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)

Questions about Political Factors that Impact the Amount of Meeting Risk (4 of 5)

This is the fourth 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

POLITICAL FACTORS

The political factors are an indicator of the political and personality climate surrounding the project.  These factors heavily influence the success of a facilitated approach.

1. Business Attitude: What is the attitude of the business? The general attitude of the business toward the system is: understands the FAST process and its value (good), does not fully understand the process and is somewhat reluctant (fair), has no appreciation for the process and is anti-project (poor).

2. Management: How committed is upper management to the project? This question concerns upper level business management’s support and backing for the project.  Adequate commitment defines those behaviors needed to maintain a non-hostile atmosphere toward the project.  If the attitude is not enthusiastic, investigate and resolve.

3. Controversy: What is the level of controversy surrounding potential specifications? How controversial is the potential solution for the project?  Are there multiple solutions with very strong support for each and little chance of compromise?  Is a potential solution going to cause a controversial reorganization?

4. Participant Level: What is the job level of the participants? Sessions become more politically charged the higher the job grade involved.  Specify the general job grade level of participant.

5. Cooperative Users: How cooperative are organizational groups with each other? If this includes various organizational units, are they cooperative or competitive?  To what degree do they talk to each other?  This question refers to the people responsible for specifying the information—not necessarily the final doer.

6. Flexibility: The participants have how much flexibility and judgment in the final decision? The participants exercise what degree of flexibility and judgment—very high (67% – 100%), average (34% – 66%), or very little (0% – 33%).

7. Processing Flexibility: The participants have how much flexibility and judgment in process design? This question is similar to question 6 above but pertains to the participant’s freedom in process and analysis

8. Design Flexibility: The participants have how much flexibility and judgment in detailed design? This question is similar to questions 6 and 7 previously but addresses the participant’s freedom in detailed design content.

9. Stability: How stable is the organization? This question is looking for the capacity to identify and coordinate players in the project without frequent changes.  This question refers to the people responsible for specifying the information—not necessarily the final doer.

• If the organization changes very little and the key players will be in their position the entire duration of the project—answer very stable (0).
• If periodic reorganizations happen that may replace some of the key players—answer periodic reorganizations (1).
• If reorganizations happen every 6 months or less in either organization—answer frequent reorganizations (2).
• If reorganizations happen frequently in both the business and data processing side due to changes in management, unstable organizations, or major shifts in the business—answer very unstable (3).

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)
• Meetings Should Include a Communications Plan, Call it “Guardian of Change” (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• “Be Here Now” – Meaning Behind One of Our Most Popular Meeting Ground Rules (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)

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)

 

Dr Edward DeBono’s Six Thinking Hats Provides Strong Stimulus for Ideation

If you haven’t read Edward DeBono’s Six Thinking Hats, or studied his concept about lateral thinking, you should.  As one of the rare authors who instructs people on HOW TO think rather than WHAT TO think, he has been hailed as one of the 250 people who have contributed most to mankind.

As shared in our last post, SCAMPER is a Mnemonic to Prompt for Excellent, Impromptu Questions, nobody is smarter than everybody because groups create more options than individual ideas that are aggregated.  Any group or individual is known to make higher quality decision when provided with more options.  The theory and concept driving the Six Thinking Hats also makes it easy to generate more ideas, thus a higher quality output.

While this blog cannot even attempt to do justice to a nearly 200-page book, you can make it easier for a group to take existing ideas by providing this method so that they are permitted to morph their ideas into something different or more substantial. For extensive instructions and options, see the source book.

Method

Note first that we have modified the hats to include a seventh or Royal hat that reflects the perspective of the owner who is both committed and invested in the meeting output and project outcome. Use the Thinking Hats approach to force perspective and capture new ideas:

• You may assign a hat (see perspectives below) to the entire group or a different hat to each person and then rotate the hats to encourage more ideas.
• Any hat can be used as often as you like.
• There is no need to use every hat.
• The sequence may be made up of two, three, four, or more hats.
• As session leader (ie, methodologist), you may permit either a pre-set order or one that is evolving.  Do not however, facilitate the sequence (ie, facilitating method) and ask your participants about which hat(s) they would like to wear.  They do not know and rely on your expertise for the method.
• You may also use Post-It® notes to have participants individually capture a bunch of ideas.  As session leader, transpose the notes so that all are legible for the participants, preferably during a quick break.
• You may prefer to not use all the hats, and you may shape the definitions based on your own situation, but use some type of visual prompt to explain the perspectives you are seeking.

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

• Parallel Thinking with Six Thinking Hats (spin.atomicobject.com)
• Six Thinking Hats (everydaygyaan.com)
• A “Plan” May Be Defined as “Who Does What (and When)” and Answers 10 Questions (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• The Meeting is the Message: Every Meeting Speaks Win or Loss (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)

SCAMPER is a Mnemonic to Prompt for Excellent, Impromptu Questions

SCAMPER provides a ‘hip-pocket’ tool; ie, an unplanned method of developing appropriate questions on an impromptu basis.  You may also take raw input (ie, first-cut ideation lists) and challenge participants to calibrate their raw input into something closer to the form of the answer being sought.

“The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery.  There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why.”

— Albert Einstein

 

Method

Select appropriate questions offered through the mnemonic known as SCAMPER and challenge some of the raw data or initial input to help the group build and understand additional options. 

Perspective

At the same time consider changing perspective to capture new ideas.  For example, assign analogies of famous people, organization, or entropic situations.  Ask—“What would (insert blank from below) do in this scenario?” such as:

• Steve Jobs of Apple, Mahatma Gandhi or Bill Gates of Microsoft.
• A monastery, the mafia, a university, the military, etc.
• Ants, weather, or an ecosystem?

Nobody is smarter than everybody because groups create more options than individual ideas that are aggregated.  SCAMPER or changing perspectives makes it easier to create new ideas during the meeting that did not exist prior to the meeting.  Any group or individual is known to make higher quality decision when provided with more options.

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)
• The Agenda can be Your Most Powerful Weapon for Leading Effective Meetings (facilitativeleadership.wordpress.com)
• Intro to memory and mnemonics (chutneylemon.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)

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)

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)