Seven Tips for Better Participation in Meetings

A meeting can be led (or misled) from any chair in the room. Here’s how to ensure that you add value during your next meeting.

Improved Meeting Participation

1. If it is your meeting, ask a facilitator to lead the group through major solution finding activities. Having a facilitator frees you to participate and gives responsibility for keeping order to a neutral person.
2. Take a moment to organize your thoughts before speaking. Then express your idea simply, logically, and concisely. People are more receptive to ideas they understand. Long, complex explanations work against you.
3. Respect others. Different views force us to develop new ideas and more ideas equates to higher quality decisions.
4. Use positive comments in the meeting. Negative comments create defensive reactions that distract from your goals.
5. Use structured activities. Methodological tools ensure equitable participation and systematic progress toward results.
6. Focus on one issue at a time. Avoid stories, jokes, and unrelated issues. These waste time, distract focus, and mislead others. Save the fun for lunchtime or social occasions where it will be appreciated.
7. Rescue wayward meetings by challenging seemingly unrelated comments. Ask, “Explain how that contributes to the issue about _______?”

Remember friends, nobody is smarter than everybody. For detailed support, see your FAST Facilitator Reference Manual or attend a FAST professional facilitative leadership training workshop offered around the world (see MGRush for a current schedule — an excellent way to earn 40 PDUs from PMI).

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The Tao of Facilitation

10th Verse of the Tao

Can you love your people

and govern your domain

without self-importance?

. . .

working, yet not taking credit;

leading without controlling or dominating?

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While it is not easy leaving the ego at the threshold, it is mandatory for modern and effective facilitative leadership.

Become Part of the Solution, Improve Your Facilitation Skills

The FAST curriculum on Professional Facilitation Skills details the responsibilities and dynamics mentioned above. Remember friends, nobody is smarter than everybody, so consult your FAST Facilitator Reference Manual or attend a FAST professional facilitative leadership training workshop offered around the world (see MG Rush for a current schedule — an excellent way to earn 40 PDUs from PMI, CDUs from IIBA, or CEUs).

Daring you to embrace the will, wisdom, and activities that amplify the skills of a facilitative leader.

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Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant

By W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne (Authors) Harvard Business School Press; 1 edition (February 3, 2005)

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The FAST technique embraces different approaches based on whether your project is seeking incremental gain or requires real breakthrough. “Blue Ocean Strategy” promotes breakthrough thinking, justified by the higher profits such thinking generates among companies studied by its authors, Kim and Mauborgne.[1]

The authors note the failures of companies over the past fifteen to twenty years—since the publishing of “In Search of Excellence” and “Built to Last”—including Atari, Data General, Fluor, and National Semiconductor.  The cornerstone of Blue Ocean Strategy is value innovation, defined as “the integrated and simultaneous pursuit of differentiation (ie, buyer value) AND low-cost (ie, supplier value).”

Their analytical tool set begins with a strategy canvass that identifies the principle competitive and investment factors within your industry. With wine as an example (in brief), they might include price, distinction, marketing, aging, vineyard, complexity, and range. Their framework (called Four Actions) relies on facilitating consensual agreement around four questions. Participants’ answers suggest a new value curve that might enable your company to shift from traditional industry factors to uncontested market space. The four questions are:
1. ELIMINATE––Which factors that the industry takes for granted should be eliminated?
2. RAISE––Which factors should be raised well above the industry’s standard?
3. CREATE––Which factors should be created that the industry has never offered?
4. REDUCE––Which factors should be reduced well below the industry’s standard?

For example, they suggest the success of Cirque du Soleil (compared to a traditional circus) accelerated with the following insights:
1. ELIMINATE––Star performers, animal shows, etc.
2. RAISE––Unique venue, type of concession sales, etc.
3. CREATE––Theme, artistic music and dance, etc.
4. REDUCE––Multiple show arenas, thrill and danger, etc.

Using the strategy canvass of Southwest Airlines they suggest the more factors of friendly service, speed, and frequent point-to-point departures. Both Cirque du Soleil and Southwest Airlines are viewed as sharing focus, divergence, and a compelling tagline. On the total, the authors’ steps for visualizing strategy draw upon group discussions and consensus—aka, excellent facilitation. They also suggest the use of a Pioneer-Migrator-Settler perceptual map that would seem to offer far less benefit than seeking consensus with the Four Actions above.

“Blue Ocean Strategy” offers additional and valuable questions[2] that challenge each of a life-cycle’s steps (eg, FAST’s Plan-Acquire-Operate-Control) to find the biggest blocks faced by buyer drivers such as productivity, simplicity, convenience, risk, fun/ image, and environmental friendliness.

The authors finish their discussion with four “organizational hurdles” including politics, motivation, resources, and groupthink (ie, “cognitive”). However, like many academics, they complete their otherwise valuable book by discussing the importance of converting the strategy into execution—missing the importance and significance of building consensual analysis to pave the way. They jump from the WHY to the HOW without a complete understanding about WHAT is required—ie, the consensual aspects that assure buy-in, confidence, and ownership. They talk about the importance of attitude and behavior but offer little insight about how to acquire “fair process,”—something that FAST alumni do regularly by building consensus around the analysis framework.

[1] See chart on page 7, “The Profit and Growth Consequences of Creating Blue Oceans.”
[2] See chart on page 123, “The Buyer Experience Cycle.”

Remember friends, nobody is smarter than everybody. For detailed support, see your FAST Facilitator Reference Manual or attend a FAST professional facilitative leadership training workshop offered around the world (see MGRush for a current schedule — an excellent way to earn 40 PDUs from PMI).

Rhetorical Precision

Was the situation on 9/11 involving New York’s World Trade Center destruction one

Prior to September 11, 2001

“occurrence” or two  ”occurrences”?  I’m reminded that $3.5 bilion was at risk since the property was insured per occurrence. For a compelling discussion on this topic see “The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature” by Steven Pinker.  Do not forget in your sessions to provide a cultural glossary that helps make sure consensual definitions among your meeting participants.

By the dawn of 2005, $4.6 billion was awarded in insurance settlements. This is a far cry from what the owners originally wanted ($7 billion), but is much more than what many pundits thought they would recover ($3.55 billion).

“‘Occurrence’ shall mean all losses or damages that are attributable directly or indirectly to one cause or to one series of similar causes. All such losses will be added together and the total amount of such losses will be treated as one occurrence irrespective of the period of time or area over which such losses occur.”

For detailed support, see your FAST Facilitator Reference Manual or attend a FAST Professional Facilitative Leadership training  session offered around the world (see http://www.mgrush.com/ for a current schedule).

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