participants with full narrative definitions for each of the perspectives used in your fishbone diagram.
Depending on time constraints, lead your root cause analysis activity either by beginning with the most important perspective, taking the likely causes within a perspective, or perhaps grabbing the easiest to manage, the “low-hanging” fruit. Determine clear and simple questions in advance and know what you intend to do with the results. Understand the type of documentation required to satisfy your deliverables. For example, if you are leading up to a RACI (i.e., roles and responsibilities) chart, then articulate the next steps or activities that need to be assigned.

Building a fishbone diagram generates consensus around the assumptions. Once your participants fully understand the question, agree on the causes associated with each perspective. Their consensual understanding makes it easier to build consensus around priorities and next steps. Carefully identify WHO does WHAT by WHEN to design your next steps.

Changing Perspectives for Root-Cause Analysis

The 6 M’s Category

- Machines, Manpower. Materials, Measurements, Methods, Mother Nature

The 7 P’s Category

- Packaging, People, Place, Policies, Positioning, Price, Procedure, Product/ Service, Promotion

The 5 S’s Category

- Safety, Skills, Suppliers, Surroundings, Systems

Six Trends from the World Future Society

- 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

Six Purchasing Value/ Utility Levers and Potential Bottlenecks

- Customer productivity
- Simplicity
- Convenience
- Risk
- Fun and image
- Environmental friendliness

Digging Deep

Use an idea-generating technique to identify factors within each perspective that could cause the problem being analyzed. For example, ask… “What are the possible machine issues affecting/ causing…?”

Repeat this procedure with each perspective to produce potential causes. Continue asking, “Why is this happening?” and put additional causes against each perspective.
Exhaust each perspective until you no longer get useful information as you ask, “Why is that happening?”
Analyze the results of the fishbone after team members agree that an adequate amount of detail has been provided under each major perspective. Look for those items that appear in more than one perspective. These repetitive factors become highly likely as frequent causes that will demand more time and generate longer discussions.
For those factors identified as the “most likely causes,” use a prioritization method to lead the team to a consensus about listing those factors in sequential priority, with the first factor being the “most probable” or “most impactful” cause. For a simple and highly effective prioritization method:
- Build the criteria for evaluation.
- Separate the SMART from the fuzzy (where SMART discussed elsewhere equates to Specific, Measurable, Adjustable, Relevant, and Time-Based as compared to DUMB which equates to Dull, Ubiquitous, Myopic, and Broad).
- Prioritize or rank the criteria using PowerBalls and Bookends.
- Appealing to the criteria, helps the group identify the most impactful of the “most likely causes.”
- Where the group remains uncertain, challenge any fuzzy factors to create understanding, but only let them use the fuzzy factors when discussing critical causes. Do not let them waste time with the least important causes (unless full diligence is required across every potential cause).
- Optionally, repeat this process when you prioritize solutions by focusing on decision criteria.

For More Root Cause Analysis Tools

For additional visual support and tool instructions on facilitating root cause analysis, see the article by Amanda Athuraliya, The Easy Guide to Root Cause Analysis for Efficient Business Problem-Solving.

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How to Conduct Better Staff Meetings That People Want to Attend

by Facilitation Expert | Aug 25, 2016 | Leadership Skills, Meeting Support

Your regularly scheduled staff meeting may not be an event that your staff anticipates. Some employees might prefer having a root canal. At least with a root canal, pain medication is provided. You can lead better staff meetings, and quicker too, and here’s how.

There are good meetings, and there are long meetings, but there aren’t many good, long meetings. Why are many staff meetings hated and what can you do about yours? Based on Agile’s Daily Scrum, this procedure encourages self-advancing teams to meet briefly. Time-boxed to 15 minutes in duration, you may also call it a daily stand-up, a weekly roll call, or a monthly huddle. This approach assuredly provides better staff meetings.

Have a Clear Purpose and Scope for Your Staff Meeting

People complain that they remain uncertain about the purpose of their staff meeting, even when it has concluded. Many managers assume that staff value developing an understanding of WHAT other staff members are doing. Many managers assume that staff will support one another when someone needs assistance. You know what happens when you assume.

Does Your Staff Meeting Leave You Going in Different Directions?

Since the purpose of the normal staff meeting rotates around sharing, emphasize WHY sharing is important. It’s not that we want bright and informed employees, so much as we want employees making more informed decisions. We seek decisions that support one another to help us reach our goals and objectives. We seek to change behavior when the meeting has concluded, to further enhance our efforts to excel. Be clear that you are seeking change, NOT simply information exchange.

If nothing has changed, then your staff meeting could be a waste of time. If something has changed, let’s ensure we understand WHAT has changed, and more importantly, WHY. Build consensus around the rationale supporting the change, not only the change action itself. If something needs to change, it may be optimal to have it change much sooner than when you schedule your regular staff meeting.

The 3-Question Approach

Use the trivium formula of “yesterday, today, and tomorrow” (past, present, future) to modify the questions listed here for your needs.

The classic three questions (with alternatives) are as follows:
1. What did you complete yesterday? (What did I accomplish yesterday?)
2. What are you focused on today? (What will I do today?)
3. What impediments are you facing that we might help you with? (What obstacles are impeding my progress?)

Here’s a motivational version:
1. What did you do to change the world yesterday? (What did you accomplish since we last met?)
2. What are you going to crush today? (What are you working on until our next meeting?)
3. What obstacles are you going to blast through that may be unfortunate enough to be standing in your way? (What is getting in your way or keeping you from doing your job?)

Convert Your Staff Meeting into a Standing Meeting

The original idea of a meeting that repeats itself the same date and time weekly, monthly, or quarterly, made that type of meeting to be called a “standing meeting.” The term originally does not only imply that it stands at the same time on the calendar, it also implies that there is no need to sit down.

People should stand at most staff meetings, and get done faster. The depth of information sharing requires that we all understand WHAT each other is doing. However, we probably don’t need to know HOW it’s going to be done. When someone goes ”deep into the weeds” they are probably talking about HOW, not WHAT they plan to do.

We need to know for example that you “are going to pay the bills” but we don’t need to know that you are writing cheques or sending electronic funds transfers. We rely on you to execute the best way to get it done. Keep in mind the difference between WHAT and HOW is relatively simple. What you do (e.g., “pay bills”) remains abstract while HOW you do it (“write cheques”) becomes concrete.

When you impose the standing (rather than sitting) rule for your staff meetings, more people will stop talking when they have covered WHAT they are doing. They will spare us the gory details and time wasted about HOW they are going to do it. For the rare circumstance when sharing the HOW is important, participants may freely ask (“How are you going to do that?”). But as long as participants remain standing, people will stay focused, and your staff meeting will provide the change you seek, only much faster than you currently realize.

Develop Consensually Agreed Upon Output from Your Staff Meeting

Did you ever leave a staff meeting and ask “What did we agree on in there?” Worse yet, have you experienced more than one answer to that question? Perhaps contradictory answers?

Do not assume that your staff has extracted the same learnings and takeaways. Do something to facilitate and confirm that we are all agreeing on the same change and a similar course of action. All too often people leave a staff meeting and begin acting in ways that contradict one another. WHY? Because we have done nothing to facilitate and ensure common understanding.

Build an agreement at the end of your staff meeting that reflects new actions learned as a result of the staff meeting. Again, if the new actions are thin and far between, perhaps we need fewer or quicker staff meetings. That brings us to our final point . . .

Final Comments

Use the same technique for your weekly, biweekly, or monthly staff meetings. Although not exhaustive, scope creep is prevented when progress reports are restricted to yesterday (past), today (present), and obstacles (future). Additionally, standing rather than sitting ensures that staff meetings remain brief, discourages wasted time, and keeps participants in scope.

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Ensuring Meeting Inclusiveness — How to Value Diversity & Plurality

by Facilitation Expert | Aug 18, 2016 | Meeting Support, Problem Solving

The primary responsibility of a facilitator is to protect the participants. Furthermore, the facilitator helps drive the group toward its desired deliverable. Since the deliverable is built to serve the participants, people should take priority over the issues. To some extent, both people and issues are managed by creating an environment that is conducive to productivity. Easier said, than done, to ensure meeting inclusiveness.

Value of Meeting Inclusiveness

Dr. Edward de Bono provides expert insight into parallel thinking; i.e., there can be more than one correct answer. Listening to others, their perspectives, and rationale creates more robust products. Because of selective perception, the aggregation of all points of view provides stronger insight than any single point of view. When facilitating a group of nine people, for example, look for the tenth answer. Our technique refers to this concept as N+1, where N equals the number of participants, always seeking the +1 perspective, thus encouraging meeting inclusiveness.

Use of Meeting Ground Rules

Remember to embrace and enforce meeting and workshop Ground Rules to create a climate of safety and trust. See our discussion on Ground Rules for additional comments and suggestions.

Key to Innovation

Diversity, or plurality as we prefer to call it (suggesting the beauty of a mosaic rather than the fracturing of something), is undoubtedly the key to innovation. See de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats (modified to Seven Thinking Hats with the MGRUSH FAST technique to also include the “Process” or royal purple view) or other means of facilitating perspective found in your MGRUSH manual or other expert sources such as Roger von Oech’s Creative Whack Pack. Consider special Icebreakers, break-out sessions, or team-building exercises that emphasize the value of plurality because meeting inclusiveness follows integrative exercises. As a result, Scannell and Newstrom offer hundreds of options among other expert tools. Take this opportunity to leverage the tactile sense, and consider some of the professional Legos® activities or others designed to prove the value of plurality and its positive impact on the quality of deliverables.

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Scope Creep Kills: Facilitate Concern, Influence, and Control

by Facilitation Expert | Aug 11, 2016 | Managing Conflict, Prioritizing

Scope creep kills projects. It also kills meetings.

The consensual sphere of Concern, Influence, and Control helps a group become mindful of aspects that could alter the group’s attitudes, beliefs, and decisions. The consensual sphere of Concern, Influence, and Control helps a group to focus, on one issue at a time, or one aspect at a time.

The single most important responsibility of a facilitator is to protect the people or meeting participants. The next most challenging responsibility however is to make it easy for a group to focus on one issue at a time.

The consensual sphere of Concern, Influence, and Control helps separate a discussion into aspects the group controls, aspects they influence, and aspects about which they have no control or significant influence. Since groups seldom perform effectively using a linear approach, consider using a “Bookend” approach for analyzing the sphere of Concern, Influence, and Control. Following are the steps required that can be used to analyze most lists, including prioritizing a list of criteria.

APPLYING THE BOOKEND METHOD TO CONCERN, INFLUENCE, AND CONTROL

Concern, Influence, and Control

Purpose

Effective facilitators shy away from working lists in a linear fashion. The purpose of using a bookend approach is to develop a natural habit of squeezing the grey matter towards the middle, rather than wasting too much time on it.

Rationale

Groups tend to argue about the grey matter that frequently does not affect the decision anyway. For instance, with PowerBalls, you can envision participants arguing whether something is more important than moderate yet less important than high. We know from experience that the most important criteria drive most decisions, so bookends help us identify the critical stuff quickly.

Method

After you have compiled a list of criteria or aspects, compare and contrast them with the simple process explained below:

Ask “Which of these is the most important?” (as defined by the PowerBalls displayed). With the consensual sphere, our question would be “Which of these is within our control?”
Next, ask “Which of these is the least important?” With the consensual sphere, our question would be “Which of these is a concern because it is beyond our control?”
Then return to the next most important . . .
And to the next least important . . .
Until the list has been squeezed into the remaining one-third that is moderate…
If comparing or contrasting Influence, consider asking . . .
- Which is most similar?
- Which is least similar?
- Repeat until one-third remains as moderate.
For Control consider asking . . .
- What is your greatest strength?
- What is your greatest weakness?
- Repeat until one-third remains as moderate.

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Related Video

Basic Facilitation Skills: #1 How to Facilitate Alignment using Power Balls and a Decision Matrix

Use the Fist of Five to Test for Consensus on Contextual Issues

by Facilitation Expert | Aug 4, 2016 | Decision Making, Meeting Support, Meeting Tools

The Fist of Five approach combines the speed of thumbs up/ down and displays the degrees of agreement that can support more complicated decision spectrums. Using this tool, people vote using their hands and display fingers to represent their degree of support.

Fist of Five Method

Use Fist of Five for Contextual Questions

When groups come to consensus on issues, it means that everyone in the group can support it. They don’t have to think it’s their favorite decision, but they all agree they can live with it. The Fist of Five tool provides an easy-to-use way to test for consensus quickly.

Most of you understand that we despise voting as a decision-making method. The losing vote(s) could represent the highest quality decision. Therefore, we recommend the Fist of Five, promoted in the Agile life-cycle, for contextual issues and NOT issues about content. For example, “Should we take a full 60-minute lunch break today?”.

To use the Fist of Five, the facilitator makes a question clear and asks everyone to show their level of support. Each person responds by showing a fist or several fingers that corresponds to their opinion.

Fist of Five Interpreted

First—a no vote, is a way to block consensus. “I need more information about the issues and require changes for this proposal to pass.”

1 Finger—“I need to discuss certain issues and can suggest changes that should be made.”

2 Fingers—“I am comfortable with the proposal but want to discuss it further.”

3 Fingers—“I’m not in total agreement but feel comfortable enough to let this decision or proposal pass without further discussion.”

4 Fingers—“I think this is a reasonable idea and am not opposed.”

5 Fingers (such as the waving hand)—“It’s a great idea and I am a major supporter.”

Anyone who holds up fewer than three fingers should be allowed to explain their objections and the team should respond to their concerns. Teams continue using the Fist of Five tool until they achieve consensus (a minimum of three fingers or higher) or determine they must move on without consensus.

Fist of Five Notes

A small problem with this approach is that two standards have emerged and you need to be clear if five fingers mean “full agreement” or “no, stop”. With the method discussed above, a fist (no fingers) implies no support while five fingers means total support and a desire to lead the charge. Typically, more is better.

Another model registers resistance to the proposal so that one finger means total support, two fingers mean support with some minor reservations, three fingers mean concerns that need discussing, four fingers mean “I object and want to discuss”, and five fingers (an extended palm like a stop sign) means “Stop, I am opposed.” Whichever method you embrace, please do NOT use the Fist of Five for making decisions about content, especially important content or client issues. You may however use the Fist of Five for making very minor content decisions such as the substitution of one word for another (wordsmithing–albeit, a lousy group activity).

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How to Facilitate Prioritization and Build Consensus Quickly (or, MoSCoW)

by Facilitation Expert | Jul 28, 2016 | Decision Making, Meeting Structure, Prioritizing

Strongly encouraged by Steve Jobs, as mentioned in his biography by Walter Isaacson, here is how to facilitate reducing some possible actions a team should consider, down to the final three or four actions your team has the resources to complete.

As mentioned casually in the biography, the concept of prioritization is key to group performance, so we will remind you about three remarkably effective and frequently used facilitation techniques from the MGRUSH method; namely Definition, PowerBalls (aka MoSCoW), and BookEnds. First, before you distill your final list of ten or twelve action items, be prepared to define the full meaning behind the terms first used. Additionally, stay conscious of the team’s perspective and possible biases.

Bias Factors that Demonstrably Affect Group Decision-Making

Everyone poorly estimates the time they need to complete any task. Fallacies and biases put us all at increasing risk of reaching our objectives. Therefore, psychologists call it the planning fallacy and the bias of overconfidence. According to the World Future Society, other significant factors known to negatively impact decision quality include:

Confusing desirability and familiarity with probability
Distorting data through selection and repetition
Forecasting with a preference for change or patterns
Framing complex issues in a skewed fashion (selective perception)
Homogenizing multiple data sources (for cost savings)
Lacking clear confidence intervals (how clean the data is)
Mistaking correlation for causation (a quite common error)
Over-immersion in local social values or perceptions

Facilitate Prioritization by Starting with the End in Mind

Are you helping the team define a final output, a desired outcome, or are you having them focus clearly on the next step (that presumably leads to a final output AND a new, desired outcome) or action required?

Describe the objectives with enough clarity that everyone provides their commitment.
Next, use our PowerBall tool to build consensus in minutes, not hours. (Known in the Agile world as MoSCoW, see below).

Definition Tool

If you are challenged about the scope, characteristics, or details of some proposed action, consider using the Definition tool. Hence, in its most robust format, a thorough definition answers five discrete questions (See the Definition tool for an example):

What is the action NOT?
Describe the action in one sentence or less than 50 words.
Provide the specific characteristics that make this action clear or unique.
Draw or illustrate the action or workflow.
Provide at least two examples from the business to vivify or bring to life the narrative definition.

Once you have a list of ten or so clear and potential actions the team has socialized and understood, then apply the PowerBalls tool (MoSCoW).

MoSCoW Corresponds to Must Have (High), Should Have (Moderate), Could Have (Low), Won’t Have (Null)

CAUTION When You Facilitate Prioritization

Be aware that an optimal approach requires to prioritize the criteria, not the options. Therefore, if you find yourself prioritizing options, reverse-engineer them by asking WHY. Then by simply asking, the responses generate the criteria or rationale used for the prioritization. (Also, know that you need to have an agreed-upon purpose to facilitate prioritization and resolve arguments.)

Method to Facilitate Prioritization

The following steps should be read with an understanding that the ‘hot linked’ activities and procedures used below to facilitate prioritization are explained more fully elsewhere on this site on “Facilitation Best Practices” and found in the MG RUSH curriculum. You will discover that PowerBall measurements provide flexible instruments for measuring anything. Consequently, for simple decision-making, use the following steps:

Establish the purpose of the object the team is considering (i.e., Purpose of _______ is to . . . So that . . .). Hence, you have now established WHY this action is important.
Build your list of options (e.g., Brainstorming). Additionally, strive for creativity and innovation by encouraging more, even wild ideas. Set the list of options aside.
Build your list of decision criteria (be prepared to define each “criterion”).
Look at the criteria to see if any options are in direct violation. For example, if Sally is allergic to flowers, then “buying her flowers” presents an option that should be eliminated. However, using SCAMPER we might discover other options such as silk flowers, a painting of flowers, etc.
Ask the participants if they can support the remaining options. If someone objects, consider eliminating that option if numerous others are satisfactory to everyone.
Once your participants can support the remaining options, you have consensus, however, you don’t yet have your deliverable.
To improve the quality of your decision, unveil the visual legend for PowerBalls. Finally, always use the economic definitions shown.

NEXT . . .

Apply the PowerBalls and prioritize the criteria, using the Book-End rhetoric, explained fully below. Here we ask, “Which is most?”, “Which is least?”, etc., and squeeze in on the moderate stuff.
Find the option(s) that best aligns with and supports your stated purpose (Step 1). Therefore, appealing to the previously built purpose statement confirms the most appropriate or impactful criteria.

Apply Bookends Rhetoric to Avoid Wasting Time with Lists

Effective facilitators shy away from analyzing lists linearly. The purpose of using our Bookends Method is to develop a natural habit of squeezing the grey matter towards the middle, rather than wasting too much time on it.

The Rationale of Bookends

Groups tend to argue about a grey matter that frequently does not affect the decision anyway. For instance, with PowerBalls, you can envision some participants arguing whether something is more important than moderate yet less important than high. We know from experience that high criteria drive most decisions, so bookends help us identify the most important stuff quickly.

The Bookend Rhetoric

After you have compiled a list, compare and contrast different items with the straightforward process as explained below:

Use the Bookends Rhetoric to Avoid Wasting Time with Lists

Ask, “Which of these is the most important?” (as defined by the PowerBalls displayed).
Next ask, “Which of these is the least important?”
Then return to the next most important
And to the next least important

Until the list has been squeezed into the remaining one-third that is moderate.

If comparing or contrasting illustrations, consider asking…

Which is most similar?
Which is least similar?

Repeat until one-third remains as moderate.

For discussions consider asking . . .

What is your greatest strength?
What is your greatest weakness?

Repeat until one-third remains as moderate.

Definitions to Facilitate Prioritization

The definitions provided in the iconic legend above apply to all situations and can be equated or converted to numbers, such as:

5 or a solid ball means high “Pay any price.”
1 or an empty circle means low or “Want it for free, not willing to pay extra for it.”
3 or a half-filled ball means moderate or all the other stuff between high and low, meaning we are “willing to pay a reasonable price” without being forced to define “reasonable.”

Five-Level Numeric Alternative (plus Null) Where More is Better

Low Importance
Moderately Low Importance (if necessary)
Moderate Importance
Moderately High Importance (if necessary)
High Importance

Ø. NULL or Will NOT have

MoSCoW Alternative

Alternatively, in the Agile world, PowerBalls also equate to MoSCoW, whereby:

M equals Must have and equates to a solid ball, or the number 5
S equals Should have and equates to a half-filled ball, or the number 3
C equals Could have and equates to an empty circle, or the number 1
W equates to Won’t have or the null (the ‘o’ makes the mnemonic easier to remember)

With MoSCoW or PowerBalls, separate the most/ least important criteria, force-fitting one-third high and one-third low. Cluster the remaining one-third and code them as moderate by default, without discussion. Attempt to force fit one-third of the candidates as each high, low, and moderate—but be flexible. Appeal to the high criteria and isolate the option(s) that best support the purpose statement. Additionally, to advance understanding further or to optimize or guide discussion (if required), appeal to some of the fuzzy factors that may be difficult to measure objectively.

When you need help creating a robust definition of an option or a criterion that may be arguable, turn to the Definition Tool for support. If you discover the PowerBall technique is not robust enough, use something more suitable for complicated prioritization such as the MGRUSH Scorecard tool or Perceptual Mapping.

Video Demonstration on How to Facilitate Prioritization (MoSCoW) and Quickly Build Consensus

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7 Reasons Why Agile Facilitation Provides a Powerful Mindset for Various Frameworks

by Facilitation Expert | Jul 21, 2016 | Scrum Events

We love Agile and an Agile mindset. You should too.

For most of you, some version of Agile methodology will replace or at least substitute for waterfall SDLC (software development life-cycle) and PDLC (product development life-cycle). For many of you, it already has. ‘Agile’ and ‘facilitation’ are terms so intertwined, that they are nearly redundant and remarkably powerful.

An Agile mindset compelled us to become Registered Educational Providers through the Scrum Alliance. Therefore, alumni of our MGRUSH workshops may now receive up to 40 SEUs (Scrum Educational Units). Here’s why.

Roles, artifacts, and ceremonies align wholeheartedly with our instruction about meeting consciousness (understanding responsibilities), competence (managing artifacts), and confidence (facilitating events).

Both Agile and MGRUSH structured facilitation stress the importance of rapid planning. We call it the WHY before the WHAT before the HOW. Agile notes three levels of planning sessions, for Agile teams. Therefore, we roughly approximate below with traditional Business Planning. With the conviction that “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools” (Agile Manifesto, 2001), consensual planning becomes essential.

Facilitation Planning Sessions

Business Planning	Agile Rapid Planning
Strategy	Release
Portfolio	Sprint
Product	Daily

The increasing resolution behind different levels of ‘requirements’ speaks loudly to the MGRUSH preference, to start broad and work narrow. Prioritization Tools in MGRUSH have long promoted CRUD, MoSCoW, Story Sizing and other recommended Agile steps. Additionally, we recommend building user stories using the MGRUSH Purpose Tool, whereby . . .

Agile supports stress-tested workshops such as Release Planning agendas that virtually ensure success. Meetings, even Daily Scrums, embrace rules to ensure that everyone gets done faster. Remember, you don’t have to have rules. However, without structure the terms ‘discussion’, ‘percussion’, and ‘concussion’ remain closely related.
Life cycle meetings such as a Design Review encourage the participation of necessary roles, without the redundancy of too many people (7 plus or minus 2) or the gap of missing stakeholders. Retrospectives follow our established Content Management tool with the three-question method leading to changes for the next sprint or release.
Significant meetings such as Planning, Design Review, Pre-Planning, Final UAT, and Iteration Retrospectives are structured by clearly defined deliverables from each step in the agenda. We love that because it is easy to lead when you know where you are going. Perhaps most importantly the Agile Community understands the importance of operational definitions. Critical terms such as “DONE” are clearly defined and not subject to non-productive arguments.
Finally, Agile facilitation encourages scenario development and visual support to galvanize consensus. Process or Activity Diagrams, Wireframes, Mockups, Clear Criteria, and Specifications by Example are all encouraged, if not mandated. Love it.

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Frequent Meeting Problems and What You Should Do About Them

by Facilitation Expert | Jul 14, 2016 | Communication Skills, Facilitation Skills, Leadership Skills, Managing Conflict, Meeting Structure, Meeting Support, Meeting Tools

Don’t let meeting problems become a burden

Ever develop that sense of deja vu about not getting anywhere during a meeting?

Meeting problems are indicative of resistance that is generated during a meeting. However, resistance can be prevented and mitigated with professional behavior. Here’s what to do about the most common meeting problems.

1. Meeting Problems — Lack of clear purpose

All too frequently, meetings are held for the primary benefit of the meeting leader, typically the group’s director, supervisor, or project manager. The session leader has decided to schedule a series of weekly meetings in advance, typically for their convenience. They anticipate needing the time of others to raise the fog high enough so that they can determine what they need to get done over the next week, until the next meeting.

SOLUTION FOR MEETING PROBLEM — #1:

Carefully articulate the purpose and deliverable of the meeting, preferably in twenty-five words or less. If you are unable to clearly explain why you are having the meeting and the meeting’s desired output (i.e., “What does ‘DONE’ look like?”), then you are not prepared to be an effective meeting leader. If you are the participant, demand a written statement that details the purpose, scope, and deliverable of the meeting, preferably in advance, or don’t attend.

2. Meeting Problems — Unprepared participants

Lack of clear purpose (mentioned above) is the main reason participants show up unprepared. Before and sometimes during the meeting, they remain unclear about what “showing up prepared” looks like.

SOLUTION FOR MEETING PROBLEM — #2:

Beyond a written statement about the meeting’s purpose, scope, and deliverables, participants need an advanced understanding of the agenda. The agenda explains how the meeting will generate results so that participants can get out. Nobody wants more meetings or longer meetings. Detailed questions determine agenda topics (e.g., What are our options?). Ideally, participants should know the questions to be asked during the meeting before it begins, so that they can attend prepared and ready to respond.

3. Meeting Problems — Biased leadership

Nothing will restrain the input of participants faster than a leader who begins to emphasize their answer. Participants will then hope the leader exposes an entire position before they begin to make contributions, so that they know where they stand, and avoid embarrassment about being “wrong”.

SOLUTION FOR MEETING PROBLEM — #3:

Leaders should embrace neutrality. If they want others’ input and opinions, then ask and listen. If they don’t want others’ ideas, they should not have a meeting. There are more cost-effective means for informing and persuading than hosting meetings. Being neutral is like being pregnant, you either are or you’re not—there is no grey area.

4. Meeting Problems — Scope creep (strategic and tactical blending)

All too often, meetings dive deep into the weeds (i.e., HOW or concrete methods) or challenge the purpose (i.e., WHY or ultimate intention). Nobody wants more meetings, they only want results.

SOLUTION FOR MEETING PROBLEM — #4:

To avoid scope creep in the meeting, carefully craft a written statement reflecting the scope (see item number one above). Carefully police the scope of an issue so that participants don’t go too deep into the weeds. Thus ensure that others do not argue about the reason for a project, as project approval is beyond the scope of most meetings. For pertinent strategic issues that are beyond the scope of the meeting, capture them in a “Refrigerator” (aka “Parking Lot”) to preserve them until you can meet in a workshop forum that discusses strategic issues, their implications, and what needs to be done about them (recommendations).

5. Meeting Problems — Poor or non-existent structure

Lack of structure applies both at the meeting level (i.e., agenda) and within each agenda step. Structure enhances flexibility and gives you a method for delivering ‘done’. Most leaders are competent at soliciting ideas (i.e., creating a list) but remain frail during the analysis activity. Therefore, use our Meeting Pathway and Meeting Canvas regularly.

SOLUTIONS FOR MEETING PROBLEM — #5:

Determine in advance:

What are you going to do with the list?
How will you lead them to categorize items?
Should you categorize, or perhaps push on to specific measurable details?
If prioritizing, have you separately identified the criteria?
How are you going to lead the group to apply the criteria to the options that lead to a prioritized list?

6. Dealing with the Meeting Problem — “They’re all Priority One!”

A group would not prioritize a list of activities because they felt that all were very important and that prioritizing them would allow some to drop off and not get done. The support organization had only a limited number of resources and limited time. First of all, how do you get a group to set priorities?

Dealing with Meeting Problems

SOLUTIONS FOR MEETING PROBLEM — #6:

Separately develop the criteria that prove the importance of the activities.
Admit that all the actions are top priority or they would not have been discussed.
Ask them to prioritize the criteria, one relative to each, other using the Bookend tool.
Build a Decision-Matrix to align the criteria with the activities and develop a sense of relative importance, without omitting anything.

7. Dealing with the Meeting Problem — “Don’t Measure Me”

An organization is culturally biased against SMART measures and hard objectives during a business process improvement initiative. Hence, history has caused them to resist, cheat, or fall victim to objective measures. Since the facilitator must get the group to define SMART measures and objectives, what should they do?

SOLUTIONS FOR MEETING PROBLEM — #7:

Follow a method that allows the group to define their measures—by first defining the rewards, benefits, risks, challenges, and then associated measures.
To ensure that key measures have been identified, ask participants to draw upon benchmarking of competitors and other industries
Have the group identify their concerns with SMART objectives and develop strategies or actions to address their concerns. Consider the Content Management tool.

8. Dealing with a Meeting Problem — One-Day Wonder

A diverse group has one day to define an improved critical scheduling process. Because the improved process needs clear roles and responsibilities, how do we get them going?

SOLUTIONS FOR MEETING PROBLEM — #8:

Define a limited deliverable very clearly with the project manager. Focus on what can be done within the time frame.
Have the participants complete before the workshop, such as benchmarking, assessment tools, etc.
Conduct a quick team-building exercise at the start to pull the team together as quickly as possible.
Timebox steps as necessary with precise rhetoric that questions “Did we get the most important stuff?” and NOT “Did we get everything?”.

9. Dealing with Meeting Problems — Two Groups

We have two groups, each from a different office, yet each is jointly responsible for a project. One was actively involved upfront (the project manager is from that area) while the other was not involved in the initial meetings. The second group feels no ownership even though they have a key role. How do you get them together?

SOLUTIONS FOR MEETING PROBLEM — #9:

Meet with the second group first in developing the workshop and to help them understand what has developed, their role, and clarify the issues that concern them.
Meet with executive management to reinforce their support for the project because their visible support motivates others.
Launch a formal kick-off meeting and provide some team-building exercises.

10. Dealing with Meeting Problems — Executive Solution

A workshop designed to focus on business process improvement opportunities. The workshop develops the goals, objectives, principles, and strategies of the initiative. The executive participated in the workshop. However, after the workshop, the executive decided to change the output to suit himself.

SOLUTIONS FOR MEETING PROBLEM — #10:

Publish the original results for distribution to all stakeholders as soon as possible.
Also, have the project manager intervene on behalf of the project team members.
Carefully document the risks and rewards associated with the mandated change.
Next time, emphasize ground rules about consensus building and educate the executive, before the workshop, on empowerment, ownership, and accountability.

It’s not easy to lead a successful meeting. No one ever said it was. Success begins with clear thinking and understanding of how to avoid the most common problems with meetings.

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“Customer Moat: Unveiling the Secrets of Business Strategy”

by Facilitation Expert | Jun 16, 2016 | Leadership Skills, Meeting Tools

Eddie Sung (Author) has released an easily readable book, Customer Moat: Unveiling the Secrets of Business Strategy, that some might call a primer.

Although his discussion does not break new ground (like “Blue Ocean Strategy“), he brings life and enjoyable reading to the basics of profit-building, illustrating the complex interrelationship of customer voice mixed with market factors that lead to profit. Thus, his story builds the analogy of a “moat” serving to isolate customers from competitive choices and alternatives.

His experience derives from a family-owned retail business and his rhetoric is biased by simple decision-making. Readers from more complicated commercial, industrial, and institutional environments may lack an easy conversion to their complex reality of multiple purchasing voices and influences within one customer organization. However, Eddie provides an excellent series of end notes and bibliography to both support his claims, thus making it easy for you to dive deeper based on your own, discrete scenario, and customer moat perspective. Therefore, his primary thesis builds upon eight “customer moat builders” including (alpha sort):

Customer Moat Protection

Branding
Cost
Distribution
Location
Networking
Scale
Supply
Value

(Part One)

The early premise provides a clear compendium of his MBA background and research. His explanation that customer moats impact market share, profit margin, and price is basic, although nicely illustrated. This section provides more value in growing and retaining a customer base than it does in providing insight into acquiring new customers and markets. He stresses “. . . how businesses hold on to their customers.” through operations, scale, positioning, and control. He concedes later “ . . . it is better to foster repeat customers. . . keeping existing ones is often more cost-effective.” and “The main purpose of the Brand moat builder is not to get new customers per se but to keep existing customers returning.”

(Part Two)

His detailed discussion about the eight customer moat builders remains vibrant and research-supported. While some of his examples are classic business tales (e.g., Ohno’s Five-Whys at Toyota), his writing style keeps the reader engaged as the pages turn quickly. However, he again primarily illustrates his claims with simple retail examples including 7-Eleven, Amazon, Costco, Krispy Kreme, McDonald’s, Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, Toyota (automobiles), Walgreens, and Wal-Mart among others.

His discussion on Network Effect (Scale) provides some of the freshest material and does not pre-supposes that he has the answers, he does offer up some excellent questions:

“How do we get customers to enhance the experiences of other customers?” and
“What types of information do our customers possess that we can use to improve their future experience?”

In the end, you should buy this book. Although I’ve never met him, I’m convinced that Eddie is a “good guy” and he certainly researched well, worked hard, and wrote clearly to make this book on customer moats available. Treat it somewhat as an updated “In Search of Excellence” as the takeaways are clear and valid, even fun. Be forewarned however that clear actionable takeaways may be lacking for readers who are not directly in the retail sector.

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The Most Effective Facilitators Stop Saying “I” — Use Pluralistic Rhetoric

by Facilitation Expert | Jun 9, 2016 | Communication Skills, Leadership Skills

As an effective facilitator, stop saying “I”

Learn to naturally substitute the plural “we” or “us”. However, for others, it remains a significant challenge. Therefore, if challenged, consider this opportunity as the number one change you can embrace to become a more effective facilitator. Stop saying “I”.

We have witnessed many people using the word “I” over three times in one sentence and over one dozen times in one minute. In other words, don’t be that person.

For instance, look at these examples drawn from numerous self-directed comments.

“I am going to . . .”
- could be, “We are going to…”
“I believe . . .”
- Could be, “Do you believe…”
“I can agree . . .”
- Could be, “Will you support…’
“I can see it both ways . . .”
- COULD BE DELETED ENTIRELY, reflect both ways instead.
“I expect . . . ”
- Could be, “We may see …”
“I got it.”
- Should be, “Do you all understand that…”
“I like it . . .”
- Should never be spoken.
“I like that one . . .”
- Should never be spoken.
“I need . . .”
- Should always be, “We need…”
“I need your input . . .”
- Should be “We need your input…”

Look at these …

“I propose . . .”
- Is never the role of the facilitator.
“I see . . .”
- Should be, “Do you all see that…”
“I see nodding . . .”
- Needs reflection of WHY they are nodding.
“I think . . .”
- You were hired to facilitate, not think.
“I think we have . . .”
- Substitute with “It appears…”
“I want . . .”
- Again, “We need…”
“I would like . . .”
- Again, “We need…”

Now for our favorite …

____________________________________________

“I’d like you to help me . . .”
- But we hired you to help us!

____________________________________________

Followed by …

“I’ll talk about . . .”
- Shut up and listen.
“I’m hearing . . .”
- Should be, “We’re hearing that…”
“I’m very interested in . . .”
- Could be, “We would all benefit from knowing…”
“What I would like you to do . . .”
- Should be “What we need to do now is…”
“What I’d like to do . . .”
- You don’t need permission to do your job, just do it.
“What I’d like to do now is . . .”
- Should be, “What we are going to do next is…”

Or, using a first-person variant such as:

“Sounds to me . . .”
“My thoughts . . .”
“Can you tell me . . .”
“Tell me . . .”
“Help me . . .”
“My meeting . . .”

Our favorites are in bold font (“Help me”)

Since we are led to believe that the reason for engaging a facilitator is to help us (participants), simply use integrative rhetoric, substituting the plural “we” or “us” such as “We need . . .” or “We are going to . . .” The biggest challenge for many is that they remain unconscious as to what they are saying, how many times they are saying “I”, and the negative impact it has on their persona as an effective facilitator. When a meeting leader frequently uses the word “I”, such as “I”. . . believe . . . want . . . think . . . hope . . . need . . . feel . . . etc . . . focus becomes directed at them instead of the issue at hand, most importantly, the meeting deliverable. Therefore, guess who will own the deliverable at the end of such a meeting? The “I”s have it

“I”llness or “We”llness

How to Influence Ownership

To ensure that ownership of meeting output is owned and shared by everyone, and to help you become a more effective facilitator, look at the difference between the following two terms:

Illness
Wellness

The simple (and somewhat humorous, albeit coincidental) difference is contrasting the first person singular to the first person plural. Above all, the focus should always be on the issue and the participants, not on the facilitator.

Record yourself some time, listen to the recording, and count the occurrences of the word “I.” You may be surprised, and if so, now you can do something about it to become a more effective facilitator.

Finally, stay vigilant about saying “Thank you” too often. Optimally, you should probably never say “Thank you”, but we understand the need for you to be natural as well. However, if you are constantly thanking participants for their contributions, who does it appear the deliverable is built to serve? Therefore, transferring ownership of the meeting output begins with integrative and pluralistic rhetoric. Avoid the colloquial and stay conscious. After all, you should be there to serve them, not the other way around.

Build Immediate Results, Create Long-Lasting Impact

Our hands-on approach to meeting leadership, facilitation, and design offers immediate improvements in the productivity and effectiveness of your meetings. By focusing on purpose-driven agendas, engaging facilitation, and clear processes, we empower professionals to create meetings that yield results, enhance decision quality, and foster meaningful participation.

Are you ready to transform your meetings into opportunities for impactful decision-making and innovative problem-solving? Explore our curriculum and discover how structured training in meeting leadership and facilitation can elevate your team’s potential and enhance every session’s effectiveness.

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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. MGRUSHworkshops 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.

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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With Bookmarks no longer a feature in WordPress, we need to add the following for your benefit and reference

20 Prioritization Techniques = https://foldingburritos.com/product-prioritization-techniques/
Creativity Techniques = https://www.mycoted.com/Category:Creativity_Techniques
Facilitation Training Calendar = https://mgrush.com/public-facilitation-training-calendar/
Liberating Structures = http://www.liberatingstructures.com/ls-menu
Management Methods = https://www.valuebasedmanagement.net
Project Gutenberg = http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
Scrum Events Agendas = https://mgrush.com/blog/scrum-facilitation/
Teleconference call = https://youtu.be/DYu_bGbZiiQ
The Size of Space = https://neal.fun/size-of-space/
Visualization methods = http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html#

How to Be Precise with Three Meeting Transition Questions: Do NOT Ask “How Do You Solve Global Hunger?”

by Facilitation Expert | May 26, 2016 | Communication Skills, Meeting Structure, Meeting Support

Meeting Transition questions is highly effective because you cannot develop a plan, any plan, such as a marketing plan, by asking “What is the marketing plan?” The question is so broad as to be dull, ubiquitous, myopic, and broad (DUMB).

Three Transition Questions for Clarity and Precision

It’s not easy for participants to respond to broad questions like “How do you solve global hunger?” While appropriate, the question’s scope is too broad (and perhaps vague) to stimulate specific, actionable responses like “We could convert those abandoned mine shafts in Somalia and create food storage areas.”

Three Appropriate Yet Powerful Transition Questions

Extemporaneous leaders should develop a tendency to modify three core transition questions during meetings instead of asking broad questions like, “Are we OK with this list?” or, “Can we move on?” Therefore, use more structure and precision by relying on transition questions with these three simple, pertinent, and clear questions that can be modified to your own situation:

Do we need to clarify anything (e.g., on this list)? (First test for clarity and shared understanding only, not necessarily agreement).
Do we need to delete anything (e.g., from this list)? (Next test for appropriateness, relevancy, and potential redundancy).
Do we need to add anything (e.g., to this list)? (Finally, scrub for omissions or something significant that needs to be considered in addition to what has been already captured).

The three detailed transition questions make it easier for meeting participants to analyze, agree, and move on. Consequently, after participants have agreed they understand, have been provided an opportunity to remove something they cannot support, and have been challenged to add something they may have missed, you are prepared to properly transition.

The clarity and precision of the three transition questions demand more rigorous thinking and encourage the focus most people need to apply thorough analysis. Make it easier for your participants, and avoid the vague, extemporaneous questions that result in the worst deliverable you could ever develop in a meeting—another meeting.

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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities every day during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.

Related article

SCAMPER is a Mnemonic to Prompt for Excellent, Impromptu Questions (mgrush.com/blog)

Differences Between Skills of Project and Program Management

by Facilitation Expert | May 19, 2016 | Communication Skills, Facilitation Skills, Leadership Skills

Close analysis of the PMBOK® (version 5) suggests that all skills required for effective project management are also required for program management.

The differences between project management and program management reflect the prioritization and relative importance of skills to each role.

At a high level, both project management and program management require:

Conceptual skills
Design skills
Human skills
Technical skills

However, there are clear differences between the day-shift manager at a fast-food restaurant and a program manager running a multi-billion, multi-cultural, multi-year project. Both require the skills listed above, but differences lie in their relative importance, or prioritization. If comparing the three roles on a simple basis, you might agree to the following levels of importance, where a solid Powerball is High and an empty Powerball is Low:

While your environment may be ‘unique’ and therefore not like the above, there must remain differences. Most noteworthy on the aggregate, ‘human’ skills are the most important, followed by technical skills. Since human skills rely hugely on communication skills, and effective communication relies largely on ‘listening’ skills, then arguably facilitation remains one of the most important skills for project management and program management, since the core skill of facilitation is “active listening.”

Program Management in 3-D

Expand the logic further by using Mackenzie’s “The Management Process in 3-D” as a guidepost. Here we see (from an area perspective) that “People” represent one-half of the pie. People require ‘leadership’ skills depending on the function of ‘communications’ to ensure understanding and bring about purposeful action.

Therefore, we would argue that facilitation skills are more important for project managers than program managers. With a project manager, there may be more than one right answer. For most program management, conditions and assumptions drive optimal solutions. Both manager types need to be skilled, but the relative importance of those skills varies across management types.

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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities every day during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.

Four Phases of a Strategy Execution Map and Great Questions to Ask

by Facilitation Expert | May 12, 2016 | Meeting Agendas, Meeting Support

Discovering and creating a Strategy Execution Map may proceed in four phases:

Preparation: Evidence-based support relies on facts, opinions, and perceptions gathered during a workshop from key stakeholders. Therefore, see the questions below to guide your agenda and build your Strategy Execution Map.
Education: This phase will describe the process end-to-end to create a common vocabulary and tell the participants what to expect. This will also include a description of the common biases that inhibit communication and decision-making when creating your Strategy Execution Map.
Creation: In this phase, key decision makers, Subject Matter Experts, stakeholders, and others come together to create the Strategy Execution Map. This phase needs a free-flowing exchange of ideas and diverse points of view. Ergo, debates must be encouraged
Validation: In this phase, offline Strategy Execution Map meetings consolidate, ‘clean up’, and publish Strategy Execution Map inputs.

Four Phases of Strategy Execution Map Described

Phase	Intensity level	Description
1. Preparation	Medium Intensity	Complete your preparation with a structured and well-prepared workshop, maybe run by a professional facilitator, who does not allow scope creep and conversations to drift. Therefore, the questions below should be used to steer your deliverable.
2. Education	Low Intensity	Having launched the effort, offline investments are made by the stakeholders to secure evidence including facts, trends, and examples to support their arguments. Hence, the evidence they gather will be shared in the next pre-read or at the next workshop.
3. Creation	High Intensity	Creating the Strategy Execution Map will require all participants to come together in a workshop format; this phase can last from one to five days.
4. Validation	Medium Intensity	If the preparation phase is done well, the validation phase will usually happen quickly. Validation can be done offline, involving shorter durations and a lesser number of people at a time, but then it is spread over a longer period. Thus, a brief workshop is preferred.

Here are some questions to ask during the preparation phase.

First some strategy questions:

What are our mission, values, and vision? Are there societal and environmental sustainability elements?
What is in our written business plan(s)?
- How is it communicated to stakeholders?
- How is it updated?
- Who has the decision responsibility for the plan(s)?
- Are the decisions made via collaboration or directive?
- If by collaboration, who should participate?
Are there any major transformational shifts on the horizon?
- Any mergers and acquisitions that may be announced?
- How does the M&A fit with the strategy?
- What are the value drivers for the M&A decision?
Do we have a standard framework and operational definitions for the strategic development and execution process?
What is our unique value proposition?
- What unique value do we bring to the marketplace?
- Stress, What do we do differently and better than everyone else?
- What are the primary sources of our competitive advantage?
- Why do/ should customers buy from us rather than from our competitors?
Who are our key competitors?
- How do we expect to compete and win?
- What factors enable us to consistently outperform our competitors?
- How are we going to grow our company?
Where are the market opportunities or customers that we have rejected recently and why?
What are the barriers to entry in our market?
- How difficult will it be for others to copy our strategy?
- How are we going to stay ahead of the game, ahead of old, new, and future competitors?
- What factors enable us to create a long-term, sustainable competitive advantage?
- What are the key uncertainties?

Next are questions about our business model

In the specified business area/ product/ service line—how does this business work?

What is our revenue generation model?
- How is this business going to generate positive cash flow and turn a profit?
- What are the key drivers of financial success?
Is our business in a growth, decline, or status quo phase?
What are the key performance indicators that we track and take action on?
What is our traffic generation model?
- How are we going to attract new customers?
- How are we going to market and sell our products/ services?
What is our customer retention strategy? How are we going to keep our customers and increase our share of wallets?
What are the working assumptions for our business model? Organizational? Market? Customers? Employees? Regulatory? Community? Others?
Are we fully leveraging the potential of Information Technology?
- Are our systems integrated or are they siloed (isolated)?
- Which of our systems is a bottleneck?
- Are there single or multiple sources of truth for critical data?
- What data is typically missing, incorrect, or not available promptly?

Followed by questions about capabilities and culture

Look at other areas needed to achieve the strategy.

How do we go about assessing the capability risk?
What key skills individual, team, and organizational capabilities do our vision, strategy, and competitive advantage require?
What kind of culture do we need to compete and win in our chosen markets?
How are we going to deploy our organizational levers to best create and reinforce our core capabilities and desired culture?
How strong is our leadership pipeline?

Finally, questions about resources to execute the strategy

Human resource needs:
- How many people and what kinds of skills?
- What is our plan for recruiting, developing, and retaining this talent?
- What is our current retention rate?
- Are we able to retain the right people?
- Do we have the right people in the right jobs?
Financial resources:
- How much capital do we need for setting up and/ or operating the company?
- What combination of debt and equity?
- How will we manage our cash flow?
Is our organization structure promoting collaboration or conflict or siloed in its thinking?
What are the governance models at the enterprise, initiative, and project levels?
- Do any of our policies conflict with each other?
- Is there a gap between a policy and its implementation?
What intellectual capital do we need?
What are the key processes that add value to the outputs we deliver to our customers?

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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities every day during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.

How the MGRush FAST Facilitation Technique Helps You Succeed

by Facilitation Expert | May 5, 2016 | Meeting Agendas, Meeting Structure, Meeting Support

One of the many approaches taught by MGRUSH in our Professional Certified meeting leadership training includes the FAST facilitation technique. The FAST facilitation technique ensures that meetings and workshops will be more effective in building consensus and producing quality decisions. As the facilitator, it helps make you a more successful leader and meeting designer.

Numerous academic books, classes, and courses focus on the individual; individual beliefs, values, and behavior. Most studies on ‘Critical Thinking’ for example, strive to make the individual participant a better thinker. Courses on ‘Marketing’ for example, emphasize individual sensitivities and choice. “What is FAST“ provides the group view.

When dealing with groups, leadership styles have been so ineffective that many methods rely on voting to make critical decisions. The voting method yields more significant numbers but not necessarily higher-quality decisions. In corporate, government, and NGO (i.e., non-governmental organizations) cultures, complex decision-making usually involves three discrete voices:

FAST Facilitation is optimal for facilitating decisions around complex issues

Budget approver
Brand selector
Requirements specifier

HOLISTIC

FAST facilitation provides a holistic technique for structuring the input of various and complex perspectives. The method creates a consensual outcome that every participant owns and supports. With consensus, as opposed to voting, you develop a win-win situation. The FAST facilitation technique is designed to help you win and it begins by teaching groups HOW TO THINK. The curriculum focuses on the tools and methods that generate results an entire group will support.

LEADERSHIP

We begin with leadership, defined as having line-of-site, to know where you are going. If you are going to run a meeting, you first need to know ‘what done looks like.’ Specifically, before any meeting begins, you need to spell out the meeting deliverable (i.e., be able to describe what success means before your meeting begins). Even lousy facilitators succeed when the deliverable has a clear and direct impact on the quality of life of its meeting participants. Participants will help a poor facilitator get results for their benefit or gain.

FACILITATIVE

Leaders can be doubly effective when they embrace a facilitative style. This means taking their subject matter expertise and putting it in the form of questions rather than answers. The facilitative style is the opposite of control and command. Modern leaders appreciate the existence of more than one right answer, so they seek the best answer given current conditions, from the group they are leading. If the leader already has the answer, they should not conduct a meeting, as meetings are a very poor form of persuasion.

MEETING DESIGN

However, even a leader who knows where they are going and what it takes to be facilitative still requires one more skill to be effective. They need to know HOW TO build what ‘DONE’ looks like (i.e., HOW TO make the deliverable). The FAST facilitation technique emphasizes the HOW TO and calls it meeting design(or, methodology).

When you take a trip for example, first you need to know WHERE you are going (and of course, WHY you are going there). HOW you get there reflects various options and criteria. For short-distance trips, for example, most of us could take a car, walk, ride a bicycle, etc. FAST facilitation optimizes HOW you get from the meeting introduction to the meeting conclusion, on time and with results everyone will support.

FAST Facilitation Mission

FAST Facilitation Values

Integrity (Trust)
Vibrancy (Energy)
Acumen (Talent)

FAST Facilitation Vision

Building on the FAST technique, MG RUSH has provided the foundation for successful meetings and workshops around the world by supporting:

Applications such as JAD, OLAP, SAP, SOA, and UML
Business agility, analytics, architecture, intelligence, decision support, portfolio alignment, and process improvement models
Life-cycles such as DMAIC, Kaizen, Lean, RUP, SCRUM, Six Sigma®, SCM, and SDLC
Our most popular deliverables include gap analysis, planning of all sorts, prioritization with six levels of complexity (and an appropriate tool for each), and project charters and product vision
Work products such as Daily Scrums, Data Models, Product Backlogs, QFD, Requirements Gathering, Retrospectives, Root Cause Analysis, SIPOC, Use-Cases, and User Stories

The FAST facilitation technique refines the governance of information and decision-making with proven results:

Capacity building for nonprofits, NGOs, and management support organizations
Clear and traceable assumptions and decisions
Documented governance and ownership of information and decision-making
Fewer omissions resulting in less costly changes
Up to 400 percent reduction of total resources compared to using individual interviews

Primary features of the FAST facilitation include:

Reference manual that covers the life-cycle of meetings and workshops. Topics include facilitator skills, group dynamics, meeting agendas and preparation, project planning, and visual aids.
Five-day FAST Professional Facilitation Training—called “THE boot camp” for facilitators, producing some of the finest facilitators in the world.
Dozens of hours of practice and daily feedback, including five written pages.
Commitment to continual improvements and updates of our content. Electronic access to hundreds of templates/ support materials to conduct your meetings, workshops, and presentations.
Continuing professional development, enabling experienced facilitators to expand their abilities and continue to grow.
Continual fine-tuning and improvement of our technique through our own (and alumni) in-field applications as regular, practical facilitators—we practice what we preach!

You should care about What is FAST if you lead meetings, teams, and groups of people because the FAST technique will make you more successful.

What is MG RUSH FAST? — How to Build Consensus

FAST structures the input of various and complex perspectives by enforcing a consensual outcome that everyone owns and supports. With consensus, as opposed to voting, you develop a win-win situation. FAST helps you win and it begins by teaching you HOW TO THINK, not so much about individual behavior, but the tools and methods that generate results for an entire group, results they will live by.

Proven Career Boost

FAST facilitation works, and based on alumni feedback, it works great. Read some of the testimonials, including those from recent classes (by our standards, the most important). Every day we are helping thousands of alumni run more effective meetings, thus helping them exceed personal and project objectives faster than they would have without us. Participants derive from various cultures with multiple beliefs and values that seem to yield contrary choices and behaviors. While not for the faint-hearted, you will leave our training competent and adding more value than ever for the benefit of your career and your organization.

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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities every day during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.

3 Review Meetings: Operational, Strategic, and Strategy Renewal

by Facilitation Expert | Apr 21, 2016 | Meeting Agendas, Meeting Support, Meeting Tools

Deliverables should drive meetings, even review meetings.

Meeting time is too expensive to conduct unstructured discussions and hope some of it sticks. Here you will find three strong reasons for conducting review meetings. Moreover, you will better understand the different types of deliverables, frequency, and structure for each.

3 Review Meetings	Operational Review (HOW)	Strategic Review (WHAT)	Strategy Renewal (WHY)
Meeting Purpose	To review the performance of products, projects, or operating departments and build the next steps	Review performance indicators and initiatives to assess progress and barriers to strategy execution	Review the strategies and modify or supplement as required
Deliverable	Actions and activities for quick fixes and solving short-term problems	Plans for a product or project acceleration or deceleration and other adjustments such as personnel assignments	New, improved or transformed strategies, targets, and authorization for expenditures
Frequency	From daily to monthly	. . . monthly to quarterly	. . . quarterly to annually
Topics	Operating dashboards Sales, bookings, shipping, and inventory reports Customer complaints Late deliveries Defective production Knowledge gaps Equipment or process breakdowns New opportunities Departmental specific (e.g., resource balancing)	Scorecards Strategy map Workforce development Brand identity Product innovation Customer satisfaction Business process improvement Strategic objectives and themes Focused theme(s) that are rotational	Strategic assumptions Strategic targets Budgets and allocation balance The strategies themselves Shaping curves Analytic reports (e.g., correlations) Market analysis (e.g., industry updates) Technology developments
Agenda Construct	Use the “Facts, Implications, Recommendations” tool; aka “What, So What, Now What”	Use the “After-action Review” tool; aka “Hotwash”	Consider Quantitative TO-WS and other portfolio prioritizing methods (e.g., Perceptual Mapping)
Comments	Avoid discussions about strategic issues or put them in the Parking Lot	Avoid discussions about operational issues or put them in the Parking Lot	The approach and procedures for renewal can be substantially modified, even going back to Mission, etc.

Make Review Meetings Participatory

Participants should NOT spend their time listening to report presentations during review meetings. However, they should have become familiar with the main topics through their pre-read and preparation, and have developed some input for consideration. Build your agenda for review meetings around discrete deliverables from each step, and make sure the deliverables can be documented. If your deliverable is too abstract (e.g., ‘shared awareness’), then it is inappropriate for these three types of meetings. Remember that a world-class strategy is impotent if it is not converted into operational plans that are executed against the agreed-upon performance targets.

The role of session leader (aka facilitator) is frequently filled by the same person who also provides the role of meeting designer. Since there is usually more than one right answer (or meeting design, that leads to the deliverable), how do you determine the optimal approach?

As you may know from MGRUSH structured facilitation, a robust decision-making method suggests creating your options and then separately evaluating them against a set of prioritized criteria; including SMART criteria, fuzzy criteria, and other important considerations.

Additionally, the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) encourages you to “select clear methods and processes that . . .

Foster open participation with respect for client culture, norms, and participant
How To Direct Review Meetings
Engage the participation of those with varied learning/thinking styles
Achieve a high-quality product/outcome that meets the client’s needs”

Foster Open Participation

Support the plurality goal of the IAF’s first point by carefully selecting and blending your meeting participants. Keep in mind the type of change effort you are leading. If your deliverable contributes evolutionary advances to the project cause, you may want to get done quickly, with people who know each other and work together effectively. If your deliverable contributes toward revolutionary advances, then invigorate your blend of meeting or workshop participants. Remember, if you want the same old answer, then clone yourself. If you need something truly innovative, then invite people who may be viewed as outsiders or confederates, and depend on them to help stir things up. We know empirically that more options correlate strongly with higher-quality decisions.

Engage participation

Support their engagement and participation (second bullet above) with the frequent and extended use of break-out teams and sessions. Groups get more done as their sizes are reduced. Breakout teams give quiet people permission to speak freely. Provide creative team names (e.g., stellar constellations or mountain names) and appoint a CEO for each breakout team (i.e., chief easel operator). Be well prepared with your tools or your supplies and handouts.

Achieve

Manage breakout teams closely by wandering around and listening. Keep the teams focused on the question(s) as you would with a larger group, preventing scope creep that yields unproductive time. When you pull the teams back together, use our Bookend Rhetoric (tool) to aggregate and collapse the perspectives into one, unified response.

Next, the International Association of Facilitators encourages you to “prepare time and space to support group process

Arrange physical space to support the purpose of the meeting
Plan effective use of time
Provide effective atmosphere and drama for sessions”

When confined to one room, typically arrange easels in different corners. With virtual meetings, convert local call-in centers (e.g., a group conferencing in from another city) into discrete sub-teams. If possible, plan on separate rooms for break-out sessions, pre-supplied with easels, markers, handouts, etc.

Minimize the allotted time. It’s shocking what teams can complete in three minutes with clear instructions. Even with a three-minute assignment, by the time you have appointed CEOs (Chief Easel Operators), instructions, and participants have assembled and then returned; a three-minute assignment quickly turns into five minutes, five minutes turns into ten, etc. Again, minimize the allotted time, but be flexible and afford more time if the teams remain productive and need more time that adds value.

The more you do in advance to prepare your instructions and the physical space, the more you can expect back in return. If you are blasé and assign team numbers, and randomly assign participants 1,2, 3, etc.—then expect blasé results. If you are creative and involved, you can expect creativity and engagement from your participants.

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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities every day during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.

Influences through Eight Group Decision-Making Styles

by Facilitation Expert | Apr 7, 2016 | Facilitation Skills, Leadership Skills

We have applied modern research about decision quality with material found in Vroom and Yetton’s robust volume, “Leadership and Decision-Making”. Here they identify eight group decision-making styles.

Research proves that groups make higher-quality decisions than the smartest person in the group (i.e., individuals). Therefore, it is relatively easy to picture the relationship as shown in the following array of potential group decision-making styles:

Influence Upon Group Decision-Making Styles

Next, understand the eight styles and then watch what happens when we array them against a new chart, with the “X-Scale” representing how much time is invested by group members and the “Y-Scale” representing the tendency from authoritative decision-making to completely collaborative decision-making.

First the eight styles:

Ai Autocratic or directive style: The leader defines the problem, diagnoses the problem, generates potential solutions, evaluates the options, and selects among the best options.
Agi Autocratic with group input: The leader defines the problem and conducts some diagnosis. They look to the group for the cause and potential solutions, and then unilaterally select among the best options.
Arf Autocratic with group review and feedback: The leader defines the problem, diagnoses probable causes, and selects a solution from among the best options. The leader presents their plan to the group for understanding, review, and feedback, and frequently to transfer ownership.
Ci Individual consultative style: The leader defines the problem and shares it with the individual members of the group. The leader solicits ideas around probable causes and potential solutions. After obtaining information, the leader selects among the best options.
Gc Group consultative style: Similar to the Ci described above the sharing occurs with the group as a whole, rather than as segmented individuals.
Gd Group decision style: The leader shares the problem with the entire group. The group diagnoses probable causes, generates options, evaluates against criteria, and selects among the best options.
Ps Participative: The group as a whole identifies and agrees on the problem. They continue to diagnose probable causes, generate options, evaluate against criteria, and select among the best options. The role of the leader serves as a true facilitator.
Lt Leaderless team: The group has no formal leader, but assembles. Often a leader emerges and may bias the problem or solution. However, the group still The group diagnoses probable causes, generates options, evaluates against criteria, and selects among the best options.

Actual: Styles of Group Decision-Making Impact on Decision Quality

Implications

Having arrayed them in the chart above, it becomes apparent, that critical decisions demand more group time while simple and tactical decisions should be managed by individuals and not macro-managed by groups or supervisors. The next time you are faced with a critical decision, demand the time to take a facilitated group approach, and you will be amazed at what a solid group of subject matter experts can generate when properly facilitated as defined by the Ps style above.

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Accurate estimating for meeting duration helps optimize the schedules and expectations of your participants. Therefore, stay vigilant. When estimated incorrectly, your sessions risk the worst deliverable from any meeting — another meeting.

General Guidelines for Estimating Meeting Duration

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12 PMI (Project Management Institute) Planning Steps Applied to Managing Multiple Workshops

IDENTIFY PRODUCT OR PROJECT DELIVERABLES

ID CHECKPOINTS

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Estimating Meeting Duration for Specific Deliverables

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Meeting graphics such as illustrations capture concepts and ideas that substitute for words. Why should we care about meeting graphics and illustrations?

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Application

Roadblocks

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Summary

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You may effectively facilitate Board Meetings by relying on Robert’s Rules of Order, however, blend in facilitative leadership skills to improve your decision quality.

When You Facilitate Board Meetings, Include Ground Rules

2. When You Facilitate Board Meetings, Sustain an Upbeat Tempo

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4. When You Facilitate Board Meetings, Focus on Output NOT Outcome

5. When You Facilitate Board Meetings, Manage Open Issues and Next Steps

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Using your telephone or a separate camera to record and back up meeting output will help you avoid losing valuable information.

Back up Meeting Output from a Whiteboard or Easel for Later Transcription

Tips and Tricks

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How to Facilitate Root Cause Analysis

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Changing Perspectives for Root-Cause Analysis

The 6 M’s Category

The 7 P’s Category

The 5 S’s Category

Six Trends from the World Future Society

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Digging Deep

For More Root Cause Analysis Tools

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Your regularly scheduled staff meeting may not be an event that your staff anticipates. Some employees might prefer having a root canal. At least with a root canal, pain medication is provided. You can lead better staff meetings, and quicker too, and here’s how.

Have a Clear Purpose and Scope for Your Staff Meeting

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Convert Your Staff Meeting into a Standing Meeting

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Final Comments

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Value of Meeting Inclusiveness

Use of Meeting Ground Rules

Key to Innovation

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Scope creep kills projects. It also kills meetings.

APPLYING THE BOOKEND METHOD TO CONCERN, INFLUENCE, AND CONTROL

Purpose

Rationale

Method

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The Fist of Five approach combines the speed of thumbs up/ down and displays the degrees of agreement that can support more complicated decision spectrums. Using this tool, people vote using their hands and display fingers to represent their degree of support.

Fist of Five Method

Fist of Five Interpreted

Fist of Five Notes

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Strongly encouraged by Steve Jobs, as mentioned in his biography by Walter Isaacson, here is how to facilitate reducing some possible actions a team should consider, down to the final three or four actions your team has the resources to complete.

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Facilitate Prioritization by Starting with the End in Mind

Definition Tool

Rationale to Facilitate Prioritization

CAUTION When You Facilitate Prioritization

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