1. Articulate a vision, 2. write, rewrite a mission, 3. conduct an environmental scan using unscientific tools, 4.  choose priorities & set goals, 5.  develop action steps, timelines, roles and responsibilities, 6. draft a formal plan, 7.  pronounce it very good and 8. repeat the process every three years.

As strategic planning models became routine and accepted as a standard of practice, those who excelled in project management and repositioning content developed a consultant industry of strategic planners who emerged to bring expertise to “help” organizations create high impact plans.  The secret that few consultants want to admit is that strategic planning is often reduced to a cookbook that illustrated with overused “fill-in-the blank” prescriptions that result in an unimaginative plans.  Quite often, strategic planning is a simplistic reordering and renaming of existing strategy and approaches. Such a focus diminishes the value of strategic planning. This premise of the declining value of traditional strategic planning was identified over a decade ago in the seminal Harvard Business Review article titled, “The Fall and Rise of Strategic Planning” by Henry Mintzberg.  Mintzberg’s main criticism is that strategic planning often stymies strategy. He argues that “sometimes strategies must be left as broad visions, not precisely articulated, to adapt to a changing environment” (p. 112).

Since the appearance of Mintzberg’s article (and subsequent text that reverses the title ), strategic planning has been broadened somewhat to include the concepts loosely termed adaptive planning, opportunity management, or “real-time” strategic  planning.  In essence, the “innovation” of the adaptive strategic planning models is to build into the process  strategies that allow organizations to be responsive to sudden shifts in the operating environment.  Yet the methods employed to get to this more “flexible strategic plan” still reflects the pedestrian process described above.  In other words, the revamped strategic planning model looks more like this:

1. Articulate a vision, 2. write, rewrite a mission, 3. conduct an environmental scan using unscientific tools, 4.  choose priorities & set goals, 5). develop action steps, timelines, roles and responsibilities, 6.  insert opportunity matrix 7. draft a formal plan, 8.  pronounce it very good and 9. repeat the process every three years.

The economic meltdown of recent years that still haunts many nonprofit organizations has been a wake-up call is that business in no longer usual.  The rapidly changing environment require more than a strategic planning process focused on rearranging the deck chairs and adding one more lifeboat christened “opportunity management.”  As Mintzberg suggested over a decade ago, we must liberate strategy from the confines of a constrained and defined planning process and foster a culture that encourages strategic thinking at every level of an organization.  Strategy needs to be unbound from pedestrian and conventional thinking, which many strategic planning consultants fail to recognize and build into their practice.

Let me illustrate.  I was recently reading the retreat notes from what was billed as an adaptive planning process that written by a consulting group, which a nonprofit agency had contracted with.  It is stunning how pedestrian the results were.  Day opens with the typical icebreaker, pages of brainstorm lists are then sequenced and the conclusions are listed as key….yawn…. findings.  these included …yawn… diversify your funding, increase your communications, and invest more in …yawn…(excuse me)…  capacity…  No wonder strategy and strategic planning are undervalued, if not ridiculed by so many nonprofit leaders.

Force marching an organization through a strategic planning process is not the same thing as stepping back and asking the hard questions related to how nonprofit operations are organized around solid business thinking that is resilient and tenable over the long term.  For example, going back to the …yawn… adaptive strategy notes review, one of the most non-strategic statements of the document was this:

“Key Finding #2 – Financial stability/funding is the greatest challenge facing XYZ agency as it plans for its future.” Open-ended answers provided by staff and board focused on identifying XYZ’s greatest challenge included, long-term sustainable funding, limited funding resources, identifying alternative funding sources, lack of diversity in funding.”

This statement is non-strategic on two levels.  At face value, this key finding lacks any basis for action. Every nonprofit’s greatest challenge is to develop long-term sustainable revenues.  So what.  Where is the strategy?  Second, pulling up the most recent IRS Form 990 for the agency shows a revenue pattern that is represented in this graph. This agency not only weathered the downturn but doubled revenues in five years. Indeed, portraying revenue as the greatest challenge for an organization with this revenue profile borders on malpractice.

To me, strategy would be to ignore the economic angst of the board and staff and build on the organizational strength of the funding model.  Indeed, during a period where many nonprofit agencies were hammered by steep revenue declines, this nonprofit held its own. As a facilitator of such a process, I would be asking the questions, how do we replicate, or at least maintain, the stable revenues patterns that we held through the economic crisis.  How do we build upon the revenue spike of 2009?  What drove the break-out revenue for that year?  What lessons can we learn from how we brought in the additional revenues?

I almost titled this post, “What is Needed Now?” because I am convinced that this is the single most important question that nonprofit leaders must be asking today. For me, the answer to the question, “what is needed now” is not strategic planning but strategic thinking that is supported by clear and strategic program plans. The fact that strategy needs to be a cultural value does not negate the need for strategic planning and the development of clear strategic written program plans. The shift that needs for agencies to think strategically and support strategy with programmatic planning.  This is not a mere nuance but it means abandoning the two million images of a senseless strategic planning model and embrace, focused planning based on strategic thinking.

Elsewhere I have written about the layers of planning and approaches to nontraditional strategic planning and will not belabor the point here. Rather I want to point to three areas where focused planning needs to occur.

Core Social Impact Strategies: A clear and focused organizational model and theory of change, leverage, and scale is the core strategy for an agency.  Without a shared conceptual approach to how an organization fulfills its mission nothing else matters.  Previously, I have explored social impact (here) and social innovation (here) in more detail.

Revenue Strategies: There has been a tremendous amount of recent research that goes beyond the irrelevant and oversimplified model that all agencies need diversified revenue streams and that the board of directors should play a major role in revenue development.  Revenues  strategy should include a customized strategy carved from the careful study of autonomy, reliability and the opportunity costs of diversification. Such strategy planning also includes thinking about investment capital, earned income, and policy approaches to revenue development. Having a clear revenue plan is a second core document (more here).

Operational & Capacity Strategies: Often undervalued in strategy is a clear articulation of the operational capacity that is really required for successfully creating significant social impact. Such strategy requires the consideration of capital investment, breaking the tyranny of starving overhead costs, investing in technology, staff development, building outcome measurement systems, and expanding key staff and external partnerships (more here).

Other common areas that require strategic thinking and planning  include communications and marketing, program evaluation, and board development, to name a few.  The point of this post is not to list every possible strategic planning focus but to point out the fallacy of trusting the arcane strategic planning process while missing the opportunities for strategic thinking and focused programmatic planning.  As the current year ends, and a New Year opens with equal uncertainty, the role of strategy becomes more important than ever.

As Mintzberg, concluded, “Three decades of experience has taught us about the need to loosen up the process of strategy making rather than trying to seal it off by arbitrary formalization (p. 114).”  We are yet a decade and a half beyond Mintzberg’s words and yet many nonprofits continue waste time and resources executing ill-conceived strategic planning sold to us by some book or consultant group. As we reflect on the year past and look forward to the year future, let us commit to thinking strategically first and allow formality to unfold driven by need.

As always, your thoughts are welcome.

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In my last post I asserted that the nonprofit organizations of tomorrow are being born out of the economic crisis of today.  In this current economic turmoil, there are many voices counseling the nonprofit world to increase “collaboration.” Unfortunately, many of these experts are using “collaboration” as euphemism for “merger and acquisition.”  However, unlike the opinions of these non-prophets (pun intended), I believe that the organizational tempering is less about “merger and acquisition” and more about vision, leadership, agility and innovation.  As a new operational model, authentic collaboration  needs to be grounded in sovereignty, aspiration, innovation and brought to life as a concrete operating strategy.  In this post, I wanted to outline what I consider to be the provocative questions that nonprofits (and nonprofit boards) need to consider before pursuing formal collaborations with other agencies.

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What are we trying to achieve through collaboration?  A first question that informs a discussion of collaboration is the fundamental question of outcome.  The expert perspective that “there are too many nonprofits,” may suffice as an efficiency justification for encouraging collaboration but for the individual agency struggling with the question of collaboration, efficiency is but one variable.  A nonprofit must clearly identify the drivers of collaboration.  The heart of the question is twofold.  First is a consideration of where an agency wants to be compared to where it is now.  In other words, what is the performance gap that needs to be closed?  The second question asks if collaboration is among the best ways to close the gap (systems-thinking knows that there is usually more than one “best way”).

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I would like to suggest that the question of outcome requires an agency to explore three dimensions of organization practice including its: Operating, Resource, and Social Impact models.  In the resources listed below,  I link to a couple of business planning documents that all discuss these three dimensions of practice.  Such and exploration ideally includes both inquiry and reflection.

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Resource Model: The current economic crisis sets up the  false dichotomy of a “merge or die” line of thinking.  “Our budget is shrinking, should we merge?” is one way to approach the question.  However, implicit in this approach is a scarcity mentality –namely, that there isn’t enough money to go around.  Illustrating this, I was recently talking to a colleague who made the blanket statement that he would “not encourage any agency to launch ambitious new plans in this economy.”  Scarcity thinking is one way to approach the resource model conversation but such an approach often misses larger conversations.  For example, I know an organization with heavy revenue concentration from stable long-term government grants.  It is also an agency that has a large number of volunteers, whom have never been asked for donations.  In the context of three straight years of government budget cuts, the stability of the organization was incrementally being threatened.  By revisiting the resource model of the agency, the decision was made to a build new revenue stream based on small individual donations. Two years into the plan the organization is on track to reinvent its resource development model.

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Operating Model: A second inquiry and reflection exercise is to consider an organization’s operating model.  Are services delivered effectively?  Can the system of operations be reconceived?  Such a conversation does not question the program strategy of an agency but looks for operating efficiencies. Conversations might focus, for example, on the value of collaboration to create “back office” efficiencies or the value of sharing space.

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Social Impact Model: the third conversation that informs the question of “what do we want to achieve?” is the conversation of social impact.  Here a group examines the heart of the organization through the lens of impact.  I can think of more than one nonprofit agency that has reinvented its programs and services to create a larger impact (or the same impact more efficiently).  Here is the greatest need for inquiry and reflection and, in my opinion, it is from this dimension of organizational practice where the best collaborative decisions are made.

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What are the models of collaboration?  Following inquiry and reflection, an agency needs to explore the various models of collaboration (and inherent philosophies of each).  In another post,  I identified five models of collaboration that serve as a good working outline of models.  (In the resources section below I reference a study documenting eight models). Too often groups think in polar opposites.  Merge and “go it alone” are simply two points on a scale of collaboration.  A thoughtful discussion of other collaborative models will help in articulating a collaboration strategy.

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What is the due diligence process associated with our collaboration? A third component of the strategic conversation around collaboration is to create a roadmap for exploring a specific collaboration model.  Making process a part of the initial conversation can help an organization get a clear picture of the scope of work, timeline and resources required to support the development of collaborative partnerships.  As with most organizational change efforts, developing collaborative relationships is subject to the old adage of: “fast, cheap, done correctly –chose any two.”   Collaboration, done correctly, takes dedicated resources of time and money and generally the faster you want it to happen the larger the costs.

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What does the collaboration process look like?  The final component of the collaboration conversation is to be visually clear about what the entire collaboration process looks like.    I have also written before about describing process from the perspective of visual learning.  In mapping out a process of collaboration, creating a visual understanding can assist an organization build a shared image of the change ahead. However, even if an organization chooses not to visually represent the plan, there needs to be a written workplan developed with clear milestones and markers of success along the way.

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Collaboration exists on many levels in organizations.  As this post is a  follow up to my last post, it is important to recognize that I am referencing collaboration that can fundamentally change the fabric of an organization.  Change that can lead to sharing space, affiliation or even merger is a deep process and is not the equivalent of collaborating with other agencies on a community event.  Embarking on the process of inter-agency collaboration is a major undertaking for any organization and carries with it the weight of seismic organizational change.  Facilitating collaboration requires more than simply running a good meeting and requires the thoughtful attention to inquiry, reflection, and process.

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As always, your thoughts are welcome.

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Resources:

The Process of Social Entrepreneurship: creating opportunities worthy of serious pursuit

Business Planning for Enduring Social Impact

Models of Collaboration Nonprofit Organizations Working Together

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One question that frequently comes up when potential clients contact me is “When do I need to bring in an outside facilitator?”  If you ask three or ten different facilitators the same question one will get three or ten different answers. Early on in this blog I outlined some heuristics about working with consultants that partially answers this question from my perspective. However, in my interaction with clients,  I am becoming more and more convinced of the key role an external facilitator can play is during periods of transition.  Transitions can be difficult times for teams, companies and agencies. In fact, managing change is one of the key drivers of exploratory calls I receive from potential clients who recognize their need for help. I believe that there are at least five types of transitions where a facilitator can be useful including:

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Mergers & Acquisitions:  Any organization that has experienced the blending of two organizations can tell you how complicated, emotional and volatile such a process of change is.  By the sheer complexity, a merger or acquisition often includes a team of strategic advisors, lawyers, and a sundry of other consultants (human resource, accounting, real estate, etc).  As part of this change team, a facilitator can bring a “process value” to help manage the complexity.

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Succession Planning & Leadership Change:  Clearly when the leader of an organization changes, the ripples of that that change reverberate through an entire organization and, often, the extended community.   There is fairly significant body of succession planning literature that can be used to guide succession planning and one of the core principles common to several references is the need for active management of the change.  This management of change is a process of facilitation.  I also suggest that facilitating the transition of leadership may not only be tied to the senior management positions.  There are times when it is a good practice to facilitate change in the “lower ranks” of an organization.  For example, the departure of a highly effective and volunteer coordinator in an organization that is dependent upon volunteer contributions might require the active management of the transition between coordinators to ensure the strength of the volunteer base.

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Crisis: A third transition where a facilitator can play a stabilizing and moderating role is during periods of crisis.  I have consulted with organizations that have gone through messy human resource crises and one once was hired to direct a project that had been fiscally mismanaged and was reeling from the aftermath of divisive politics. My personal experiences with crisis helped me understand the role that an external and impartial facilitator can play in helping an agency to manage crisis.

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Shift in Culture: There are times when organization practice changes in a way that creates a shift in organizational culture. For example I once worked with an organization that created a new human resource job classification system to bring uniformity across several distinct business units.  The implementation of the new classification system resulted in some employees being reclassified “upwards” and others reclassified “downwards.”  In addition, the new classification system came with a new annual staff appraisal system.  While the strategic direction and program of the agency remained constant, the shift in organizational practice required the use of a facilitator to assist in the cultural transition to the new system.  Other culture shifts could include such things as the implementation of a new organizational performance management systems, the unionization of a workforce, or even an agency relocation into new space.

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Change in Strategic Direction: Organizations that are faced with a dramatic change in strategic direction can also benefit from an external facilitator.  In fact, I would say that when strategy is at stake, the entire agency needs to be engaged in the process.  An external facilitator makes that universal engagement possible.  Examples of such strategic change might include an organization experiencing a sudden dramatic increase in revenue such as from a federal stimulus grant (or conversely the sudden lost revenue), an organization undergoing a major re-branding initiative, or organization developing an entirely new strategic or business plan. Each of these scenarios could benefit from the external perspective of a facilitator.

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While this list of transitions is likely not comprehensive it illustrates a range of issues that potentially require the use of a facilitator to manage the change.  In addition to standard tools a facilitator would bring to the meeting and process management, transitional facilitation requires the facilitator to assume one or more of the following roles:

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Coordination:  A facilitator can bring to a transition project a coordination role in complex processes of change.  For example, an organizational merger, having an individual tasked with facilitating all the moving parts, frees up senior management to focus on leadership, content and diligence rather than ensuring meeting minutes are copied and distributed in a timely manner or that major meetings are not scheduled on top of each other.

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Communication:  A second role that a facilitator can play in a transition is to be the communication link, ensuring that all of staff and stakeholders are informed.  Uniquely, a facilitator that is external and impartial can also act as a ground wire, taking some of the charged current out of the communication messages.  Communication might also involve such specific tools as interest-based problem solving or mediation to help keep everyone engaged, open, and transparent.

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Compassion:  Related to communication, a facilitator might also serve as a reflector of compassion.  Perhaps using tools like Nonviolent Communication techniques, a facilitator can help lead individuals and groups through a process of observing and feeling as well as identifying needs and requests. This humanizing role of facilitation allows space for hearing and for being heard at a relational level.

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Coaching:  Increasingly, facilitation is also about coaching.  Facilitator as a coach requires a depth of experience and expertise that helps empower individuals and teams in constructive ways. Being a sounding board, reflective mirror, and provocateur can help leaders move through transitional waters.

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Clarity/compass:  A final role of a transitional facilitator is to weave together the other roles in a way that acts as clarifier and compass to the process.  Far from being  simple GPS system that tells the group when to turn left and right, being a compass requires the facilitator to explore and move through the transition as a guide that is confident of where the group will end up, despite detours taken along the way.

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In this context, my personal bias comes though once again, that facilitation is not about running good meetings but is fundamentally about performance improvement. Facilitation is fundamentally about managing change and assisting organizations in transition is likely one of the most effective use of a facilitators skills.  Organizations seeking a competitive advantage will do well to consider the strategic use of facilitation and process.

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As always your feedback is welcome.

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There is a large body of literature supporting the “how and why” of the coalition development process, community engagement and community organizing (a few of which are listed below) so providing “coalition development 101″ is not my intent..  Instead, the focus in this post is  to provoke thought around the unique skills required to facilitate a community engagement process like a coalition or community advisory group.

I once had a conversation with a distant colleague and we were reminiscing about a mediocre community engagement processes that we both served on.  We were discussing the quality of the facilitators who led the process and we agreed that, while the facilitators ran productive meetings, that meeting facilitation skills were not enough to sustain what was a complex community collaboration process.  As we brainstormed together, we created a list of competencies that the paid facilitators lacked in managing the process.  Taken together the list suggests the requisite skills needed to meaningfully facilitate community engagement processes.

Meeting Facilitation:  Not wanting to throw the proverbial “baby out with the bathwater,” the obvious fact needs to be stated. Having strong meeting process skills comprises the first competency of managing community engagement.  Being able to develop a meaningful vision, mission, goals, objectives, group process, documentation and communication cycle are the foundational skills of any facilitated process.

Consensus Building and Dispute Resolution:  A second skill area required for community engagement involves understanding mediation and interest-based problem-solving.  Facilitation is not the same as mediation, despite the fact that many confluent the two concepts. The ability to separate interests, needs and impartially structure a process that mediates differences is very different than a facilitation skill of ensuring equal voice and participation. Consensus building and dispute resolution lay the foundation for building structures of trust.

Systems-thinking:  I consider systems thinking to be a core facilitation competency in general.  However, in the context of a community engagement processes systems-thinking takes on critical importance.  Specifically, when one is facilitating a community engagement process, it is imperative that the facilitator understands both the “bricks and mortar” infrastructure of the community (i.e., organizations, policy, and governance) but also understands the social infrastructure of the community.  Without an understanding of how systems work, a facilitator engages the community with a truncated depth perception especially when it comes to the critical processes of stakeholder analysis and power analysis.

Empowerment Theory: Community engagement also requires more than a cursory understanding of empowerment educational theories.  Based on the application of the theories of Paulo Freire facilitation becomes the act of empowering the community. True facilitation designs a respectful process that allows individuals to co-create solutions and in the process develop mutual trust, respect and a sense of community.

Participatory Evaluation and Outcome Mapping:  Finally community engagement requires an innate understanding of participatory evaluation theories.  The process of facilitating community engagement is just that — Engagement.  When community engagement is not going well, the root cause is often traced back to a reliance on meeting facilitation skills and focusing on the means and not the end. Understanding participatory evaluation theories give a facilitator a deep appreciation and understanding of the ends-planning rather than means-planning.  Ends-planning influences the process design and often necessitates a re-thinking of traditional facilitation tools.

As I reflect on the list of skills and competencies required to effectively facilitate a community engagement process I realize that the goals of this list are high and it is a rare moment when the task, resources and group allow all of these skills converge.  However, what it is clear that the overriding theme of facilitating community engagement is the paradoxical challenge of giving away control and power in order to accrue back trust, collaboration and process ownership.  Facilitating community empowerment requires not only an understanding of group process but, in the words of a mentor of mine, “group process squared.”  Community engagement takes basic facilitation skills and requires them to be lengthened, deepened and expanded by a social theory multiplier.

Part two of this post will discuss measuring progress in a community engagement process.

Coalition Development Resources

Web Resource (PDF):  Developing Effective Coalitions
Web Resource (PDF): EPA’s Environmental Justice Collaborative Problem-Solving Model
Book: The Spirit of the Coalition
Book: Coalitions and Partnerships in Community Health

Again, you comments are always welcome.

As I speak to potential clients, it is not too infrequent that I have to say, “When looking for a facilitation consultant it is important to separate and keep separate the concepts of facilitation goals and facilitation tools.”   To unpack this concept, let me illustrate with a personal story. At a couple of different times in my life, I worked in construction.  On one project, I worked closely with Dan, a highly experienced finish carpenter, who became a mentor as he taught me finish carpentry.  Our goal was clear, trim windows and doors so that the end result looked spectacular. The tools however, were varied.  Table saw, miter box saw, levels, files, hammers, As I was learning how to work with power tools, a very nuanced process, Dan would ask a lot of questions, sometimes guide my hand and, at other times, would intervene and save me from wasting an expensive length of trim molding.  Dan taught me a variety of alternative ways of looking at, what on the surface, is a simple process of measuring twice and cutting once.  Finish carpentry, I learned was a craft that is executed best by those rich in a tacit understanding of the process as well as the tools. So what does this have to do with facilitation?

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Coming back to my opening sentence, I once was talking to a potential client who was describing his board’s interest in hiring a facilitator to help his organization create a new strategic plan.  He waxed eloquent about how the board was looking for innovative approaches to the process of creating a strategic plan.  His passion for innovation raised my eyebrows, because the written specs for the project clearly asked for a scenario planning process.  When I suggested that “innovation” in creating a strategic plan might not involve scenario planning, the response was basically that a board member attended a scenario planning process and that is what they are looking for.  To me, this is a great example of confusing facilitation goals with facilitation tools.  In this one conversation the potential client was asking for both innovation as a goal and at the same time prescribing a single tool that might or might not be terribly innovative.

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When I heard that dichotomy being expressed, I remembered back to working with Dan.  We needed to cut a corner piece on a complicated trim molding and Dan said, “How do we cut it?” I answered, “The finish table saw, set at 45 degrees.” Dan smiled, “Too complicated of a cut. Hand saw in a miter box at 47 degrees.” Dan’s method resulted in a near perfect match.  Dan not only knew both what was needed to be done but also tacitly knew how it should be done.

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When facilitation goals and facilitation tools are confused, the best outcome is rarely achieved.  So when seeking the assistance of a facilitation consultant one needs to clearly separate goals from tools. This is an important task and both clients and facilitation consultant have a role to play in the separation process. Here are some simple questions to help you think about this separation.

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Where do you want to be? The critical first step is to clearly figure out where you want to end up when the facilitated process is over. Rather than focusing on facilitation tool that will get you there, it is important to first clearly know where you are going. The goal is more important than the tool.   “We want to develop a strategic vision,” or “We want to create an implementation plan for our strategic vision,” are clear goal statements.  “We want you to facilitate a retreat,” is not so clear. Being clear about the goal helps you ask the right questions of a facilitator.   If the goal is to create an implementation plan, then you know to ask questions about implementation planning. What is his/her experience in the area of implementation planning?  What are his/her foundations of practice?

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Do you have strong feelings about how you get there? A second question reflects on the tools.  Does the tool matter to you?  If so, then you need a facilitator who has experience helping agencies with similar goals and has a deep content knowledge of the specific tool you require. If “doing a SWOT analysis,” or “facilitating scenario planning” are critical tools to use then be intentional about looking for a facilitator with expertise in using those tools. However, if you separate the goal from the tool then your preference for a tool might be influenced as the facilitator helps you reflect on the goal.  A finish table saw is good choice to get the job done, but there are times when a miter box is a better choice.  Keeping the goal and tools separate allows you to have a wider lens in assessing potential facilitators.

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What is the organizational fit? The third question is to consider how the facilitation goals and tools fit with your organizational culture and structure. Elsewhere, I wrote more extensively about cultural and organizational fit but the reminder in this post is to consider the impact of the facilitation process on your organization.  For example, if you are a smaller grassroots nonprofit agency and you are seeking for someone to assess your organizational capacity, traditional capacity assessment tools likely have little relevance to your organization.  In your case, capacity measurement needs to be forward thinking and aspirational rather than the use of a “present or absent” capacity checklist.

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Do you have the resources to make it work? The final question is to think about the resources available to make a facilitation process work.  While this includes thinking about money, it may also be influenced by such factors and time and space.  In some urban areas, the cost of a face-to-face meeting might include 60-90 minutes of commute time on top of meeting times.  Such a commute might negate planning a series of face-to-face meetings.  Commuting time becomes a geographic cost barrier.

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Remember that facilitation consultants should be able to help you untangle the differences between where you want to get to and how to get there.  If you have worked out the four questions above, it is completely appropriate to discuss your rationale with prospective consultants and seek validation or invite alternate ways of triaging the context.  Beware of the consultant who jumps too quickly to, “of course I can facilitate your retreat what date do you want me to do it?”  Remember, hiring a facilitator is starting a strategic relationship that ideally is the beginning of a long-term partnership  rather than a one-time event.

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Coming back to our example of the director looking for innovation in strategic planning but requiring the use of a scenario planning tool, his confusion of goals and tools was easy to reframe.  This agency was looking for a facilitation consultant who uses scenario planning to develop a strategic planning process.  There is nothing wrong with this intentionality because the process fit the culture and resources available.   The point that needs to be made is that hiring a facilitator needs to consider the goal, tools, culture and resources and to the degree that you think through these four issues the process of assessing potential consultants becomes easier.

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The process of hiring a facilitation consultant is challenging.  In fact, much of the traffic that comes to my site via search engines is often driven by variations of the phrase “how to hire a facilitator.”  Hopefully, this post on clarifying facilitation goals and facilitation tools, along with other posts in this occasional series, will better equip your agency to find consultants that will not just “run a good meeting” but will significantly advance your organizational capacity.

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As always your thoughts are welcome.

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The search term that causes many people to end up on my website is some variation of “what does a facilitator cost.” So accordingly, one of the most accessed posts on my blog is a short discussion on the cost of hiring a facilitator.  In that post, I argue that looking at the simple dollar cost of a facilitator is not the starting point for thinking about facilitation costs.  The cost of not hiring a facilitator, the value of the return on your investment, and the value of the long term consulting relationship are better starting places.  In this post I want to delve a little deeper into pondering the mechanics of figuring out how much it costs to contract with a facilitator simply because there is interest in the topic.  So once you estimated what you need in a facilitator and are clear what the return on investment might be, how do you assess the cost of hiring a facilitator?  I would suggest five principles.

Assessing Expertise: The first principle is that there is value in academic preparation and professional experience. I would like to suggest that the value of any consultant is found in what expertise s/he brings to your organization and what that expertise is worth to your agency.  For example, if you are a small office or nonprofit agency and your computer network crashes, you are likely willing to call a computer network consultant and write him or her a check as fast as the network is restored.  Likewise, if you hire an accounting consultant to audit your books, you generally know what expertise you are paying for.  However, in the case of a facilitation consultant, one does not need any credential to use that label.  You can’t fake the repair of a computer network very well and you can’t fake an audit (okay one could fake an audit but it might end that person up in jail) but you can fake being a facilitator.  And many do.  So I would suggest two measures of evaluating a facilitator.

On one level there needs to be some indication of academic preparation.  What academic or theoretical training does the facilitator bring to the table? So, for example, I have two Masters degrees related to program planning, organization theory and learning theory.  In addition, I have taken a couple of variations of a facilitation leadership course and also have mediation and facilitation training from a community mediation center.  I also worked for 3 years on a team that had a nationally known Organizational Development consultant as a facilitation trainer and coach as we hosted large regional and national conferences.

On a second level but equally important is that the consultant should have a depth of knowledge and experience across an array of business sectors.  There needs to be a professional depth from which the facilitator can draw from.  You can’t fake experience.  If a facilitator has one 4 year marketing job out of college they might be valued differently than someone with 17 years of experience across multiple sectors.

Assessing Billing Rate Transparency:  A second principle relates to transparency of billing rates.  If you dig around online it won’t take you long to find a facilitator database.  Facilitators can add a listing in this database and every time the database matches a facilitator with a client they take a “finder fee.”  If you search the database for Oregon you will find consultants with a daily billing rate of $1,500 – $5,000.  Remember that those numbers are likely padded to cover the “finder fee” but he point I want to make is the range of billing rates is staggering.  It gets more complicated when you hire a consulting group, where the billing rate for the senior partner may be $225/hour or more and a junior partner may bill at $90/hour.  Having said all that, take a deep breath.  In my very local and practical world, based on numerous facilitators I know and/or have worked with, I can say that a qualified but less experienced facilitator bills in the $80-$110/hour range and a more experienced facilitator bills in the $140-$200 range.  The one caveat is that for specialized content expertise you might pay more.

In looking at billing rates, the more important variable is transparency in the billing rates.  I once evaluated facilitator proposals for a company and could clearly see that some consultants were, in essence, bidding the job based on the experience of the senior facilitator and only in the details did I ferret out that the majority of work was to be done by much junior facilitators. How much the facilitator is charging and for what experience level is being delivered in return can become a game of smoke and mirrors when multiple people bill at different rates on a project.

To me, the equalizer is finding comparable firms in terms of experience and expertise relative to the complexity of the project.  Simple facilitation assignments could be had for $90/hour but when the stakes are higher and the complexity increases you might be paying at the $140/hour rate or higher. Once you are clear about what you want and find similar priced facilitators, figuring our comparable rates becomes somewhat easier.

Assessing Process and Product:  The third principle is to carefully consider if you are seeking to pay for a process or product.  A facilitator responsible for delivering a strategic plan at the end of the process is different than a facilitator delivering a strategic planning process.  I once was part of a process where the facilitator spent the first 3 hours of a one day retreat doing art therapy as a team-building exercise and at the end of the day we failed to create the forward thinking plan that was the core task of the day.  Who pays for that lost time and energy?  It depends.  Was the facilitator hired to deliver a product or hired to simply run a good meeting?  Often facilitation contracts are not clear enough about the deliverables and the consequences for failing to deliver. So in negotiating with facilitators concreteness of expectations is an important and critical discussion and often paying for the deliverable is a better strategy than paying a facilitator by the hour.

Assessing Depth of Tools: Fourth on the list of principles is assessing the degree to which the facilitator is willing to customize and tailor the process.  I have seen more than one facilitator in my experience, take  a single hammer out of his or her toolbox and apply that hammer equally to every facilitation assignment.  If the process proposed sounds like it comes straight from a facilitation 101 textbook then it probably is.  there will be a case when you can get by with a simple facilitation but the range of tools a facilitator brings to the table is often the distinguishing characteristic between good meetings and performance improvement.

Assessing References: The fifth principle is about reference checking.  I have done reference checking on facilitators before and my experience is few, very few, references will give critical analysis.  The reference check invariably is positive.  Why else would they be a reference?  Get specific. Tell me about a time when the facilitator managed conflict.  What did s/he do and what was the outcome?  What did s/he do when the process of off track?  Were all deliverable met on time or was there slippage?  Describe that slippage.  Even then, references often don’t yield much useful information.  So take references with a grain of salt.

Assessing the Relationship:  The final principle comes back to relationships. Creating a facilitation contract needs to have a relational aspect of trust.  You have to feel comfortable with the person you are bringing into the culture and fabric of your organization.  Relationship and trust is the flip side of clear communication and expectations.  However, I would caution against allowing the relational dimension overshadow the due diligence associated with the previous principles. Relationships matter but competency, experience, transparency, and deliverables matter as much if not more.

Again, there is no easy answer to the question related to how much does facilitation cost.  Cost is directly related to the outcomes being sought and the degree to which solutions are customized and tailored to your needs.  Cost also related to competency and experience supported by a process of due diligence.  Thinking deeply, being clear about expectations, engaging in dialogue and getting it in writing will all help you have confidence in the investments in facilitation and process.

On more than one occasion I have been asked, “So how much does it cost to hire a facilitator?” Unfortunately this question often comes at the beginning of a conversation with a perspective client and is the start of an awkward dance where neither partner names the dance being offered.  The potential client is often carrying a number in his or her head and simply wants to negotiate that price or, better yet, a 10% discount on the price. Unfortunately, facilitation is not a product that you can buy off the shelf like a computer or desk. Facilitation is about process more than product and as the facilitator, if I do not understand the scope of the task or the desired performance outcome it is hard for me to answer a preemptive question of cost.  As a result, the client dances with a product and the facilitator dances with the process much like one person  dancing the tango and the other dancing the waltz.   So I thought I would outline some organizing questions for thinking about the cost of facilitation.

What is the cost of not hiring a facilitator? The challenge with answering this question is that it requires the client to ask hard questions about the outcome and the value of that outcome. For example, let’s say you manage a team of 10 people and your team meets two hours once a month for a team meeting and that each meeting has 30 minutes of preparation and debrief time for each team member. You have observed that your team uses only half of the time effectively. So the productivity of the meetings is 50%. So you pull out your calculator and do the math. 3 hours/month – times 10 staff – at an average salary and benefit cost of $30/hour equals $900/month. Since the meetings are only 50% productive you realize you lose $450/month in productivity or $5,400/year. So the cost of not hiring a facilitator has a cost of $5,400/year? That number becomes the value of your need.  So the client needs to ask him/herself, “what return do I expect on my investment in meeting efficiency, or strategic planning, or job classification redesign.”

What it the value-add rather than the hourly rate? If you have a value-based need, it becomes less important to ask a facilitator about his/her hourly rate and more important to ask what can the facilitator do to close your value gap. Carrying our meeting improvement example, further, a facilitation consultant might propose to use training and coaching to increase your meeting efficiency by 30%. I will let you do the math, but if you did the $5,400/year productivity loss would decrease to a loss of only $2,160/year that translates to a $3,000 plus productivity gain. Even if you lost a third of that gain each year for the next two years, the three year productivity gain would still be near $6,000. As a potential client, you could then ask yourself how much you are willing to invest to gain $3-6,000 of productivity over the next three years. That is a different conversation than”what does facilitation cost?”

What is the Alliance and Relationship being built? Elsewhere I have written that a critical variable in hiring a consultant is to look for someone who not only understands but is willing to enter into your organization and become part of it. It is a myth that a facilitation and process consultant is an external neutral observer. As you look to hire a facilitation consultant it is important to have the lens that you are extending your agency capacity. It is my belief that a consulting relationship needs to be a learning relationship with two goals of 1)  meeting present need and 2) building agency capacity. The discussion of the cost of facilitation needs to explore immediate organizational needs and the organizational change required to alleviate the need for consulting services in the future. Contracts should be negotiated around, outcomes, return-on-investment and performance improvement.

It is easy for a consultant to quote an hourly rate of between $80 and $200 for facilitation services. Unfortunately, such an approach is shortsighted and opens both the facilitator and the client the use of smoke and mirrors in negotiating a price. I have found that using these three principles offers a more thoughtful values-based approach to discussing the cost of hiring a facilitator. As always, I appreciate your feedback.

This post is one in an occasional series to help guide those looking to hire a facilitator.  Other posts in this series can be found here.  If your questions about facilitation are not answered, please don’t hesitate to email me and I will be glad to help!

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The basis for most consulting relationships is often viewed in the context of a scope of work and written contract. The scope of work typically defines in some detail the activities, deliverables and associated timelines. The contract codifies and legalizes the “understanding.” However, I am of the opinion that successful consulting relationships are built upon a shared understanding of goals and expectations that goes beyond negotiating a scope of work and contract. For consulting relationships to work there needs to be effort put into entering into a collaborative mindset. For me consulting relationships need to have a kickoff meeting where everyone gets on the same page about goals and expectations. While I believe that the nature of the consulting project may influence the list of goals and expectations that there are some standard overarching principles that need to be discussed So here is my short list of goals and expectations.
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In this consulting relationship we share these goals:
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1. We all want to produce a quality product
2. We all want to meet the Schedule
3. We all want to stay on Budget
4. We all want to make a Profit
5. We all want to gain mutual trust and confidence
6. We all want to create the groundwork for new projects

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In this consulting relationship we share these expectations:
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1. We engage in ongoing and up-front problem solving dialogues
2. We clearly delineate roles and duties
3. We create realistic time lines and budgets
4. We sign-off and cross-check on key decisions/deliverables
5. We have a shared understanding of each other’s business/operation
6. We routinely communicate to build a trusting relationship
7. We become a team rather than internal/external partners.

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Kick off meetings are a great way to clarify expectations and make sure that assumptions are discussed at the front end of a consulting relationship.  As the project moves forward the agreements reached in the kick off meeting can be periodically revisited.  Being explicit about what is typically implicit often defines the difference between a consulting relationship and a successful consulting relationship.

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My seventeen plus years working in in management positions has given me exposure to a wide range of consultants. Consultants who provide niche content expertise have proven absolutely critical to the success of the various challenges I have faced. For example, HR consultants helped me navigate a challenging performance issue that had legal overtones and a highly skilled technology team solved a potentially traumatic database conversion that was a high stakes conversion for the organization.

However, my experiences working with facilitation consultants have been very mixed. I have experienced facilitation consultants who have empowered me and my team, coached and mentored me, and more than anything else, helped me achieve improvements in performance. I have also experienced consultants who, as the old joke goes, “borrows my watch and then tells me what time it is. Then walks off with my watch and two days later sends me a bill for the cost of the watch.” In these worse-case scenarios the consultants have, in one case, cost me an inordinate amount to time and energy to compensate for their skill deficits and, in another case, the consultant grossly underestimated the complexity of a project costing my team time, money and missed opportunities. My experiences led me to develop five principles of consulting.

1. If you have the skills and staff capacity to do the work yourself then save yourself the money and do it yourself.
2. Along the same lines, if you have the staff capacity but not the skills, focus on building your staff capacity rather than hiring a consultant for his or her skills.
3. When engaging a consultant be very clear about how your performance will be improved by engaging a consultant and make sure that you tie consultant compensation to performance.
4. Remember the axiom of fast, cheap, done correctly –choose any two. If you want the job to be done correctly, it will either take time or require additional resources to compress the timeline.
5. If a consultant won’t enter into the vision, thinking, culture and aspirations of your organization, run the other way.

In short, I personally believe that most agencies and teams should develop and strengthen their internal ability to design and facilitate meaningful work processes that support performance improvement. Hiring an external consultant should be reserved for those times when a team does not have the capacity or expertise to manage the processes themselves. In those cases, the consultant needs to function as a coach and mentor so that at the end of the consulting relationship, the team is closer to autonomy and self-reliance in the future. To that end, consulting agreements must clearly specify primary deliverables that include delivering the specific “products and timelines” but also should include secondary outcomes related to developing the capacity of the team. This latter competency of building capacity is an area where many consultants fall short in delivering. Building capacity works against a consultant’s “repeat business” mentality and also requires a higher degree of functioning and commitment than many consultants are willing (or able) to provide. Finally, if you do hire a consultant, it is absolutely critical that s/he not only understands but is willing to enter into your organization and become part of it. It is a myth that a facilitation and process consultant is an external neutral observer. The least effective consultants that I have seen are willfully clueless about an agency’s vision, thinking, culture and aspirations.