How to develop, facilitate and follow up on strategic team meetings

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How to develop, facilitate and follow up on strategic team meetings

Proposed session structure: Sharing tools & resources > Discussion

Tools

Many of these tools come from the Interaction Institute for Social Change. They run virtual trainings

https://interactioninstitute.org/

Super recommended trainings, and also great books!

One of the key takeaway from their trainings follow the Purpose, Outcomes, Process = POP model - here's a doc about POP https://atctools.org/toolkit_tool/the-fabulous-pop-model/

  • include results, process, and relationships in that last step in POP

2 decision making tools from the Interaction Institute for Social Change

  • Matrix with escalating levels of involvement in decision making (who decides, who gathers feedback and decides (including wrangling the group), consensus (recommendation: always have a fall back too), delegation to a subgroup with constraints that have come out of the group feedback (giving up the control)
  • Methodology: Most decision-making is brainstorming > narrowing > close (decision making phase). Calling out and communicating these phases is extremely powerful and effective with all parties involved.

Other tools:

  • Affinity mapping, using digital whiteboards. Collaborative, open ended, you can see where there are common ideas, use dots to ask folks to vote on proposals
  • Goals + Success Spectrum:
  • https://fasterthan20.com/toolkit/goals-success-spectrum/
    • Includes a Fail column, the pre-mortem visioning of "let's imagine that we failed, what are the things that went wrong". From there you can talk about what would be needed to mitigate/avoid that.
    • The Success Sprectrum allows you to set Scope items and honor them (accountability!). You refer back to it.
    • The Success Spectrum is very useful, to keep in mind and stored for reference. In your daily work instead you refer to a 1-pager, easier to check.
    • Strategy Screen (see book "Beyond Strategic Planning" on shorter strategic cycles, which can be used for longer term strategies but also daily decisions):
      • Spin on it > everyone to turn it into a checklist, that can more effectively being referred to during the daily work (while many strategy docs often just end up sitting in a folder and forgotten)
    • https://www.upwell.us/why-we-choose-what-we-choose-upwell-curation-criteria/index.html

PDSA: Plan, Do, Study, Adjust. Retrospective reflection for continuous improvement (Kaizen practices)

  • If anyone is interested in learning agile project management, I highly recommend this FREE training course from a nonprofit that prepares you to be a “scrum master” but is more widely applicable
  • Here are some tips from the product management world - mainly about how to surface what the person suggesting the thing thinks should be deprioritized + giving a place for the person’s ideas to be stored for some future consideration (sort of saying no by saying a kind of 'yes, eventually, when it rises to the level of importance that gets it a green lightvs everything else we're doing to achieve our goals')

Favorite training for Lean Agile Visual Management (not free): Modus Institute, offered by Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria (authors of Personal Kanban):

Great (not free) management course: https://www.managementcenter.org/trainings/events/76-managing-to-change-the-world-online-2-day-series/

Best practices for facilitation of strategy retreats

  • As a consultant, is it also helpful to keep things quite tech-tool-agnostic, and keep it simple.
  • Ahead of a strategy retreat, consultant to talk with team members
  • Helpful activity: The Epitaph (or Tombstone) exercise. Imagine that your organization no longer exists, how do you want it to be remembered?
  • Way to empower staff: What have we learned from the past x years? And from there, build on and start identifying goals for the next year(s)
  • Goal: Each staffer to be able to map their task list (any kind of task!) to the Goals and Strategy identified. Strategy implementation phase: Reflect on what we learned, how the tasks have matched the Strategy, and consider then how to move forward
  • It is not a failure when we decide *not* to do things. It can be very positive!
    • Scoping out tasks and seeing how long it would take to implement as a way to help move away from saying "yes" to everything. Some math about how long things take can help because it shows overwork so clearly. Classic risk: Focusing on how much things cost instead of how much time they would require
  • Co-ownership requires interaction
  • Create shared language around the strategy, ensure that everyone with their different personality type can engage and participate with the methodologies and tools used
  • re: Saying no without saying no, some tips from the product management world - mainly about how to surface what the person suggesting the thing thinks should be deprioritized + giving a place for the person’s ideas to be stored for some future consideration https://www.mindtheproduct.com/a-product-managers-guide-to-saying-no/
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