Questions about Size Factors that Impact the Amount of Meeting Risk (2 of 5)

This is the second of a five-part discussion, providing a method for evaluating the relative risk of a meeting or workshop.

Method

The method follows the steps below:

• Review the risk assessment questions from prior worksheets or those that follow.
• Use the FAST risk analysis worksheets to capture your answers and compute a score.
• Use this score as a basis for the risk-skill matching described in the risk-skill map section.

Questions

SIZE FACTORS

The size factors measure the overall project size of effort, scope, and number of workshops.  This is an important factor in determining risk due to the complexity of planning and coordinating large projects and the required resources.

Project Life Cycle

All questions in this size section refer to the entire life span of the project your meetings support—initiation through implementation.

1. Work Hours: Total work hours (1,000s) for the project? This question refers to the estimated effort in thousands of work hours to develop the complete system.
2. Duration: What is the project’s estimated duration? This is the elapsed (calendar) time to complete the project.
3. Number Projects: Number of projects supporting the initiative or program? If a staged or prototype project, how many stages?
4. Dependency: Is there another project on which this project is likely or totally dependent? This question focuses on the “weakest link” theory.  It asks if the implementation has one key project that must go right above all others for the initiative to be successful.  If yes, does intuitive feel for the situation say the risk associated with that project is high?
5. Interfaces: How many existing “systems” will the new solution interface? Count the number of existing, distinctly different, systems that will provide or receive information to or from the new solution.
6. Workshop Quantity: Estimated number of workshops required for the project? Count the estimated number of different FAST workshops required to complete the project.
7. Different Types: How many different types of workshops are required? Count the number of different types of workshop agendas required.  If the project requires six workshops all using the same approach, count only 1 (one).  If the project requires multiple approaches and different types of workshops, count as appropriate.
8. Beginning Phase: In which phase are the workshops starting? Identify the beginning phase of the project.

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 a facilitative leader.

Related articles

• Meetings Should Include a Communications Plan, Call it “Guardian of Change” (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• A “Plan” May Be Defined as “Who Does What (and When)” and Answers 10 Questions (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)

40 Proven Questions to Determine and Mitigate Meeting or Workshop Risk (1 of 5)

This two-part discussion provides a method for evaluating the relative risk of a meeting or workshop.

What is Risk?

Risk is exposure to the following consequences:

• Failure to achieve benefits
• Hardware and software incompatibility
• Higher implementation costs
• Longer implementation time
• Performance that is less than expected

Risk is not “bad”—failure to understand risk is dangerous.

Risk Defined

Risk shows up at three significant levels in a project:

1. Business risk is the potential exposure to the business for an incomplete, inappropriate, or late project.
2. Project risk is the likelihood of a given project failing, missing timelines, falling short of delivery standards, or grossly exceeding its estimates.
3. Technique risk is the potential for failure or major problems using a specific technique or tool in a given situation (ie, workshop or meeting methodology).

Source

We worked with Harvard Business School experts F. Warren McFarlan and James McKenney to create an algorithm that provides as assessment of meeting risk.

Meeting and Workshop Risk Components

A facilitated meeting or technique aggregates up to four discrete areas:

1. Size—a measure of overall project effort, number of dependencies, and numbers and types of meeting or workshop sessions required.
2. Complexity—a measure of the newness of the methodologies being used, the preexisting structure of the business requirements, and complexity of understanding the new requirements.
3. Politics—a measure of the controversy surrounding the project, cooperation amongst the groups, and general tendency of the participants to involve political considerations in a solution.
4. Customer Organization (ie, heterogeneity)—a measure of the size, location, and complexity of the customer organization and potential logistical problems.

Assess each area using the questions and templates that follow in part two. Meanwhile, continue reading with a discussion about mitigation actions.

When To Assess

Assess risk for every significant meeting or workshop.  Perform the assessment as part of the initial preparation.  Reassess risk for each stage or phase gate meeting, decision reviews, and look backs.  If meeting risk is not going down as you progress through the project life cycle, your meeting or workshop is likely facing additional trouble.

Mitigating Meeting Risk

Finding that a meeting or workshop is high risk is not enough.  You must do something to mitigate the risk.  Following are guidelines:

High Complexity

• Structure more participants in your workshops.  Have a speaker (not yourself) stimulate the participants with prototyping ideas and then drive additional creativity to inspire innovation.

High Politics

• Use a politically savvy session leader.  Develop consensus and vision building with management by conducting a management workshop to develop the purpose, scope, objectives, and vision for the new business, process, or system.  Complete this workshop first.

Large Project

• Conduct four to five requirements gathering workshops and then have a review with senior management to see if still on track.  When scheduling workshops, schedule them from Tuesday through Friday and plan to finish on Thursday.  That ensures that the participants have cleared their calendars for Friday in case the workshop runs over—otherwise, they go 
home early.

Diverse Organization

• Lead meetings in a similar fashion as you would for a large project.  Also, schedule numerous face-to-face visits or conference calls for the preparation interviews.

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 a facilitative leader.

Related articles

• 17 Valuable Tips and Essential Issues for “Chairing” Successful Meetings (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Meetings Should Include a Communications Plan, Call it “Guardian of Change” (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• A “Plan” May Be Defined as “Who Does What (and When)” and Answers 10 Questions (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• How to Facilitate Building a Group’s Vision Using the Temporal Shift Tool (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• How to Structure and Normalize a Discussion Around a “Many to Many” Dilemma (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)

 

How to Structure and Normalize a Discussion Around a “Many to Many” Dilemma

The purpose of this topic is to help a group focus its discussion when there are many symptoms, causes, preventions, and cures that should be considered; likely against an array of multiple agents or actors who need to act upon a new plan or process.

Rationale

Meetings waste much time because they lack structure, not because they fail to generate some good ideas.  The problem with most meetings is that the group of participants do not know if they “got it all”, how they can measure their progress, and how much work remains to be done.

Method

This approach can be modified, but embraces the second step of Brainstorming called Analysis.  With a complex problem, consider the following:

• Confirm the purpose of the solution state or the ideal condition. Describe the way things ought be when there is no problem and everything is working properly according to design.
• Fully define the problem state or condition, building consensus around the way things are at present.
• Identify all the potential symptoms that make it easy to characterize the problem or issue. Consider symptoms to be “externally identifiable factors” that can be seen and observed objectively, such as “tardiness.”
• For each symptom identify all possible causes (or consider Root Cause Analysis [aka RCA] or the Ishikawa Diagram).
• Identify the people, agents, or actors that will participate in the solution or plan (eg, participants, management, contractors, etc.).
• Populate a matrix with the agents against a timeline as shown below.  The simplest way to approach the x dimension is to separately cover the before and after phases (such as what can be done to prevent each cause and what can be done to cure for each cause by each agent).
• With group at large or using sub-teams with assigned areas, develop all potential responses or actions with every agent across the timeline (see below).

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 a facilitative leader.

Related articles

• A “Plan” May Be Defined as “Who Does What (and When)” and Answers 10 Questions (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• 8 Meeting Purposes: What Task(s) Are You Asking Your Group To Accomplish? (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Root causeanalysis1 (slideshare.net)

Using the Fist of Five to Test for Quick Consensus About Contextual Issues

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 approach people vote using their hands and display fingers to represent their degree of support.

Method

When a group comes to consensus on a matter, it means that everyone in the group can support the decision; they don’t all have to think it’s the best decision, but they all agree they can live with it.  This tool is an easy-to-use way to test for consensus quickly.

To use this technique the facilitator restates a decision the group may make and asks everyone to show their level of support.  Each person responds by showing a fist or a number of fingers that corresponds to their opinion.

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

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

2 Fingers—“I am comfortable with the proposal but want to discuss some minor issues.”

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

4 Fingers—“I think this is a good idea/ decision and will work for it.”

5 Fingers—“It’s a great idea and I will be a major leader supporting it.”

If anyone holds up fewer than three fingers, they should be given the opportunity to state their objections and the team should address their concerns.  Teams continue the Fist of Five process until they achieve consensus (a minimum of three fingers or higher) or determine they must move on to the next issue.)

Notes

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

Another model registers resistance to the proposal so that one finger means total support, two fingers means support with some minor reservations, three fingers means concerns that need discussing, four fingers means “I object and want to discuss”, and five fingers (an extended palm like a stop sign) means “Stop, I am opposed.”

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 a facilitative leader.

Related articles

• A “Plan” May Be Defined as “Who Does What (and When)” and Answers 10 Questions (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• “Be Here Now” – Meaning Behind One of Our Most Popular Meeting Ground Rules (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• How to Make Better Decisions Together (shareable.net)

Meeting Tip: Take a “Break” to Improve Your Group Performance and Your Own

In addition to taking standard ten minute bio-breaks every hour or so, you may need to take breaks for the benefits of your team, for your own benefit, or to encourage innovation through a change of scenery.  These extra breaks enable people to move around, get the blood flowing, grab some fresh air, and think of the situation in a different environment 
(eg, an outdoor courtyard or near a fountain).

Method

When either you, the session leader, are fatigued or confused or whenever the group gets stuck on a subject, such as an argument, lethargy, etc, take a break.  Before you send them on this special break, however, do the following:

1. Give them a specific time to return (normally fifteen minutes so that they have ten minutes of a ‘normal’ break and an additional five minutes for steps two and three below).
2. Visually post or give them a question to think about while on the break and ask them to consider the question for five minutes during their extended break.
3. When participants return, capture their new ideas or responses.

Notes

This fairly simple exercise has resulted in many issues being resolved, arguments ending, decisions being made, and participants waking up.  It allows some time for evaporation if the team is saturated, thus allowing space for new ideas to develop.  For the session leader, it affords additional time to regroup while the team remains productive. Do not be afraid to take a break as no team has ever been disappointed when the session leader tells the group to take a break.

Ergonomic Break Alternative

The cognitive benefits of exercise have been demonstrated in older people, middle-aged people, and even fourth graders.  Clinical proof exists that you learn twenty percent faster after exercise than after sitting still.

Why?  Exercise improves the blood’s access to specific brain regions and stimulates learning cells to make brain-derived neurotrophic factors, or BDNF, which acts like a Miracle-Gro^® for neurons.

What?  Consider an ergonomic break where you (or appointee) begin a simple series of stretching.  Have participants roll their heads, twist their torsos, bend their hips, rotate their arms, or even massage the shoulder trap muscles of the person next to them.

Everyone will benefit, feel better, and stay awake longer.

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 a facilitative leader.

Related articles

• “Be Here Now” – Meaning Behind One of Our Most Popular Meeting Ground Rules (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• 8 Meeting Purposes: What Task(s) Are You Asking Your Group To Accomplish? (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Celebrate Pause Appreciation Day (thehealthyhousewives.wordpress.com)

 

Meetings Should Include a Communications Plan, Call it “Guardian of Change”

Meetings Should Include a Communications Plan, Call it “Guardian of Change”

Stakeholders ask meeting participants, “What happened in the meeting?” It’s a good idea to sound like all attended the same meeting.  To ensure that participants harmonize their “elevator speech” (also known as coffee pot, issue bin, and other 30-second synopsis of events or issues), quickly facilitate and get the group to agree on what they are going to tell their superiors and other stakeholders when asked.

Two-column Guardian of Change

For major initiatives such as strategic planning or project launches, it is wise to invest a few hours to build a robust communications plan, but most meetings do not afford that much time.  Rather than skip the activity entirely, Use the FAST Guardian of Change approach to build a quick and simple communications.

Some background.  We learned at a Fortune 50 client that the best product ideas were not being commercialized.  Rather, the products getting approval were the products that were being “championed” by the most persuasive and charismatic “champions.”  From that moment until now, we have learned to avoid the term “Champion,” preferring the term “Guardian.”  We do not want somebody to make their idea into more than it is or allow it to be discounted below its worth.  We want them to protect it for what it is, guard it.  Do not expand it or detract it but protect it for what it is.  Here is how to facilitate the communications plan for a meeting, to homogenize the rhetoric so that everyone’s superiors and other stakeholders hear the same message.

Purpose

Empirical research shows that it is best to guard and protect communications than to simply shout out.  Different audiences need different parts of the message, and may react differently to descriptive terms used and the media used to communicate results.

The overall purpose is to get a group to agree on how it will communicate the results of its meeting and workshop efforts to others.  Students that rely on study groups average a GPA that is 0.50 points higher than students without groups.  Why?  Socialization.

Rationale

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

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

1. What do we tell our bosses or superiors ?
2. What do we tell people dependent  on our results ?

Method

After identifying the target audiences, ask for each, “What are we going to tell _____?”  List the messages as bullet points that begin to homogenize (ie, create consistency) the meeting participants’ descriptions in the hallway about what was accomplished.

If necessary, discuss HOW TO communicate with the target audience such as face-to-face, email, etc.  For complicated communications plans, further discuss frequency or how often to set-up regular communications.  It may be necessary to schedule the communications so that the superiors are informed before other stakeholders.  Failing to plan, meeting participants will use different methods and different rhetoric that will generate different understanding among stakeholders that may require shared or at least similar understanding.

Proactively consider a 3*30 Report, a written summary of results that should take no longer than 30 minutes to write and no longer than three minutes to read and reply.  The 3*30 Report may be ideal for executives and other team members who are interested but not fully invested.

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 a facilitative leader.

Related articles

• Four Activities to Efficiently and Effectively Wrap-up a Meeting (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• PMBOK #5 Boosts Stakeholder Management (mosaicprojects.wordpress.com)
• 15 Fun and Quick Tips to Help You Become a More Successful Facilitative Leader (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Stakeholder Matrix Template – What You Need To Know About Stakeholders (demandmetric.com)
• Taking Charge of Poorly Led Meetings When You are Not the Leader (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)

 

17 Valuable Tips and Essential Issues for “Chairing” Successful Meetings

Many skills required to facilitate also apply to “chairing” meetings. Success begins with vision and meeting vision is defined as knowing the purpose, scope, and objectives in advance.  Other issues that support successful facilitating or chairing naturally include people skills such as:

Leadership

 

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

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

• Missing the context in which a claim is offered to be valid
• Overgeneralization to such an extent that meaning in the particular case is lost
• Presumptions that everyone is thinking what the subject member is thinking
• Primacy and recency affects—whereby the first and final arguments carry more weight
• Use of terms that are unclear or ambiguous

Additionally, and specifically for meeting chairs as opposed to workshop facilitators, here are seventeen additional and valuable tips:

1. Always know your deliverable, that is the same as the meeting objective and logically identical to starting with the end in mind.  In the world of Lean Sigma, this is called “right to left” thinking.
2. Always strive to separate facts and evidence from beliefs and opinions.
3. Arrive first and prepare your physical space for optimal seating arrangements.
4. Clarify frequently so that everyone is offered an opportunity to question and challenge.  They will find it easier to challenge you as chair, than the original speaker who may own the content.
5. Consider posting the deliverable visually on a large sheet of paper, and restate periodically to reinforce the purpose of the meeting.
6. Explain your role and aspiration to embrace the people and communication skills mentioned above.
7. Help manage conflict and do not simply ignore it. Some of the best ideas and strongest solutions result from getting conflict out in the open where everyone can understand.
8. Limit the size of the meeting by keeping representation between five and nine participants, known to be the “sweet spot” for optimal decision-making.
9. Manage administrivia such as bathroom locations and safety procedures during your introduction.
10. Manage transitions carefully by reviewing a closed agenda step and clearly moving on to the next open agenda step.
11. Prepare, presell, and at the start of the meeting review the meeting purpose, scope, objectives, agenda, and estimated duration. If you expect participants to own the output, they have a right to influence how the output is determined.
12. Protect your participants but realize that it is not your job to reach down their throat and pull it out of them.  As employees or associates, they have a fiduciary responsibility to speak up when they can offer value.
13. Remain impartial during arguments, or at least demonstrate the appearance of impartiality so that participants can arrive at their own conclusions.
14. Restrict discussion to agenda items or you will subject yourself to scope creep within the meeting, and risk not getting done on time.
15. Seek contributions from everyone but do not embarrass anyone by forcing them to speak.
16. Start on time and police and breaks carefully as well. Do not penalize participants who are on time by starting late.
17. Take breaks when necessary, likely more than traditional.  A five-minute break every 40 minutes is better than a fifteen break every two hours.

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 a facilitative leader.

Related articles

• Four Activities to Efficiently and Effectively Wrap-up a Meeting (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Taking Charge of Poorly Led Meetings When You are Not the Leader (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Leadership Style Depends on Source of Ideas & Solution Ownership (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• 15 Fun and Quick Tips to Help You Become a More Successful Facilitative Leader (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)

 

“Be Here Now”—Meaning Behind One of Our Most Popular Meeting Ground Rules

Removing distractions so that a group can focus remains the most important goal of an effective facilitator.  Getting the right group of people to focus on issue ensures a successful outcome.  Yet we all know how hard it is to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time.  Researches claim that meeting participants divert their attention to other or personal topics every six to eight minutes.  If you have a meeting with twelve people, someone is “waking up” every 30 seconds.

Simply apply the ground rule “Be Here Now” won’t alone solve the problem, but it will help, especially if you take the time to explain everything it means to your participants.

• Arrow—post a visual agenda and put an arrow or other device on it to indicate where the group is on the agenda.  Do not use the checkbox approach since it is never clear if the group is on the last checked box or the next unchecked box.  Shopping mall signs indicate where you are, not where you were.
• Consciousness—ask participant to “be here now’ and strive to keep their consciousness focused on listening and contributing.  Ask them to stay fresh, and if necessary, take more frequent breaks.  Bio-breaks should be offered more frequently in the morning and with virtual meetings (eg, video presence).  Consider 30-second “stretch” breaks every thirty minutes; offering up quick deep knee bends or shoulder turns to keep participants awake and fresh.  Some cultures refer to this as a 30-30, and if it is part of your culture, use a timepiece or timer to signal each 30-minute segment.
  

  Electronic Leashes

• Leashes—have participants disengage their electronic leashes and beware because the vibration mode does not mean silent, only lower tones.  If participants cannot wait to address an electronic request, have them take it out of the room, but do not allow laptops, smart phones, and multi-tasking.  Groups that claim to multi-task, perform mentally at the level of chimpanzees.  Do you really want to facilitate a roomful of monkeys?
• Punctuality—participants should not arrive late, either at the meeting start or after breaks.  Start meetings on time so that you don’t punish the people who attend on time.  Use FAST timers to ensure on time attendance after breaks.
• Updates—if participants are late or leave the room and then return, do not stop the meeting to give them a personal update.  Personal updates penalize the on time participants.  Rather, refresh the tardy participants during the next break or pair them off with somebody and send them to the hallway for a one-on-one update, if the update cannot wait until the next break.

To “Be Here Now” is infectious so lead the way.  Arrive early and first.  Watch your time closely and call breaks as needed.  More are better so that participants can attend to their electronic updates.  Most all agree that four 5-minute breaks during a morning session are better than one 20-minute break.  Monitor them tightly however and do not allow leakage.  Your group depends on you for their success.

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 a facilitative leader.

Related articles

• Four Activities to Efficiently and Effectively Wrap-up a Meeting (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Taking Charge of Poorly Led Meetings When You are Not the Leader (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• What Takes the Energy from Meetings with Good People and Intent? (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Some of the Challenges and Costs Associated with Hosting Meetings (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
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The Agenda can be Your Most Powerful Weapon for Leading Effective Meetings

Regardless of source, style, or bias, experts/ authorities on effective meetings mandate the use of structured agendas.  Some organizations even encourage meeting participants NOT to attend if there is no agenda, since the meeting time represents a high probability of wasted time.  He or she who controls the agenda, controls the meeting.  Additionally, a survey of meeting experts suggests the following suggestions are embraced and encouraged by most:

• All agendas should include a beginning, middle, and an end.  Do not skip the beginning or the end.  See other FAST blogs or your Reference Manuals for details on how to manage robust introductions and wraps.
• An agenda needs to be written down so that everyone can refer to the same visual referent.
• Drafting an agenda with the minutes (ie, deliverable) in mind makes it easier to create the natural steps required to complete the meeting.  For example, a “Wedding Plan” might include decisions about food, music, and ceremony while a project plan might include situation analysis, alignment, and assignments.
• Participant input should be captured in advance to make modifications or additions.  Since we expect the participants to own the output of the meeting, they should be entitled to some voice into HOW the output is derived.
• Simple agenda steps ought reflect WHAT is the object (ie, noun) of the step and not HOW (ie, verb) you are going to facilitate the activity.  Save the detail, method, and tools for your private, annotated agenda.  See our picture that illustrates each agenda should focus on a discrete outcome (ie, a condition) or output (ie, something that can be documented).
• The agenda should be circulated before the meeting, earlier is better.
• Time box strategic discussions, unless you are hosting a strategic planning sessions.  Many tactical and operational meetings get bogged down with strategic issues that should be deferred to a separate time and place.  In other words, most meetings waste time discussing stuff not related to the deliverable of the meeting or the agenda; ie, scope creep within a meeting.
  

  Simple Agenda Example

The agenda represent the method by which you are using a group of people to advance a common cause.   Respect it.  Do it.  Share it.

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 a facilitative leader.

Related articles

• Four Activities to Efficiently and Effectively Wrap-up a Meeting (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Taking Charge of Poorly Led Meetings When You are Not the Leader (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• 8 ways to have more productive meetings in 2013 (whiteboardmag.com)

8 Meeting Purposes: What Task(s) Are You Asking Your Group To Accomplish?

Effective meetings are first based on clear line of sight to the end result, preferably something that can be documented.  All too often meetings are held with the intent of determining WHAT the deliverable ought be for a group of people, clearly a sign of weak methodology.  Here are some of the most common reasons for meetings and some of the benefits or problems associated with each.

Meeting Types

• Analysis—highly complex situations may require multiple subject matter experts.  Frequently experts have their own vernacular or vocabulary, and a meeting is appropriate to homogenize understanding and agreement.  Have you ever run a meeting with PhD engineers and creative marketing folks together?  Sometimes it sounds like they are from different planets.
• Assignments—structured meetings or workshops provide an excellent means of building agreement around roles and responsibilities.  When embracing our popular FAST technique, you can leave the meeting with a consensually built GANTT chart, estimation of resource requirements, and approximation of budget needs.
• Decision-Making—since resources typically fall short of the demands, prioritization is critical for high group performance.  No team has the time or resource to do everything.  Consensual understanding around prioritization provides one of the best justifications for hosting a meeting or workshop.
• Idea Generation—the reason that groups are smarter than the smartest person in the group is because groups create more options than simply aggregating the input of participants.  Many of the best ideas did not walk into the meeting; rather they were created during the meeting, based on stimulation from others.
• Information Exchange—by far and away the most common reason for meetings is also one of the worst possible reasons for justifying a meeting.  With instant access and electronic filing cabinets, coming together face-to-face is a very expensive way to exchange information.  A better justification would be to address questions about clarity, agreement, and omissions of related information or the impact the information ought have on the behavior of participants.
• Inspiration and Fun—meetings can be effectively used to both reward, incent, and incite but usually on a large-scale that involve complimentary events or sessions that also involve learning and building teamwork.
• Persuasion—probably the worst reason for holding a meeting is to convince other people to change their behavior.  There are three primary forms of persuasion; namely identification (eg, advertising), internalization (ie, long-lasting), and forced-compliance (ie, “gun to the head”).  Meetings are sub-optimal for all three forms of persuasion, and therefore are rarely successful at persuasion.
• Relationships—simply pulling together people face-to-face provides the glue that can pull people together and get them to work more cooperatively.  Frequently venting, or managing conflict, can result in increased effectiveness.  Probably the best time to invest in face-to-face meetings is when people don’t agree with each other and need to both reconcile their points of view and agree to move on.

For what other reasons have you found yourself in a meeting?  What other reasons do you think exist to justify a meeting?  We would love to receive your input on this topic.

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 a facilitative leader.

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• How to Build a Roles and Responsibility Matrix for Multiple Sites (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)