Posts Tagged ‘performance improvement’
Facilitating a High Performing Board
. Recently, I have been working on several different projects that involve nonprofit board development issues ranging from staffing a board, to recruiting board members, and improving the effectiveness of boards. My recent work has led me to filter my experience through a review of the literature on the characteristics of ...Read More
Facilitating a Capacity Building Process
. The economic downturn that occurred in the last couple of years has been unquestionably harsh on most nonprofit agencies. The increases in service demand, coupled with the decreases in revenues have created organizational strains and fractures that will linger for years to come. If there is any silver lining to ...Read More
Facilitating Knowledge Creation & Management
. As groups and teams work together on planning or performance improvement initiatives there is often a secondary agenda of creating and capturing knowledge. So, for example a healthcare team wanting to improve patient services might meet to develop a series of rapid cycle tests using the Plan, Do, Study, Act ...Read More
Clarifying Facilitation Goals and Tools
. 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 ...Read More
Strategic Planning: Defining the Strategic Agenda
. The first post in this series outlined the importance of aligning the culture of your organization with the framework used for strategic planning. In this post I want to discuss the importance of clarity of purpose and agenda before embarking on a strategic planning process. Without a clear focus at ...Read More
Characteristics of Quality Facilitation
. One of the common misconceptions that I encounter is that many people equate facilitation with meeting management. If meetings run smoothly they are considered successful and facilitated well. While running effective meetings does require facilitation, meeting management is the most rudimentary of facilitation skills. Virtually anyone can be trained to ...Read More
Facilitating Technology-based Collaborative Workspaces Part 2
. In Part 1 of this post I discussed the roles of a facilitator in helping teams function in a technology-based workspace that was specific to document co-creation (as opposed to web-based training). The basic message is that all projects need to lead with a consideration of facilitation followed by the ...Read More
Facilitating Technology-based Collaborative Workspaces Part 1
. In an age of networks and distributed technology the convening and teams located in different offices or even different continents is an increasingly common phenomenon. Web-based training, email discussion groups and teleconferencing are now commonplace means of conducting training and exchanging information. Also increasingly common is the use of technology-based ...Read More
Workplan Development Process
. I believe that a workplan is a critical component of process improvement but is often under-resourced in the planning process. For example, I was recently asked to facilitate a meeting for an interdepartmental team that was in the early stages of operationalzing a major quality improvement initiative. The described goal ...Read More
Data Drives Everything
. In addition to facilitation and process the recurring themes of this blog also include discussions of performance, measurement and agency capacity, with a focus on the government and nonprofit sector. Recently I was in a conversation with a colleague where we were discussing the keys to sustainable nonprofit growth. ...Read More