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

This is the fifth 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

HETEROGENEITY

The heterogeneity factors are an indicator of the diversity, complexity, and nature of the business organization.  These factors look at the ability of the business to cooperate with each other and logistics involved in coordinating all the potential participants.

1. Number of Units: Number of departments (other than project team) involved with the project? How many functionally different organizational units significantly participate in the project?  If the project is for an IT organization, then IT is one of the business organizations.
2. Participants: Number of potential participants? What will be the total number of people potentially involved in providing information in all of the likely workshops?
3. Locations: Number of participant geographic locations? Count the number of physically distinct (over two hours commute apart) locations in which the participants work.
4. Multinational: Are multinational participants scheduled to participate? Are participants from overseas scheduled to participate?  Will sessions occur both domestically and internationally?  Does the system require the inclusion of international design and support?
5. Prior Experience: Have the participant organizations ever worked on a project together before? Have these particular participant organizations worked together on a project before?  Have they participated in a common system development or process engineering?
6. Business Change: Must the business organization change to meet the requirements of the project solution? The business organization requires what degree of change to implement the proposed solution?  Will the organization remain largely unchanged (minimal) or must functions, responsibilities, and personnel be realigned to meet the design of the process (major)?  This question refers to the final doer in the system.
7. Project Knowledge: How knowledgeable is the business in the area of the project process? What degree of project sophistication does the business area possess?  Compared to similar efforts, is the business experience similar (very); does the business understand the key ideas and issues (knows concepts); or is the level of the project process new to the business?  This question refers to the people responsible for specifying the information—not necessarily the final doer.
8. Business Knowledge: How knowledgeable are the business representatives in the business process? Do the business representatives have a good practical understanding of the business application (very); or is the understanding “academic” (knows concept); or at a lower level (limited)?  This question refers to the people responsible for specifying the information—not necessarily the final doer.
9. Team Knowledge: How knowledgeable is the project team in the proposed solution? Similar to question 8 but asked about the project team.

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)
• 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)

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 Build a Flexibility Matrix to Guide Consistent Group Decision-Making

Triple constraint theory suggests that it is not practical to expect to build the fastest, the cheapest, and the highest quality. Typically, something has to “give.” While most executive sponsors aspire for all three characteristics, the nature of group decision-making suggests that time, cost, and quality are the three most important considerations, yet we need to remain more or less flexible with time, cost, or quality.

To help groups understand the tradeoffs that need to be made, consider building a Flexibility Matrix.

Rationale

All sponsors want the best, the fastest, and the cheapest but something has to give.  You could never ask an executive sponsor ‘which is most important?’ because they would answer “All of them”.  Therefore, we concede that quality, speed, and price are all most important, but we seek to understand where we have the most amount of flexibility, and conversely, the least amount of flexibility.

Method

Since the sponsor may not give us their preferences, we can ask the team to build it, knowing that the Flexibility Matrix captures the group assumptions that support the decisions made.

Build the matrix factors in advance and define or explain the terms time, cost, and quality for your situation. Be certain to work the bookends and ask the team where we have the most amount of flexibility?  Then the least? We know the moderate box by default since it is the only blank remaining.

This is important.  After you have created the visual response, have the team convert each checkmark into a narrative sentence or statement, for example:

Schedule is least flexible because we must have the release ready by October 1.

Quality (scope) is the most flexible because we can release an upgrade or modification after December 1.

Challenge

Make sure you fully define time, cost, and quality in advance of the facilitated session.  For example, if we are deciding on the criteria to support a decision about where to locate a landfill (ie, garbage dump), we might define time as when the landfill opens, cost as the total cost of ownership, and quality as the impact on the environment. As such, the “answer” would likely be the opposite of the chart shown above, with time being the most flexible and quality being the least flexible.

Related articles

• Four tips for better group decision-making (sashadichter.wordpress.com)
• Leading Teams When Lives Are at Stake (blogs.hbr.org)
• Decision Rules and Group Rationality: Cognitive Gain or Standstill? (plosone.org)
• 5 Evidence-Based Ways to Optimize Your Teamwork (99u.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)

 

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)

How to Facilitate Group or Team Decision-Making Using a “Pros and Cons” Tool

TRADITIONAL FRANKLIN

Teaming Up

First, the “Pro-Con” method according to its creator, Benjamin Franklin:  “My way is to divide half a sheet of paper by a line into two columns; writing over the one pro, and over the other con; then during three or four days’ consideration, I put down under the different heads short hints of the different motives, that at different times occur to me. for or against the measure. When I have thus got them all together,

in one view, I endeavor to estimate their respective weights; and, where I find two (one on each side) that seem equal, I strike them both out. If I find a reason pro equal to some two reasons con, I strike out the three. If I judge some two reasons, con equal to three reasons pro, I strike out the five; and thus proceeding I find at length where the balance lies; and if, after a day or two of farther consideration, nothing new that is of importance occurs on either side, I come to a determination accordingly. And though the weight of reasons cannot be taken with the precision of algebraic quantities, yet, when each is thus considered separately and comparatively, and the whole lies before me, I think I can judge better. and am less likely to make a rash step; and in fact I have found great advantage from this kind of equation, in what may be called moral or prudential algebra.”

MODERN FRANKLIN

This updated tool supports decision-making for a group of people.  It can be used as a proxy for Benjamin Franklin’s “Pros & Cons” method, whose approach is better suited for an individual than a group of people.  Especially with controversial issues, it is helpful to consider multiple points of view.

Method

To safely argue a controversial issue, carefully (and with advanced forethought about the options for a homogeneous, heterogeneous, or hybrid blend of teams) separate your participants into three teams: Affirmative, Dismissive, and Observer.  Give the affirmative and dismissive teams each fifteen minutes to develop their arguments, respectively supporting or refuting the issue.  The observer team drafts criteria by which it may evaluate and assess the issue.  Have the teams present their arguments to the observer team formally—as if it were a debate or court of law.  Next . . .

• Affirmative and dismissive teams prepare for two-minute rebuttals to defend their positions.
• Observer team then describes the criteria they recommend using to help decide the issue, based on arguments presented by both affirmative and dismissive teams.
• Teams are given another five minutes to revise their arguments based on observer criteria and the discussion sequence described above is repeated.
• After round two, teams reform as one to discuss the issues.  If the discussion reaches an impasse, switch members among different teams, carefully placing louder voices on the teams opposite of their apparent voice, so they are forced to represent the “other” side.

Do not intentionally polarize participants.  Ensure that teams are made up of people who hold a variety of views.  As session leader (ie, both facilitator and methodologist), select the teams—do not allow the participants to choose.  In most debates, the side one takes is not known until minutes before the debate, so that debaters are forced to prepare to argue both sides of an issue.

Benefits

The benefits that are realized include:

• Amplifies, expands, and stretches the issues, criteria, and perspectives.
• Allows the group to build am integrative view of all sides of the issue.
• Provides more robust and coherent arguments, issues, and criteria.

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)

Related articles

• How to Help Your Meeting Participants Become Better Listeners (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• What if Benjamin Franklin were alive today; how would his twelve virtues apply to a modern-day setting? (riccampbell.wordpress.com)
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• Taking Charge of Poorly Led Meetings When You are Not the Leader (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)

How Facilitated Leadership Can Help You Overcome 7 Common Project Pitfalls

Facilitative leadership provides the best assurance that team leads/ project managers can overcome project pitfalls.  Borrowing from the PMBoK (ie, Project Management Institute Body of Knowledge) and other published sources, following are seven of the most common project pitfalls. A discussion about each follows below.

Using Facilitative Leadership
To Overcome Project Management Pitfalls

7 Project Pitfalls

1. Abandonment of Planning
2. Feature (Scope) Creep
3. Omitting Necessary Tasks
4. Overly Optimistic Schedule
5. Suboptimal Requirements Definition
6. Underestimating Testing
7. Weak Team

Abandonment of Planning 

Do not abandon your plan or the planning effort. No matter how proactive you are, some contributors will under perform, customers will request changes, and technical issues will prevent you from delivering some features on time. It’s not a question of “if” but “when”. As soon as you start to deviate from your plan, intelligently refactor, but stick to it. Never abandon your plan.

Feature (Scope) Creep

As time goes on, customers learn more about their needs and they come up with new features and ways of improving existing ones. Don’t let these changes throw your project plan out of control. Gather the feedback, analyze it, prioritize it, document it, and schedule the changes as mutually agreed upon. You’re not going to build the perfect product in one release. Deliver on your existing commitments, and try to facilitate deeper understanding about many the change requests. Omissions can be quite costly, so don’t immediately discount the value of understanding.

Omitting Necessary Tasks 

A project schedule should not simply comprise the tasks required to develop product and process features. It should also include other derivative activities, such as interacting with customers, writing detailed functional specifications, and receiving technical training. Team-support activities cannot be skipped and therefore should not be ignored when baselining a project schedule.

Overly Optimistic Schedule

Meeting schedules should be aggressive, yet realistic. Demanding an overly optimistic schedule greatly reduces your chance of completing a project on time. Be aggressive with your plan, but remain realistic.

“Even particularly smart people in extremely high-performing situations will consistently underestimate how much time it takes to complete certain tasks.”—Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize

Suboptimal Requirements Definition

While showing illusional progress, coding before requirements gathering actually delays project completions. Spending time early refining requirements can save weeks later on.

Underestimating Testing 

Project tend to underestimate how much effort is required to test a major release. As a rule of thumb, one-third of the entire project should be spent testing and fixing defects for major releases. Consensual understanding of test results and implications is key to stakeholder ownership.

Weak Team

Various resources claim that there is as much as a ten-to-one efficiency ratio between top performers and mediocre ones. Second-rate members contribute to project failures in many ways. They deliver late, do stuff that doesn’t support the project, and allow defects in their work that lacks the level of quality deemed acceptable by you and other stakeholders. Select your team members carefully. At the end of the day, even the best project manager can’t succeed with a weak team.

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).

Related articles

• Combining APM, PMI and PRINCE2 into a Holistic Approach to Project Management? (jamkib.wordpress.com)
• How to become a Jedi project manager (careeradvisor123.com)
• The Role of the Project Manager (agilityloop.com)
• How to Build a Roles and Responsibility Matrix for Multiple Sites (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)

Four Activities to Efficiently and Effectively Wrap-up a Meeting

Here is how to facilitate the four most important activities to properly wrap-up a meeting or workshop: 1-Review, 2-Next Steps, 3-Communications, and 4-Assessment. None of the following should ever be skipped entirely, so expand and contract based on your situation and constraints.

1-Review

Wrap-up

Do not relive the meeting; simply review the outputs, decisions, assignments, etc. Focus on the results and deliverable of each agenda step and not on how you got there. Participants do not need a transcription, they need to be reminded about the takeaways, and be offered the opportunity to ask for additional information or clarification before the meeting ends.

2-Next Steps

There are various methods and treatments of open items and formal assignments, such as roles and responsibilities. For additional and detailed support see How to Transform Your Responsibility Matrix Into a GANTT Chart for help building a RASI matrix and How to Manage the Parking Lot and Wrap-up Meetings for helping to manage the Parking Lot or Refrigerator. Once the next steps and assignments are clear, the meeting is nearly over.

3-Communications

Here you lead the participants to agree on what they will tell other stakeholders was accomplished during the meetings.  It is a good idea if the participants sound as if they were in the same meeting, so take a few moments to homogenize the rhetoric and help them agree on what they will tell people who ask. Minimally consider two audiences, and record the bullets or sound bites for each, namely: their superiors and other stakeholders (eg, peers or customers). See How to Communicate Meeting and Workshop Results for detailed support.

4-Assessment

Get feedback on how you did. Set up or mark a white board by the exit door and create two columns, typically PLUS and DELTA (ie, the Greek symbol ∆ or “change”) but also known as Benefits & Concerns and other cultural specific labels. Have each participant write down on a small Post-it® note, at least one thing they liked about the meeting (+) and one thing they would change (∆). Ask them to mount each note in its respective column as they exit. Again see  How to Manage the Parking Lot and Wrap-up Meetings for detailed support.

Effective leaders will not disband their meetings until participants have been offered a final opportunity to comment or question, action steps have been discussed, messaging has been agreed to, and feedback for continuous improvement has been solicited. Until next week, continue to fortify your skill set with tools and improvement suggestions available in many of our prior postings.

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).

Related articles

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

 

How to Build a Roles and Responsibility Matrix for Multiple Sites

 

Here is a roles and responsibilities matrix that can help you manage more complicated situations than the traditional RACI model (or its equivalent) discussed in How to Transform Your Responsibility Matrix Into a GANTT Chart.

Roles and Responsibilities for Multiple Sites

Using the table above as an illustrative template, following is the content suggested by this method that need to be developed and facilitated. The suggested content is coupled with additional explanations of the column headings.

The first section provides details about the Activity or Task that need to be assigned and completed. Since the details will not fit comfortably into a spreadsheet cell, the cell could be coded and refer to another document with additional details. As the details may or may not be complete at the time of the assignment, there may be a separate individual or group who takes on the role to author and provide the details. When initially logged, the details are either complete (y for yes) or not (n for not).

Since identical tasks may be carried out in multiple facilities, code the facilities in the Location section. There could be more than two facilities of course. If more than two, you might substitute “A” for all instead of “B” for both.

The WHO section captures who will be responsible for the activity or task at each respective location. If necessary, you can add an additional column indicating their backup or who may be supporting them.

The Frequency section refers to how often the activity or task needs to be performed. The due date captures WHEN the activity or task should be completed. For repetitive activities or tasks, the coding shown suggests the following:

• W = weekly
• M = monthly
• Q = quarterly
• A = annually
• V = variable or ad hoc

The last section captures the intensity or concentration of effort required to complete the task. While frequently shown as hours per month, you could substitute FTE (ie, full-time equivalent) or whatever measurement works best in your culture.

Finally, you could append the table with a resource column that estimates how much financial capital or currency is required to support the activity or task. Clearly this is a tool that you can modify to your own situation, cultural expectations, and terms—so experiment freely.

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).

Related articles

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Taking Charge of Poorly Led Meetings When You are Not the Leader

We are not suggesting that you take over lame meetings but there are some things you can do to improve the meeting without stepping on the toes of the meeting leader.

Situation

The situation is this: You are attending a meeting. It is failing because the leader has neglected some or many of the rules of good meeting management. What can you do?

Everyone is Sitting

Taking Charge

If all participants, including the leader, are sitting down, take a marker and stand up. Suggest to the leader that you can help by assisting in recording what is happening. Try to summarize what seems to be the purpose and direction (for lack of an agenda) of the meeting. You may even propose an agenda to finish the meeting. At that point, unless you are told to sit down and shut up, you become a facilitator. When appropriate, you may introduce your opinions, violating neutrality, but by standing up, recording on flip charts, and using facilitation skills to keep the discussion focused, you have effectively taken over using a consultative leadership style.

Leader is Standing

If the meeting leader is standing up, start by using facilitator skills, such as active listening, to get the group focused. If the leader is not effective in leading, this will not be a problem. Once you gain a role as a “focuser”, you may suggest to the leader that an agenda would help you understand the direction better (playing “dumb” is very effective in getting people to set direction without feeling threatened by you). You may suggest to the leader that he or she has so much to contribute, that you would be willing to stand up and do the flip chart recording.  Once you are up with a marker in your hand, you become the facilitator.

In both cases, talk to the meeting leader after the meeting, in a non-threatening way, about how the next meeting can be made more effective.  You will begin to change the culture in your organization.

Summary

If you can get to be the only person standing and have a marker in your hand, you can take over a meeting by using facilitator skills. Keep these rules in mind though:

• NEVER embarrass the leader
• NEVER challenge the leader’s capabilities
• It is NOT your meeting, you are only trying to help
• If the leader resists your efforts, stop

For You

If meetings are run well, you will enjoy the meetings that you attend more.  This is important because your attitude about your job will improve—even if it is good now. You should find:

• Your time in meetings will not be wasted or unproductive—you will feel like you are accomplishing something.
• People will look to you as a model of meeting management—and management in general. Senior executives find future executives in meetings—those who contribute and manage the meetings best.

For Your Company

Even if you don’t change your entire company, changing one organization within the company benefits a great deal. In organizations where productive meetings are a way of life, they are able to do things others have not been able to do, such as:

• Assure higher team participation and ownership
• Better align planning practices with strategic goals
• Complete projects/ programs correctly, on-time, and within budget
• Implement teams that generate high-impact

Revolution or Evolution

Look at your meeting culture and obstacles. Have poor meetings become an epidemic and people are openly complaining? If so, revolution may be the answer. Change the next meeting and let everyone know about it. Publish the fact that you are running the meeting in a totally new way. Publish the results of the meeting. Ask the attendees to answer—how was it better, how was it more productive? Publish results and suggest that such results can be achieved on a consistent basis if more meetings were conducted properly.

If your organization is not having major problems follow an evolutionary approach. Change the next meeting you run—even a short staff meeting.  Talk to your peers and subordinates about the meeting approach. Suggest changes to the ways meetings can be held. See if there is an interest in getting more people trained to run better meetings. Publish the benefits of better meeting leadership.

Example is Best

People see you succeeding at meetings and they want to try what you have been doing. The more people that do better, the more others will want to follow suit, and follow you. Set the example and expect others to follow.

Until next week, continue to fortify your skill set with tools and improvement suggestions available in many of our prior postings.

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).

Related articles

• The Shift From Chief Executive To Chief Influencer (fastcompany.com)
• A Meeting Participants’ Credo (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• How to Facilitate Three Actions We Take Next (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• How to Facilitate Business Process Improvement: A Proven Approach Using Teams (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Mission or Vision – What is the Difference? (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• 3 Ways to Keep Meetings Short (Every Time) (inc.com)
• How smart leaders keep meetings on track (cbsnews.com)