Facilitation
David is a seasoned facilitator, helping business leaders and their teams get past the roadblocks that stop them from making the decisions and commitments their strategies demand. He works across a range of settings, from individual coaching, to ongoing project team support, to large, multi-day events.
In conducting large-scale meetings, David works with a proven set of design principles:
In conducting large-scale meetings, David works with a proven set of design principles:
- Realistic preparation. Assume that the participants are doing 30-60 minutes of pre- work or pre-reading and no more
- Clear sponsor: The event is opened and closed by the person who "owns the problem"
- New information: To avoid rehashing old discussions, new information needs to be introduced at the meeting
- Everybody participates: No one can be at the event just to observe and report back to others
- Creative support: Artist-scribes create large-scale, colorful graphics to capture the key points of the discussion as it unfolds
- Outside catalyst: Experts, such as academics or executives from other firms, help open up people's thinking
- Different strokes: A variety of working formats maximizes contributions from people with different styles
- Recombination: Participants work in different small groups throughout the day, to ensure that everybody can draw on the best ideas
- Reiteration: Ideas and solutions get worked on repeatedly and not always linearly; too strict an “idea development funnel” can leave the best ideas on the cutting room floor
- Level-2 action planning: The end-of-the-day synthesis culminates not just with "what should be done" but, more important, with "how we will do it"
- Same-Day Deliverable: Synthesis and action planning culminate in a single piece of paper that everybody takes home
- Active, impartial facilitation: The facilitator’s role is to challenge the group, to keep it energized, and to help it arrive at its own conclusions