Buy us a cup of coffee
A ridiculous amount of coffee is consumed in the process of writing these posts. Add some fuel if you'd like to keep us going!
Pages
Posts by category
- Category: Agile and Scrum Master Facilitation
- Liberated Design Sprint Planning, by Douglas Ferguson
- How to Facilitate Multiple Generations — All the Time
- 12 Critical Facilitation Do’s and Don’ts During Meetings, Sessions, and Workshops
- Kanban or Scrum: Pick the Right Workflow Tool
- Agile vs Waterfall? Don’t Risk Failure By Using the Wrong One
- Scope Creep Kills Projects – It Begins in Poorly Facilitated Meetings
- Strong Facilitation Skills Guarantee More Successful Meetings
- Risk Analysis – Method and Questions to Facilitate A Portfolio of Projects
- Scrum Master Facilitator Techniques Improve Meetings
- How to Use the Principles of Agile’s Daily Scrum in Your Staff Meetings
- Scrum’s Evidence-based Methodology Improves the Agility of Your Group
- 7 Reasons Why Agile Facilitation is Powerful
- Category: Analysis
- Do NOT Attempt a Design Sprint Without a Facilitator
- Real-Win-Worth Provides a Superior Facilitating Opportunity
- 30 Questions to Change the Point of View in a Meeting
- What is TRIZ and When Should You Use It?
- Triple Constraint Theory: Use a Flexibility Matrix to Build Consensus
- Four Reasons You Will Dial Up Decision Quality with More Diverse Teams
- How to Facilitate Force Field Analysis Leading to Actions
- Quantitative SWOT Analysis Makes it Easier & Faster to Build Consensus
- Trending Towards Evidence-based Management for Decision-making
- Questions to Ask If Using a Decision Quality Spider Chart (DQ Spider)
- How to Facilitate KPIs or Root Cause Analysis — an Ishikawa Diagram
- Scope Creep Kills: Facilitate Concern, Influence, and Control
- When Facilitating, How to Categorize List of Ideas and Inputs
- Category: Facilitating Projects
- How Structured Facilitation Training Can Save Your Arse and Boost Your Career
- How to Build Action Plans with Shared Ownership and Accountability
- Work Breakdown Structure Increases Focus and Reduces Scope Creep
- Three Behaviors Guaranteed To Improve Your Ability to Build Consensus
- Five Compelling Business Reasons To Use Structured Facilitation Sessions
- MG RUSH Certified, Professional, Endorsed Facilitators are Helping to Solve World Problems
- The New Science of Teamwork: Is it new or just MG RUSH Professional Facilitation at work?
- Ground Rules and Ideation Rules for Optimal Group Behavior in Meetings
- Becoming an Unconsciously Competent Facilitator
- Twelve Behaviors that Define Great Facilitators
- How to Transform a Roles and Responsibility Matrix into a GANTT Chart
- Estimating Meeting Length and Workshop Duration | Tips and Guidelines
- Why care about meeting graphics and illustrations? Visual Basics
- Lunch and Learn: MG RUSH Structured Facilitation Gems or Takeaways
- Tips on How to Backup Meeting Output from Whiteboards/ Easels
- How to Manage a Problem Person During Meetings
- The Most Effective Facilitators Stop Saying I — Use Pluralistic Rhetoric
- Differences Between Skills of Project and Program Management
- 4 Phases: Strategy Execution Map, Great Questions to Ask
- How The FAST Facilitation Technique Helps You Succeed
- 3 Review Meetings: Operational, Strategy, and Strategy Renewal
- The Best One Page Agenda Template for a Fifty Minute Meeting
- Influences through Styles of Group Decision Making
- Unstructured Meeting Costs Rise: Use an MG RUSH Structured Technique
- What is FAST, Why You Should Care, and How FAST Can Help You
- Stop Meeting Scope Creep with Precise Questions
- “If you’ve never been hit in the face, find out what it’s like”
- Why Call Your Meeting Parking Lot a Meeting Refrigerator
- How to Calculate Total Factor Productivity as an Indicator
- A Toolbox for Facilitating Team Charters and Project Plans
- How to Facilitate Alignment and Confirm Balance
- How to Build Stakeholder Analysis and Consensual Understanding
- Building Agendas to Deliver the Output You Need from Your Meeting
- Become a Humane Human, Understand WHY Behind WHAT
- Why Voting Leads to Bigger Numbers but Lower Quality Decisions
- Attitude of Gratitude Makes for More Powerful Facilitation
- Use Nouns (Objects) to Describe Your Meeting Agenda Steps – NOT Verbs
- A Quick, 5-Minute Paradigm Exercise to Challenge Groupthink
- Facilitation Reference Guide Supporting an IT Project Workshop
- Process Improvement Questions to Ask When Leading an Initiative
- To Finish Meetings Faster Requires Explaining the White Space
- Thoughts, Words, and Deeds – Foundation for Building Consensus
- How to Facilitate Olympic Scoring – Innovative Ideas & Concepts
- Twenty Popular Brain Breaks to Stimulate Your Meeting Participants
- How to Manage “Probabilities” in the Role of Facilitator: Create Ranges
- Increase Your Leadership Likeability By Strolling and Smiling More
- Methodological Awareness About Deming’s 14 Points of Continuous Improvement
- Understand the Value of Argumentation for Organizational Decision-making
- Two Quick and Effective Icebreakers for Large Groups
- What to Include in a Workshop Participants’ Package for a Major Initiative
- How to Develop the Basis for a Successful Meeting or Workshop in Four Easy Steps
- Appreciative Inquiry — A Facilitative Path for the Future
- Interviewing Questions to Ask to Understand Political Risks in Meetings
- What Aristotle Might Say to Facilitators Who Cannot Remove Bias
- Facilitate: Indispensable in Guide to the Business Analyst Body of Knowledge ®
- Compelling Reasons for Structured Meetings — Positive Impact on Stakeholders
- Core Competency: Planning Changes Minds, Not Simply Make Plans
- Understanding the Time and Place for Individual Versus Group Decisions
- What Important Key is Missing from Most Group Approaches to Problem Solving ?
- When Smart People Make Dumb Decisions – How To Improve Group Decisions
- Balanced Scorecard Demands Strategy-Focused Facilitation
- Payoff Matrix — Quick Wins, Tried and True, or Hail Mary Passes
- Reasons for the Difference — Meetings and Workshops
- Do Facilitators Need to be Subject Matter Experts? Content vs. Context
- 9 Components of a Structured Meeting or Workshop
- Dealing with Anger — Only One Letter Short of the Word “Danger”
- 6 Potent Ways to Facilitate Conflict Response and Manage Conflict
- Effective Groups Attain Organizational Goals and Satisfy Individual Needs
- 10 Excellent Guidelines for Students and Teachers: Justice, Peace, and Delight
- Three Tips For Before, During, and After Meetings
- Effective Facilitators Avoid These Fifteen DUMB Vague Verbs
- Why Meetings Fail, You Should Not Fail During Your Meetings to . . .
- Meeting Announcement Considerations Prior to Shipping a Pre-Read
- Neuroeconomics and Neurofacilitation: Rational Decisions Maximize Utility
- Establishing Common Purpose Provides the Secret to Building Consensus
- Challenge the Status Quo, such as “We don’t do things that way around here.”
- Nonverbal Expressions: How to (Not) Gesture while Facilitating
- What to Do About the Seven Deadly Sins of Facilitating (in alphabetical order):
- A Simple Planning Agenda for Agreeing on Who Does What by When
- Speed of Decision-making | When Quality Not Enough
- Facilitating ‘Genetic’ Differences: Similar Values with Different Priorities
- The FUD Factor: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt Amplify Fear, but People Change Anyway
- The Way People Think Affects How You Intervene to Build Consensus
- Do NOT Lead Another Workshop Without These Four Workshop Documents
- 10 Tips for Better Interactive Listening: It’s Not How You Act but How You React
- Individual Motivation to Embrace Organizational Goals (aka, Persuasion)
- Decision-Making: Focus on Strategic, Operational, OR Tactical Issues
- Suggestions on How To Deal with a Meeting Problem Offered Up by Other Facilitators
- Facilitating Cultural Shift from Group Orientation to Shared Team Values
- Seven Meeting Tips that Increase Your Likelihood of Success
- Beware of Overconfident Subject Matter Experts, and be Prepared to Challenge
- It Is NOT What is in it for me? Rather, What do you need or want from me?
- Apply the Bookends Method to Avoid Wasting Time with Lists
- Five Narrative Brainstorming Methods to Generate Participant Input
- How to Build a Consensual Definition Making It Easier to Plan and Decide
- The Purpose Tool: Building the Strategic Plan for a Function, Process, Activity or Product
- A Few Dozen Highly Effective Icebreakers (aka, Meeting Sparks)
- One Essence, Three Aspects: The Rule of Thirds in the World of Facilitation
- A Metaphor is Worth a Thousand Pictures: Explain Via Analogy
- A Facilitator’s Profile is Much Like an Innovator’s Profile (Design Thinker)
- How Experience and Qualifications Amplify the Fallacy of Planning (i.e., “Overconfidence”)
- The Positive Psychology of Chenille Stems: How to Make Everything Seem Easier
- Context Diagram – A Consensually Built Picture Can Resolve a Thousand Arguments
- 14 Facilitator Typologies to Avoid (Humorous, Although Uncannily Real)
- For-Profit Meetings Requires Structure Not Found in Facilitating Kum-Bay-Yah
- IceBreaker TIP — Newspaper or Magazine Headlines about Accomplishments
- Seven Top Skills for Managing Change in an Enterprise or Organization
- Guidelines for Selecting Appropriate Structured Facilitation Tools
- Why We Need Trained, Professional Facilitators Who Can Guard Against Bias
- How to Facilitate Business Process Improvement Projects
- How to Help a Group Decide the WHY, WHAT, and HOW—Purpose, Criteria, and Options
- How to Effectively Build a Consensual Message for Project Updates in 30 Minutes
- Facilitators’ Overview of the HBR Book Executing Your Strategy
- Three Simple yet Precise Questions that Improve Group Clarity and Consensus Building
- 38 Proven Questions to Determine and Mitigate Meeting Risk Factors
- How to Structure and Normalize Discussions Around “Many to Many”
- Take a Meeting Break to Improve Team Performance and Your Own
- How to Facilitate Vision Using the Temporal Shift Tool
- Meetings Should Include a Communications Plan: Guardian of Change
- Be Here Now — Our Most Popular Meeting Ground Rule
- How Facilitated Leadership Can Help You Overcome 7 Common Project Pitfalls
- How Can Participants Lead Meetings and Subtly Take Charge
- Two Dozen A3 Project Questions to Manage Triple Constraints
- How to Structure Your Most Effective Meeting Introduction
- How to Manage Your Meeting Parking Lot and Assign Action Items
- Blue Ocean Strategy: Create Uncontested Market Space
- Category: Facilitation Skills
- 5 Tips on How to Facilitate Board Meetings (or Committees)
- How to Make Your Staff Meeting More Effective
- Five Ways to Facilitate Quiet People to Get Them to Participate
- Category: Conflict
- 17 Challenging Personality Types and How To Manage Them to Avoid Problem Meetings
- 4 Steps to Conflict Resolution: Purpose, Active Listening, Alignment, and Escalation
- Addicted to Being Right: 4 Participant Responses to Avoid Being Wrong
- Use the Fist of Five to Test for Consensus on Contextual Issues
- Five Common Meeting Problems and What You Should Do About Them
- “The distribution of collaborative work is often extremely lopsided . . .”
- Holarchy: The Discipline of Structured Facilitation Contrasted to Kum-Bah-Yah
- How to Manage Breakout Sessions (3 Minute Productivity WOW)
- The Four Steps to Active Listening – Strive to Reflect Rationale
- Category: Solid Questions
- Category: Facilitation Tools
- Category: Guest Post
- Category: Leadership
- Category: Meeting Controls
- Don’t Run! Learn How to Manage Group Conflict
- How to Recognize Diversity, Ensuring Meeting Inclusiveness
- How to Be Precise with Three Transition Questions: Do NOT Ask “How Do You Solve Global Hunger?”
- How to Make Thinking Visible — Three Forms of Business Argumentation Support
- Facilitation Secret Sauce – Clear Thinking, Active Listening, & Structure
- Meeting Impact: Poor Facilitation Leads to Problems, Struggles, and Errors
- Be on Guard for Selective Perception and other Meeting Participant Biases
- Effective Facilitators Remember to Remove Distractions to Provide More Focus
- 15 Facilitation Guidelines Followed by Professional Facilitators
- 16 Valuable Tips and Considerations when Chairing Meetings
- 8 Meeting Purposes – What Tasks Are You Asking a Group to Complete?
- 9 Tips Proven to Increase Meeting Competence and Output Quality
- 15 Fun and Quick Tips to Help You Become a More Successful Facilitative Leader
- “Brainsteering” Recommends 5 Activities to Improve Brainstorming
- Four Activities for an Efficient and Effective Meeting Wrap up
- How to Build a Roles and Responsibilities for Multiple Sites
- Leadership Style Depends on Source of Ideas and Solution Ownership
- Meeting Boundaries to Closely Manage: Directed or Facilitated
- What Takes the Energy from Meetings with Good People and Intent?
- Indirect Meeting Costs and Other Related Challenges
- How to Improve Use Easels When Facilitating Meetings and Workshops
- 4 Considerations Providing and Participating in Training
- How You Can Help Your Meeting Participants Become Better Listeners
- Facilitators vs. Dictators: Facilitators are More Popular
- Facilitating Crucial Conversations and the Dialogue Model
- Tips for Improved Participation in Meetings
- How to Help Resolve Business Arguments
- How to Facilitate Virtual Meetings and Participants
- Considerations on How to Facilitate Europeans and Asians
- Responsibility Matrix, Agenda Design, and Parking Lot Management
- How to Create and Sustain a Participatory Environment
- Meeting Communications and Results are Delivered with Guardian of Change
- Documentor Support — Selection and Training
- Category: Meeting Preparation
- Category: Virtual Facilitation
- Category: Methodology
- Avoid Asking “How Do We Solve Global Hunger?” with the Single Question Approach
- Facilitate Consensual Prioritization Using a Perceptual Map
- A Blueprint When Consensus Building Around All Types of Decision-Making
- National Intelligence Council Support for Facilitating Scenario Planning
- Mission or Vision — What is the Difference?
- SMART Versus DUMB Criteria
- How to Facilitate Requirements Gathering (Primer)
- How to Get Promising Meetings to Fail: Four Meeting Failure Causes
- How to Converge Your Brainstorming Input— Key Measures
- Begin to Facilitate Innovation By Using the Brainstorming Tool
- How to Facilitate Brainstorming: Primer and Overview of Three Activities
- How to Facilitate Scientists
- How to Plan Appropriate Group Processes
- Category: Analysis Meeting
- How to Facilitate an After Action Review (Hot Wash): Agenda and Tips
- How to Facilitate Prioritization and Build Consensus Quickly (or, MoSCoW)
- Power of a Single Cell to Make Your Deliverables More Robust
- Facilitate a Decision Matrix to Document Supporting Rationale
- 94 Different Purposes of Meetings Based on More than 12 Factors
- How to Facilitate Decision-Making Using Pros and Cons
- Category: Building Agendas
- Category: Design Meeting
- Category: Planning Meeting
- Category: Participants
- Values Provide and Answer to Who are We ? — Benjamin Franklin Called Them Virtues
- Mother Teresa’s Holiday Message of Prescribed Actions and Behaviours
- Consensus does NOT Mean that Participants are Going to be “Happy”
- Three Questions You Need to Answer Before Your Meeting Begins
- Best Method for Interviewing Participants Before Your Meetings and Workshops
- A Participants’ Meeting Credo
- Crashing Through Toward Improved Facilitation
- Rhetorical Precision and Clear Communications — Stress Substance Over Style
- Both Facilitator and Methodologist: Role of Session Leader
- Facilitate Meaning, Not Words
- Five Compelling Business Reasons: Why Host Facilitated Sessions
- Bad Predictions for Science and Technology
- The Modern Leader DNA – Facilitative Leadership Difference
- Category: Presentation
- Category: Technique
- Facilitative Leadership – How Even Novice Facilitators Can Succeed
- Product Owner — Creating Products that Customers Love
- Don’t Ruin Your Scrum Sprints — Facilitate Scrum Events Using These Agendas
- Want To Be Heard? Stop Talking — The Power of Silence by Karen Snyder
- Meeting Killers: Eight Ways to Kill A Meeting and Your Reputation
- The Primer on Facilitation Certification – Associations Through Universities
- How To Convert Requirements or Fuzzy Goals into SMART Objectives
- Dr Edward de Bono: Six Thinking Hats Provide Strong Stimulus for Ideation
- Reasons for Workshop Success: Witnessed by an MG Rush Alumna
- Higher Decision Quality Focuses on ‘WHAT’ is Right, NOT ‘WHO’ is Right
- Three Facilitative Presenter Tips To Make Your Presentations More Effective
- If it wasn’t documented, it didn’t happen — Meeting Documenters
- Remember the Abilene Paradox and Avoid Absurdity While Facilitating
- Securing Commitment Among Multi-Discipline Work Groups
- Sign the Charter for Compassion and Consider Becoming a Supporting Member
- You Can Effectively Facilitate With These Three Guiding Principles
- The Transforming Workplace
- Change or Die —“It is NOT the strongest of the species that survives . . .
- facilius reddo — to make easy
- Category: Theory
- Ignite Your Will and Find a Way to Improve Community
- Punctuation Precision, Humorously Proven by Eats, Shoots and Leaves
- Information is Physical — The Information (a brief review of James Gleick’s treatise)
- Content Neutrality — Take Only Photographs, Leave Only Bubbles
- Let’s Be Thankful — Where We Are Winning
- da Vinci’s Traits — Current and Compelling
- The Tao of Facilitation — Leaving the Ego Behind
- Category: Uncategorized
- Category: Agile and Scrum Master Facilitation