As a follow-up to my earlier blog post on this topic, below is the agenda of our meeting as well as the questions asked during the sessions. If you are not already doing so, I strongly recommend you start using this facilitation approach to improve your meetings – including your next Strategy Definition meeting.

Strategic Café

If you would like more information on how to organize your own Strategic Café, you can drop me an email (martin [at] analytical-mind.com). I’d be happy to help.

Strategic Café

Agenda – Day 2

Breakfast (8:00 to 8:25)

Welcome and meeting introduction (8:25 to 8:30)

Presentation of our initiatives for the next 6 months (8:30 to 11:00)

Strategic Café

Pause (11:00 to 11:30)

Strategic Café

Prioritization of our initiatives for the next 6 months (11:30 to 12:15)

Lunch (12:15 to 1:00)

Strategic Café

World Café – Strategic assessment of our environment (1:00 to 2:30)

Background: To correctly set up our strategies, we must understand the environment in which we operate for: our consulting service, our products, and our training.

Question: What are our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in each sector of activity?

Tables:

• Products
• Products
• Consulting Service
• Consulting Service
• Training

Mechanics: The participants are allowed 12 minutes at each table.

Strategic Café

Pause (2:30 to 3:00)

World Café – Operational improvements (3:00 to 4:30)

Strategic Café

If you ever had a chance to participate in a Strategy Definition meeting, you either had a good time because YOU were dictating the strategy to follow or had an awful experience because your recommendations were totally altered, down-graded to a point of irrelevance or blown out of proportion making them un-achievable. Needless to say, for most people a Strategy Definition meeting is an experience comparable to a visit to the dentist for a root canal.

As I already mentioned, not only is our organizational structure different from most organizations but so is our strategic process. As opposed to a top-down Strategy Definition where the Top Executives come up with the Strategy, we use a bottom-up approach. Once again, we rely on the wisdom of the crowd to come up with the best strategy we can achieve. Not only is the strategy sound, it also removes the need to obtain buy-in after the fact since employees participated in the definition of their strategy.

We’ve implemented a Balanced Score Cards approach to our strategic planning process 6 months ago. This approach is helping us move forward but the format of our previous meetings left a lot of room for improvement. After asking around for an alternate approach for the meeting, François suggested we try a World Café format. After reading about the principles and the book (The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter), we spent time preparing and planning for the meeting. Needless to say, the Strategic Café was a huge success.

World Café used to Define the Corporate Strategy

I want to sharing with you the agenda of the meeting as well as the questions asked during the sessions. If you are not already doing so, I strongly recommend you start using this facilitation approach to improve your meetings – including your next Strategy Definition meeting.

If you would like more information on how to organize your own Strategic Café, you can drop me an email (martin [at] analytical-mind.com). I’d be happy to help.

Agenda – Day 1

Breakfast (8:00 to 8:25)

Welcome and meeting introduction (8:25 to 8:30)

Warming up the brain cells (8:30 to 8:45)

We asked participants to compete in a friendly game of Rush Hour. The intend was to introduce a fun element in the day in preparation for the meeting.

Strategic Café

World Café – Retrospection of the previous 6 months (8:45 to 10:30)

Background: What should be done to improve the organization on the following 5 dimensions: communication, accountability, prioritization, leadership and decision making?

Question: What are the challenges encountered within the organization and what is my contribution to meeting these challenges?

5 Tables: Communication, Accountability, Prioritization, Leadership, and Decision Making.

Mechanics: The participants are allowed 15 minutes at each table.

At the end of the exercise: Each of the 5 paper-table-cloths is assigned to an individual responsible to come up with a plan of actions.

Strategic Café

Pause (10:30 to 11:00)

Presentation of the new governance model (11:00 to 12:30)

Unfortunately, this part is confidential

Lunch (12:30 to 1:15)

Strategic Café

World Café – Improvement to the well-being of people (1:15 to 3:00)

Background: In 1 year from now, what will be the impact of our organization on the following 4 sectors: employees, existing customers, stakeholders, and potential customers?

Question: What programs should we develop to meet our objective of improving people’s well-being?

4 Tables: Employees, Existing Customers, Potential Customers, and Society.

Mechanics: The participants are allowed 20 minutes at each table.

At the end of the exercise: Participants were asked to select the top 4 priorities for each of the sectors and write them on a master flip-chart. Participants were then asked to vote to select the top 4 priorities overall on which the organization would invest time, energy and resources to move forward.

Strategic Café

Pause (3:00 to 3:30)

Strategic Café

World Café – Selection criteria to prioritize our initiatives for the next 6 months (3:30 to 5:15)

Background: Given the limited resources and the large number of initiatives within our organization, which criteria do we want to use to prioritize and select the initiative that we will move forward using the following areas: Financial, Customer experience, and Employee learning and growth?

Question: Which criteria we will use to determine our priorities?

3 Tables: Financial, Customer Experience, and Employee Learning and Growth

Mechanics: The participants were allowed 20 minutes at each table.

At the end of the exercise: Participants were asked to select the top 4 priorities for each of the sectors and write them on a master flip-chart. Participants were then asked to vote to select the top 4 priorities overall. Those would become the criteria used to prioritize our initiatives for the next 6 months.

Strategic Café

Dinner (6:00 to 8:30)

As an analogy to our Strategic Meeting, we had organized dinner at O’Noir.

I’ll be publishing Day 2 of our meeting shortly.

A few days ago, I had the opportunity to organize and facilitate a half-day meeting with the objective of defining a Commercial Vision. Similar to a corporate vision, the commercial vision is a long-term endeavour used to align and inspire people and communicate a common objective for the organization. The distinction with the commercial vision is that the commercial vision is strictly from a business development and commercial perspective. The commercial vision is a sub-section of the overall corporate vision.

Below is the facilitation approach I used and judging from the level of involvement of the participants, the energy level in the room throughout the morning, and the results of the end-of-session feedback, I would have to say it was a success. In an attempt to share the approach I am publishing the steps and activities used during the meeting. I welcome your comments.

• The topic for the meeting was : Vision 2020.
• To set the stage, I posted on the wall 20 newspaper articles from 2020.
• I also put up 30 words, each on their own 8.5 x 11 sheet.

[Note: In addition to creating some interest, participants immediately started sharing their thoughts about the newspaper articles. The newspaper articles were a nice ice breaker]

Wall Decoration

Wall Decoration

Wall Decoration

Welcome (10 minutes)

• Thank the participants for attending the meeting and ask them to keep an open mind – beside establishing a Vision for 2020, there is no set goal for the meeting.
• Explain to the participants that the purpose of the exercise is to provide a common framework for the commercial development of the organization.
• The end result (the Vision) is not cast in concrete – it is simply a direction.

Round Table (10 minutes)

• Ask each participant what their expectations are from the meeting?

[Note: In addition to getting people to start opening up and initiating conversation, the round table is useful for the facilitator to understand the expectations and aim to achieve them]

Reason for the meeting (10 minutes)

• Ask each participant if they are wondering why we want to talk about a commercial vision?

[Note: The objective is to anticipate and address any reservation that participants may have before getting into the meat of the meeting]

Introduction (5 minutes)

• Presentation of Apple’s video.
• The Vision traces a common goal without dictating the means to achieve it. Our goal is to provide a Vision and then allow individuals the opportunity and means to achieve it.
• The actions and behavior of people will be in line with the Vision once it is clearly established.

Tantrix Game (15 minutes)

• To create a break from their other thoughts and create a space for creativity, I invited the participants to play the Tantrix Game.
• The goal of this exercise is to force a break from routine activities so participants can then focus on the meeting.
• In addition to creating a fun environment, the game allowed for some friendly competition – each participant wanting to complete the game before their colleague.

Tantrix Game

Defining the Vision (60 minutes)

• When participants are ready to share their idea of a commercial Vision, they share their Vision with the rest of the participants and then write a summary of the Vision on a 4 x 6 index card.
• The game has 2 simple rules: when a participant builds on the idea of another participant, he must begin his sentence with “AND“, and it is strictly prohibited to use any negative terms such as but, however, no, can’t, etc. to express the Vision.
• In the latter case, the use of negative terms leads to a consequences for the offending participant (10 push-ups).

Break (10 minutes)

Aggregation of Ideas (20 minutes)

• The group is divided into teams of 3 to 5 participants.
• The facilitator gathers all the index cards and splits them into as many piles as there are teams.
• Each team receives a stack of 4 x 6 index cards.
• Each teams work independently to determine 3 to 5 main themes based on the cards they have received.

Presentation (10 minutes per team)

• Each team selects a representative to present the rest of the group the 3 to 5 main themes.
• The objective is to derive common themes in order to build upon them in the second part of the meeting.

Lunch Break (60 minutes)

Writing the Vision (30 minutes)

• Once again, the group is divided into groups of 3 to 5 participants.
• The teams can be the same or different from the previous exercise.
• The objective of the exercise is to ask the teams to write a one-page magazine article to complete the news the appeared on the cover of the October 14, 2020 “Fortune 3000″ magazine following the commercial success of their organization.

Sharing the Vision (10 minutes per team)

• Each team in the group reads the contents of their magazine article.

Aggregation of the Visions (15 minutes)

• As a single group, participants work to write an article covering the perspective of each team to achieve a common vision for the whole group.

Reading the Vision (5 minutes)

• As a conclusion to the exercise, one participant reads the final version of the magazine article (the Vision) to the entire group.

Retrospective (30 minutes)

• Participants voice their assessment of the meeting by answering the following questions: what part of the meeting were pathetic? what elements of the meeting went very smoothly? what could be added to the meeting in order to improve next time.

Wrap-up (5 minutes)

• The facilitator thanks the participants for their contribution and dissolve the meeting.

After facilitating a few challenging meetings where people talk a lot and sometimes have parallel conversations, I’ve decided to use facilitation cards to maintain a certain flow and ensure we stick to the time boxes. Since people agreed that the meetings aren’t efficient but they wish to maintain a fun atmosphere I added a couple of fun cards. Below are the cards I use – feel free to borrow them.

Voting Cards

These are pretty self explanatory.

Agrees with the proposal

Does not agree with the proposal

does not go to vote or does not cast a ballot

Questions Cards

I use these cards to control the flow of conversations. Before participants can talk, they need to notify the group about their intend. This also helps the facilitator determine if further questions or additional information is required about the topic being discussed.

The participant would like to ask a question.

I would like to add something

The participant would like to add information to the current conversation.

I have a different topic

The participant wants to raise a different topic than the one currently being discussed.

Behavior Cards

A fun way for people to comply to the rules of the meeting. Inspired by penalty cards used in many sports.

Yellow Card

“it most commonly indicates a caution given to a player regarding his or her conduct” – wikipedia

Red Card

“it most commonly indicates a serious offence and often results in a player being permanently suspended from the game” – wikipedia

Do you use facilitation cards? Do you tricks you can share with others?