Author: Michael Wilkinson

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Positioning Strategies: How Do You Differentiate Yourself from the Competition?

Business team in a meeting with a man presenting

(Adapted from The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy)

In the course of developing strategic plans, organizations often find themselves taking a step back to ask the question, “How can we differentiate ourselves from the competition?” The answer to this question often results in the development of positioning strategies.

In his book, The Discipline of Market Leaders, Michael Treacy defined three primary positioning strategies. He found that the best organizations in the world, while at least adequate at all three, typically distinguished themselves and built their success around one of the three areas. I have added a fourth positioning strategy (marketing dominance) based on my strategy development work.

Exhibit – Positioning Strategies

Operational Excellence Organizations who win through operational excellence do business faster, cheaper, or more effectively and consistently than anyone else. They have fine-tuned the operation so well, that the customer expects perfection every time. And, usually, they deliver. Examples: Wal-Mart, Federal Express, McDonald’s
Product Leadership What do Sony, 3M and Lexus have in common? They seek to position themselves as product leaders. They strive to have consistently better products than anyone else. Sony, for example, was the first with the Walkman, the Watchman, and even betamax. Well, you can’t win them all – though beta continues to be the preferred technology in the professional video world. But, product leaders do tend to be the first out with winning products over and over again. Examples: Sony, 3M, Lexus
Customer Intimacy These organizations strive to win by knowing their customers better than anyone else and using that knowledge to competitive advantage. In a world replete with poor service, organizations stand out when they deliver consistently strong customer service. Examples: Ritz-Carlton, Nordstrom, Amazon.com
Marketing Dominance What about Coca-Cola, Nike and Microsoft? They are representative of a fourth positioning strategy. Each of these organizations has competitors with better products and better operational efficiencies. Nor are these organizations known for particularly strong customer service. But what they do have is marketing dominance. They win by positioning their products in the hearts and minds of their customers, better than anyone else. Examples: The Coca-Cola Company, Nike and Microsoft

You can use the four positioning strategies to help your team understand how it is winning today and how it will need to win in the future.

The Process

The process for developing positioning statements includes the following steps that support our overall methodology, Drivers Model – taught in our training, Secrets to Facilitating Strategy.

1 Educate the team on position statements and positioning strategies After completing the review of the briefing book review and SWOT or just the briefing book (if positioning statements are done instead of the SWOT), educate the planning team on positioning statements and positioning strategies.
2 Define your current and future positioning strategy Have the team identify which of the four fundamental positioning strategies represents the way the organization operates today, and which positioning strategy best characterizes how it will need to operate in the future.
3 Identify areas for positioning statements After defining the future positioning strategy, the next step is to identify the areas for developing positioning statements. Positioning statements have two parts: the external trend (“We believe…”) and the action that will be taken (“Therefore, we must…”). There are traditionally two approaches to writing positioning statements. The first approach is to base the areas for positioning statements on the most important external trends from the briefing book review and SWOT. The other approach is to identify first the key actions we know we need to take and then identify what is happening in the external environment that mandates the action.
4 Identify strategies to respond to the trends With the key trends identified, the next step is to brainstorm strategies to address those trends. For positioning statements, the strategies need only use the “verb-object” format; there is no need to include “purpose” since this will be covered by the “We believe…” portion of the positioning statement.
5 Format the positioning statements With the trends and strategies identified, you can now create the positioning statements that combine the two. The trend will be used in the “We believe…” portion of the statement and the strategies will appear in the “Therefore, we will…” portion of the statement.
6 Perform a quality check The final step in the positioning statement process is to review each of the quality check items to ensure that all the checks are met.

More about these steps is outlined in depth in The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy.

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Certified Master Facilitator Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., The Facilitation Company and author of The Secrets of Facilitation 2nd Edition, The Secrets to Masterful Meetings, and The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy. Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. The company is also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States, having trained over 18,000 individuals.

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What consensus really means

two-happy-men-working-together-new-business-project

My experiences has led me to conclude that “consensus” is a widely misunderstood concept. Many people believe that for them to be in consensus with a decision, they have to believe that the decision is the best decision. With this definition, therefore, they believe debate must continue until they convince the others or the others convince them. But, what does consensus really mean? How a group defines consensus is critical to being able to facilitate the group toward decisions.

The implications of this definition of consensus on organizational productivity can be staggering. Allow me to explain by way of an analogy. In America, a jury is made up of 12 people. After naming a foreperson, the jury members have only one decision to make. They have to decide whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty. Consider how long this one decision takes. Sometimes, it is a few hours. Often, it takes multiple days. And, all too often, it takes so long that they quit and declare a mistrial.

Let’s come back to the work environment and consider a sample scenario of a process improvement team. Let’s say this team’s objective is to improve an organization’s hiring process. They don’t have just one decision to make. They have a number of decisions to make about each of the steps in the hiring process and how to make the overall process better. If there were just two people on the team, and they had to debate until the two of them agreed that every aspect of the solution was the best that it could be, let’s say it would take three days. If you add a third person to the team, is it now going to take five days? Probably not. It would probably take considerably longer because the discussion couldn’t stop until all three agreed on every aspect of the solution. Some places where the first two agreed, and the third person disagreed, there would now have to be additional debate. And places where all three disagreed, the time it would take to bring all three to agreement would be considerably longer then it was with just the two. Let’s say, therefore, with three people, it would now take seven days. Then, let’s add a fourth person, and a sixth and a seventh, and so on. By the time you reach a team of 10 or 12 members who all had to talk about every aspect of the solution until each one of the 12 agreed that every part was the absolute best it could be, how long would it take? Several weeks at least, and more likely several months. And quite possibly, like the hung jury, they might not ever get there!

To avoid the major investment of time and energy that 100 percent agreement on every aspect of a solution would require, we believe a different definition of consensus is more appropriate.

Consensus means: “I can live with it and I will support it.”

Consensus does NOT mean: “I think this is the best solution.” Consensus simply means, “I can live with it and I will support it through implementation.”

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Certified Master Facilitator Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., The Facilitation Company and author of The Secrets of Facilitation 2nd Edition, The Secrets to Masterful Meetings, and The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy. Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. The company is also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States, having trained over 18,000 individuals.

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Strategies for getting your ideas on the table without overpowering the group

Business professionals deliberating in a workspace

In strategic planning, it is important that all voices be heard, and that includes yours. Unfortunately, if you are like most leaders, your voice comes with considerable baggage. When the boss speaks, people listen. And, they listen differently from when other people speak.

Sure, there will likely be some people in the room who treat your voice like every other voice in the room. Whether the idea comes from you or a first-year manager, these people will state their agreement or disagreement with the idea in the exact same way, regardless of the source.

Unfortunately, this probably isn’t the case for most of the people at the table. When you speak, most may be quick to respond when they agree, and very, very slow to respond when they disagree – so slow, in fact, that sometimes they may never get around to it!

As a result of the lack of challenge many leaders experience within their own walls, the views of the leader can easily overpower the group. And even when someone dares to challenge with a question, some leaders, often without knowing it, respond with statements that belittle the questioner or not-so-subtly communicate that challenging the boss is not welcome.

Consider the following strategies.

STRATEGIES FOR GETTING YOUR IDEAS ON THE TABLE WITHOUT OVERPOWERING THE GROUP:

Explain how your role differs inside and outside the room. Let your team know the following.

  • Your leadership title was left outside the door when you walked in.
  • Inside the planning room you are one member of the planning team and have one vote just like everyone else.
  • The strategic plan being formulated inside the room is the recommendation of the team and will go to the leader for the final decision.
  • Outside the planning room you put your leader title back on and will have the final say on the recommendation of the team. Should you as the leader decide to not accept a recommendation, you will let them know why.
If you have a vision, goal, strategy or other element that you know you want to have the team consider, be intentional about getting it on the table.

  • In some cases it will be more helpful to state your view up front and gain feedback.
  • In other cases, it will be more helpful to give the team a chance to develop their ideas first and to suggest your idea only if the group did not come to it on its own.

How do you decide which approach is more appropriate?

  • Generally, if you idea is focused on broad strategic direction (i.e., vision, mission, goals, and to some extent objectives), consider putting them on the table first for reaction.
  • If you idea is more narrow or focused on implementation (i.e., critical success factors, barriers, strategies or actions) it may very well be more appropriate to suggest your idea only if the group does not come up with it on their own.
Avoid being the first, second or third person to respond.

  • Many leaders find it difficult to sit back when a comment is made that is clearly off track or may take the discussion in what they believe is the wrong direction. As a result, they speak up and give their comments first and predictably, the rest of the group typically follows the direction of the leader.
  • When I facilitate strategy sessions I make it a point prior to the first session to ask leaders to specifically not be the first, second or third person to respond to comments. I ask them to allow their people to speak up first and comment only after at least three others have given their views.
Use open, rather than closed, language.

  • When a person says, “It won’t work,” that response is what I call closed language. The words say you have already made up your mind. And unfortunately, if someone has a different opinion, they will have to disagree with you, which many will typically choose not to do, as mentioned before.
  • A more open language statement would be, “I don’t see how that would work and still make us money.” The simple phrase, “I don’t see how,” implies that someone may be able to show you. The phrasing invites people to provide you information.
  • As a leader you may very well find that using open language gives people permission to provide you information that they might otherwise keep to themselves.

Learn more ways to facilitate your group through strategic planning so that all voices, including yours, are heard. Take this course to discover more strategies – Secrets to Facilitating Strategy.

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Certified Master Facilitator Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., The Facilitation Company and author of The Secrets of Facilitation 2nd Edition, The Secrets to Masterful Meetings, and The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy. Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. The company is also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States, having trained over 18,000 individuals.

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3 Common Meeting Dysfunctions and How to Handle Them

A-business-man-addressing-colleagues-in-a-meeting

Here are three common dysfunction types I’ve seen in the meeting room. (Haven’t we all?) Let’s look at these specific dysfunctions and simple actions you can take to address them.

1. The Late Arriver/Early Leaver

Dysfunction
The Late Arriver/or Early Leaver

Behavior
Habitually arrives late to the session or leaves early
Action

  • Remind the group of the ground rules (i.e., start and end on time).
  • Discuss privately during the break to ensure there is not an additional problem.

2. The Loudmouth

Dysfunction
The Loudmouth

Behavior
Dominates the discussion
Action

  • At the start of the next process, use a round-robin discussion to get everyone involved.

You (Facilitator): “Let’s hear from everyone on this next point. With this question, I would like to start with Sandra and go around the room. The question is…”

  • At the break, solicit the person’s assistance in getting other people to speak. Remember to empathize with the symptom. Let them know that from time to time you will purposely not call on them to encourage others to speak.

You (Facilitator): “I appreciate you being willing to speak, especially given that most have been pretty quiet. I need your assistance, though. I need to get other people speaking more. Any thoughts on how we might do that.”

Participant: “You’re right. I often find myself dominating the discussion because no one else is speaking up.”

You (Facilitator): “Why don’t we do this: after the break, I’m going to be using a lot more round robins to try to engage more people in the discussion. And from time to time, you might want to say something, but I will intentionally call on others to get them involved. Will that work for you?”

Participant: “That’s fine. Thanks for letting me know.”

  • Occasionally, make it a point to acknowledge the person’s desire to speak, but call on someone else.

3. The Drop-out

Dysfunction
The Drop-out

Behavior
Silent, lacking participation, facing door or window
Action

  • Remind the group of the ground rules (i.e., every one speaks).
  • Employ a round-robin brain-storming activity to get everyone involved. Start two or three people before the drop-out to avoid putting the person on the spot and to provide the person time to prepare an answer.

You (Facilitator): “Let’s hear from everyone on this next point. With this question, I would like to start with [Jeff] and go around the room. The question is…”

  • Discuss privately during the break to ensure there is not an additional problem.

What about all of the other dozen or so dysfunctions in your meeting room? How do you deal with the Whisperer, the Workaholic, or the Naysayer? Surely, you’ve seen those in your meetings too. Leadership Strategies’ course, The Effective Facilitator, teaches you techniques on how to handle those dysfunctions too. Plus, you’ll learn the general formula for responding to and preventing dysfunction so that your meetings don’t turn into disasters. Download this free eBook – Managing Dysfunction – for extra support.

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Certified Master Facilitator Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., The Facilitation Company and author of the new The Secrets of Facilitation 2nd Edition, The Secrets to Masterful Meetings, and The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy. Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. The company is also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States.

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7 Key Activities a Strategy Leader Should Do

Man in suit playing chess

As a strategy leader, you have seven activities to which I recommend you pay close attention to build a strong strategy that has full buy-in and commitment. Let’s examine each of these activities.

1. Gain your team’s commitment and buy-in to the process.

If your leadership team members are like most with whom I have worked, they are stretched for resources and have more on their plate than they can likely accomplish with the time they have. Therefore, for many of them, the prospects of taking valuable time and resources to develop a plan that will come up with more to add to their already over-loaded plates is NOT a welcomed idea.

So how do you gain their commitment to planning and their buy-in to a planning process such as the Drivers Model? I consider this my secret weapon for buy-in: the management briefing. With the management briefing, you will have your team identify the most critical issues facing the organization; then they will make adjustments to the planning process as needed to ensure that the process addresses those issues. The management briefing increases commitment to planning by providing your team with a road map that shows how what is important to them will be covered during the strategic planning sessions.

2. Ensure all voices are heard.

The fundamental secret of facilitation indicates that you can increase buy-in and commitment by having those impacted by the plan involved in the creation of it. However, everyone in your organization will be impacted by the strategic plan. Does that mean everyone should be at the table creating the plan?

No, of course not. Nor is it necessary. Involvement does not necessitate being at the table. For some, just giving them a chance for input through a survey or a suggestion box will be adequate. For others, focus groups, one-on-one interviews or other methods for gaining in-depth input may be more appropriate. One of your important roles is to determine who should be at the table and to put in place other avenues to ensure all voices are given the opportunity to be heard.

3. Ensure key information is brought into the room.

You may have been in the room when a team has made a decision based on the best information available, only to discover that if they had been aware of other information that had not been brought into the room, they would have likely have made a different decision. Sound familiar? Well, part of your role is to ensure that this doesn’t happen with your planning activity.

My company’s work in the area of consensus building has shown that one of the primary reasons people disagree is due to a lack of shared information. Many disagreements can be resolved, and even prevented, by making sure all parties have the same information. With the Drivers Model, the briefing book serves the purpose of ensuring all your team members start with a common set of information.

4. Get your ideas on the table without overpowering the group.

As indicated earlier, it is important that all voices be heard, and that includes yours. Unfortunately, if you are like most leaders, your voice comes with considerable baggage. When the boss speaks, people listen. And they listen differently from when other people speak.

Sure, there will likely be some people in the room who treat your voice like every other voice in the room. Whether the idea comes from you or a first-year manager, these people will state their agreement or disagreement with the idea in the exact same way, regardless of the source. Unfortunately, this probably isn’t the case for most of the people at the table. When you speak, most may be quick to respond when they agree, and very, very slow to respond when they disagree – so slow, in fact, that sometimes they may never get around to it!

As a result of the lack of challenge many leaders experience within their own walls, the views of the leader can easily overpower the group.

5. Ensure that the plan components meet the quality checks.

With the Drivers Model each component is dependent upon the components that came before it. So, for example, if you do a poor job of defining your mission and vision, your goals and objectives will reflect this. Likewise, if your goals and objectives are misaligned, your critical success factors and barriers will also be off. And if your critical success factors and barriers are inadequate, your strategies and action plans will be inadequate as well. Therefore it is essential that you do a quality job every step of the way through the planning process.

The Drivers Model is designed to help you do this. From vision and mission through to strategies and action plans, the Drivers Model provides a specific quality check for each component of the strategic plan. These quality checks help ensure that your plan is comprehensive, robust, inspiring, and implementable. As the leader, it is your role to ensure that each component of the plan passes its quality check.

6. Follow through and hold people accountable.

If you have been involved in strategic planning processes, you know that far too often it is a game in which considerable energy is placed in developing a plan that is then put on the executive’s shelf, only to be looked at when it is time to do strategic planning once again.

The Drivers Model strives to end this game. As see in Chapter 14 of my book, The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy, you and your team will assemble a detailed process for aligning the organization and ensuring monthly check-ins, quarterly reviews and an annual update to the strategic plan. This structured monitoring process is intended to help ensure that the plan moves from paper to implementation.

7. Decide if an outside facilitator would be helpful.

With an activity as critical as strategic planning, it is essential that the effort be facilitated by someone who is skilled in facilitation but also has considerable experience guiding a team through strategy. Some organizations have internal resources with both the facilitation and the strategy expertise. But others choose to bring in outside professional facilitators with years of training, experience and proven results.

When should you bring in an outside facilitator? It is your role as the leader to make this call. Get help making that call with these guiding questions.

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Certified Master Facilitator Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., The Facilitation Company and author of the new The Secrets of Facilitation 2nd Edition, The Secrets to Masterful Meetings, and The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy. Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. The company is also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States.

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How to Facilitate Feedback: Focusing on Improvement – Not Weaknesses

A-feedback-evaluation-on-a-tablet-

Rated Feedback Process

Getting feedback on a facilitation process is an important part of ongoing learning, development and application for facilitators. However, people are often reluctant to give critical feedback. And, sometimes, when feedback is given, it isn’t clear whether the feedback is the view of one individual or the entire team. The rated feedback process is a vehicle to help ensure you get quality comments and that you understand the amount of support for those comments.

In the rated feedback process, you ask the group to identify strengths first, being sure to get everyone involved. You then ask the group to identify ways to improve. Note that you do not ask for weaknesses. Instead, you ask for specific ways the session could have been improved. The “ways to improve” terminology serves to keep the discussion constructive using the “Here is what I liked – here is how to make it better” format. In addition, by identifying strengths first, people who are reluctant to criticize tend to be more open to indicating ways to improve.

Once you have identified ways to improve, go back and ask for a show of hands of those who agree with the improvement suggestion. In this way, you get critical feedback, along with ratings indicating the level of support for each feedback suggestion.

EXAMPLE: The table below outlines steps for a sample scenario (a process improvement team facilitating a session on improving their existing hiring process). The team is on the last agenda item – “Review and Close.” They have reviewed the actions that occurred in the process as well as all decisions, issues and actions. They are now ready for detailed feedback on the session itself.

Technique

Rated Feedback

 Function: Feedback
1. Describe the activity and purpose. (Note that you may have already done this through the checkpoint.)

  • “We are nearing completion of the entire agenda. The last thing on our list is to evaluate the session, so we can identify what went well and what improvements can be made so the organization can benefit from the process learning we have gained.”

2. Use PeDeQs to describe the general directions.

  • “The way I would like to do this is, we will first identify strengths – the things that we felt went well. We will then talk about ways that the session could have been improved. Finally we will look back at those session improvement suggestions and identify the ones that have strong support for implementing.”

3. Start with strengths. Ask a starting question and use a round-robin technique to include everyone. Check mark similar comments.

  • “Let’s start with strengths. I would like to go around the room starting with Jamie. I would like each person to identify one thing they liked about the process and the way we worked. If someone has already said the thing you like, feel free to say “Ditto No. 1,” and I’ll put a check mark there to indicate another person agreed with the comment. Jamie, get me started. Think about the entire process, starting on day one when we did gifts and hooks, and all the activities we did from documenting the current steps, talking about problems, potential solutions, priorities and our implementation plan. Think about things you liked about the process, the things that went well. Let’s build the list. Jamie, get me started. What did you like about the process? What went well?”

4. Move onto ways to improve. Instead of a round-robin, have participants randomly indicate suggestions.

  • “We’ve talked about strengths. Let’s move on to ways to improve. I would like to open it up. We do not have to go in any order. During this process, there were probably things that you said, “Well, I wish we had done that differently.” Or, “That certainly did not go very well.” There may have been other improvement suggestions you thought about as well. If we had a chance to do this all over again, what would you do differently? What would you suggest to the team that we do differently that would have made the process even better? Who wants to go first?”

5. Go back and review each improvement suggestion and ask for a show of hands for the number of people who support each. If it is a small group you might count the individual hands. If it is a larger group, it might be faster to estimate the percentage that agree.

  • “Let’s go back now over each improvement suggestion. I would like to get a rough indication of the level of support for each one. As I read each suggestion, please raise your hand if you agree with that suggestion. The first one says…how many people agree that this suggestion would have improved the session? That looks like about 80 percent. Let’s move onto the next…”

Curious about terms like “PeDeQs” and the “starting question”? Please review my previous blog entries or sign up for The Effective Facilitator, where this information plus more is taught in depth.

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Certified Master Facilitator Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., The Facilitation Company and author of the new The Secrets of Facilitation 2nd Edition, The Secrets to Masterful Meetings, and The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy. Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. The company is also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States.

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Leading v. Facilitating Strategic Planning

Woman wearing glasses standing in front of a business team

A major difference between leading and facilitating is that a leader often tells; a facilitator always asks. In my book, The Secrets of Facilitation, 2nd. ed., I describe how I learned what I call the fundamental secret of facilitation.

I began understanding the secret during my career with the management consulting division of what was then one of the Big-8 accounting and consulting firms. In the eight years I spent in that consulting practice, we had a standard way of addressing a client problem. We might be called in to review a particular department or activity.

We would arrive with our army of bright people, interview those whom we believed were the key stakeholders, develop a set of recommendations based on our interviews and experience, and create what might be called the “100% Solution.” We would go away and come back a year later and perhaps, if we were lucky, 15% of the recommendations would be implemented.

In my final years with that organization, the practice in which I worked began taking a different approach. We would come in with a smaller group of consultants and work shoulder to shoulder with client personnel. Together we would convene group interviews (facilitated sessions) which typically included 8-20 people. In the facilitated sessions, the participants would create the recommendations, not the consultants.

In most cases, they would only come up with what we might consider the 60% or 70% solution. So we would float ideas based on our experience. Some they would accept, others they would reject as “not beneficial” or “not implementable” in their environment. When all was done, they might have created what we would consider “the 85% solution.” Yet a year later, when we came back, amazingly 80-90% of the solution would be implemented!

Why wasn’t more of the “100% solution” implemented? Why would the “85% solution” gained through facilitation achieve far greater success? Therein lies the secret and the power behind it.

Secret #1 If they create it, they understand it and they accept it.

You can achieve more effective results when solutions are created, understood and accepted by the people impacted.

As an expert consultant, we were “telling” our clients what they needed to do. As a result, there was very little buy-in by our clients and their people. When we began “asking” the questions that resulted in them creating their own answers, the difference was staggering.

Dr. Robert Zawacki from the University of Colorado in his book “Transforming the Mature Information Technology Organization” put the secret this way:

ED = RD x CD
Effective Decisions = The Right Decision times Commitment to the Decision

Dr. Zawacki’s point is that the multiplication sign in the formula means that even the best decision can be rendered completely ineffective if commitment to the decision is lacking. (And, this is critical to consider in the process of strategic planning.)

What does this mean to you? If you as the leader of the organization know the right decision around strategy, but your team has zero commitment to it, the effectiveness of your strategy will be zero.

If you dictate the strategy and they are not committed to it, it will be as if you are pressing on the accelerator while they are stomping on the brake – a lot of energy expended and a lot of smoke in the air, but with little to show for it.

Hence, the key difference between leading and facilitating strategy…

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Certified Master Facilitator Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., The Facilitation Company and author of the new The Secrets of Facilitation 2nd Edition, The Secrets to Masterful Meetings, and The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy. Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. The company is also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States.

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8 Steps to Brainstorming – The Art of Generating Ideas

workers-talking-about-work

Generating ideas and gathering facts are probably the most common functions performed by groups in facilitated sessions. In many sessions, the generating of ideas is crucial to arriving at creative solutions to the issue the team is tackling. We commonly use Brainstorming as the technique for generating ideas.

Brainstorming is an excellent vehicle for collecting a large number of ideas in a short period of time. In a brainstorming session, the facilitator states the objective, sets a time limit and uses a flip chart, or some other vehicle, to record ideas that the session participants rapidly throw out.

As an example, to help a Hiring Process Improvement Team address potential improvements to their hiring process, we will take them through a brainstorming exercise as shown below.

Technique

Brainstorming

 Function: Generating Ideas
1. Describe the activity and purpose; be sure to encourage creativity and out-of-the-ordinary ideas.

  • “Our next step is to brainstorm potential improvements to the hiring process. This is important because we don’t want to be constrained by the way we do things now. Instead, we want to come up with creative solutions that can help us find and hire the best people available, quickly, effectively and efficiently”

2. Set a time limit and describe the general directions, with an example if necessary; offer a response format if appropriate.

  • “We are going to take five minutes to do a round of intense brainstorming. I would like for us to go around the room starting with Joe and have each person give me one thing we could do that would move us toward our vision of a great hiring process. If you can, give me a “verb-object” such as “Implement this, Develop that.”
  • “We will probably go around four or more times, so if you can’t think of anything the first time, just say ‘pass.’

3. Prohibit judgment of any type on an idea. If the idea does not meet the objective, record it anyway. Remind the participants of the objective and keep moving.

  • “Since we want to keep the creative juices flowing, it is important that during this phase we don’t spend any time analyzing the ideas. I will be writing as fast as I can and we will be moving quickly from person-to-person. If you find yourself at any point thinking, ‘That won’t work,’ ask yourself, ‘What will work? How can I improve on it?’ Some of the best ideas start out as impractical suggestions.”

4. Ask your starting question to help the group visualize their answers.

  • “Let’s go back to our list of problems, there are the things we have to fix. Think about things you’ve seen other companies do, things that you have thought about us doing, things we could do to make our hiring process a much better process. Joe, get me started. Let’s build a list of some of the things we could do to improve the hiring process? What are some of those things?”

5. Record responses being sure to use, not abuse, the pen and to manage the recording process.

6. Keep the pace moving. Go for quantity. The more ideas the better. Use a lot of fill-in words if necessary, along with prompt questions and extended prompt questions

  • “Give me more. Who’s next? More ideas, more ideas…What other ways could we improve the hiring process?”

7. End the brainstorming segment when the time limit is reached or when there is a round in which everyone passes. Ask for any last thoughts before closing.

  • “We have reached our time limit. Any last minute ideas to add?”

8. Always follow a brainstorming session with some type of grouping or prioritization activity to highlight the jewels.

 

Apply this guide in your next brainstorming session! You and your group will love the creativity generated from this brainstorming exercise.

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Certified Master Facilitator Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., The Facilitation Company and author of the new The Secrets of Facilitation 2nd Edition, The Secrets to Masterful Meetings, and The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy. Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. The company is also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States.

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Why Do You Need a Plan?

Business plans on a white board

Developing strategy takes time and resources. It requires the time and commitment of some of the most highly paid and highly experienced people in your organization. So if your team is not willing to invest the necessary time, I recommend that you don’t do it. Poor planning is often worse than not planning at all.

So why do you need a strategy? Why take time for planning? There are many reasons. But Leadership Strategies’ Drivers Model focuses on five in particular.

1. To set direction and priorities

 First and foremost, you need a strategy because it sets the direction and establishes priorities for your organization.

Your strategy defines your organization’s view of success and outlines the priority activities you must complete to make this view your reality. The strategy will help your people know what they should be working on, and what they should be working on first.

Without a clearly defined and articulated strategy, you may very well find that your priority initiatives – the ones that will drive the highest success – are being given secondary treatment.

 

2. To get everyone on the same page

 If you find that you have departments working to achieve different aims, or going in different directions, you need a strategy.

Once you define your strategic direction, you can get operations, sales, marketing, administration, manufacturing and all other departments moving together to achieve the goals of the organization.

 

3. To simplify decision-making

 If your leadership team is having trouble saying “no” to new ideas or potential initiatives, you need a strategy. Why? Because, as mentioned earlier, your strategy will have clearly outlined the priority activities you must complete to achieve success. Once you are clear on your priorities, it makes it much easier to say no to those potential initiatives that will pull you off focus.

 

4. To drive alignment

 Many organizations have hard-working people putting their best efforts into areas that have little to no impact on strategic success. They are essentially majoring in the minors – because their activities are not aligned with the priorities.

Your strategy serves as the vehicle for answering the question, “How can we better align all of our resources to maximize our strategic success?”

 

5. To communicate the message

 Many leaders walk around with a virtual strategy locked in their heads – they know where their organization needs to be and the key activities that will get it there. Unfortunately, the strategy is not down on paper and hasn’t been communicated thoroughly. As a result, few people are acting on it.

When your staff, your suppliers, and even your customers know where you are going, there are even greater opportunities for people to help you maximize your success in getting there.

 

Once you recognize the need to plan, you now have the role of becoming the catalyst for facilitating the buy-in and commitment of your leadership team and the rest of the organization.

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Certified Master Facilitator Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., The Facilitation Company and author of the new The Secrets of Facilitation 2nd Edition, The Secrets to Masterful Meetings, and The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy. Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. The company is also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States.

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The Power of the Pen – 2 ways to use it, not abuse it

A-person-writing-with-a-pen

Few facilitators truly understand the power of the pen. When facilitators don’t record what participants say or when facilitators record their own words and not the words of the participants, we are abusing the power of the pen. Abuse of the pen can very easily lead to participants dropping out, participants arguing with the facilitator, and participants not buying into the overall result.

How does the facilitator prevent abuse of the power of the pen? Here are two ways:

1. Write 1st, Discuss 2nd

One of the ways a facilitator prevents abuse of the pen is to write first and discuss second. Consider the following:

  • If what is said is incomplete, you should write it.
  • If what is said can be improved upon, write it.
  • If what is said is not the answer you were looking for, write it.
  • If what is said is obviously wrong, still write it.

By recording what is said, you, as the facilitator, are implicitly saying, “Thank you for making a contribution.” It is vital to positive group dynamics that this happens regardless of whether the contribution was good, bad or indifferent. Each time you record a contribution, you are saying “thank you.” If you stop saying “thank you,” they may very well stop contributing!

2. Write What They Said, Not What You Heard

While writing first and discussing second is important for empowering the participants, an equally important empowerment technique is to write what they said, not what you heard. Facilitators often make it a habit to listen to a participant’s statement, then transform what is said into words more “acceptable” to the facilitator. Why change the words?

  • Some facilitators indicate they change the words to summarize the idea.
  • Others say they transform the words to promote clarity.
  • And, still, others say they are just trying to shorten the comment to make it easier to write.

Whatever the reason for changing a participant’s words, the potential negative impact on empowerment may far outweigh the benefit, as described below.

  • If you try to “clean up” the speaker’s words by writing words he or she did not say, you, as the facilitator, are implicitly saying, “You don’t know how to speak; let me speak for you.”
  • Over time, less assertive participants will tend to get lazy and look to you to “make all their words better”; more assertive participants will tend to compete with you to come up with suitable words for the other participants.
  • In addition, rewriting comments in your own words decreases the likelihood that participants will be able to understand what was meant after time has passed. This effect is a result of you using words and expressions in ways that are familiar to you, which might not be the way the participants express these same ideas.
  • Finally, writing your words can decrease ownership of the result by the participants since the words are yours, not theirs.

These are just two of several techniques for using, not abusing, the power of the pen. Interested in learning more? Take Leadership Strategies’ course, The Effective Facilitator.

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Certified Master Facilitator Michael Wilkinson is the CEO and Managing Director of Leadership Strategies, Inc., The Facilitation Company and author of the new The Secrets of Facilitation 2nd Edition, The Secrets to Masterful Meetings, and The Executive Guide to Facilitating Strategy. Leadership Strategies is a global leader in facilitation services, providing companies with dynamic professional facilitators who lead executive teams and task forces in areas like strategic planning, issue resolution, process improvement and others. The company is also a leading provider of facilitation training in the United States.