Posts Tagged ‘strategic facilitation’
Facilitating Community Engagement: Skills and Competencies
. I have been fortunate enough through my career to have sat as a member of community coalitions and advisory groups that were highly effective. In my Master's degree program I studied community engagement processes and been mentored by some very skilled community leaders. I have also had the fortune of ...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: Accountability Matters
. This is the final post in a four part series on creating the right context for strategic planning. In the first post I outlined the need to match strategic planning process to your organizational culture. In the second post discussed the need to have a clear and focused change or ...Read More
Strategic Planning: Building Momentum & Process
. In this series on strategic planning, my goal is to outline principles that inform the development of a strategic planning process. The first principle is that agencies need to connect the planning process and their organizational culture. The second principle is that strategic planning must be tied to a clear ...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
Strategic Planning: Connecting Process with Culture
. There are literally hundreds of resources on strategic planning a simple Google search away and likely an equal number of books devoted to the subject. So why do we need another blog series on strategic planning? My goal is not to teach strategic planning but to help teams and agencies ...Read More
Facilitating Collaboration: Five Potential Models
. Facilitators are often called in to help design projects involving multiple stakeholders such as in convening interdepartmental workgroups, cross-functional teams or inter-agency committees and coalitions. For these assignments one of the key assessments that the facilitator needs to make is to determine whether the convening is for the purpose of ...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
Planning Effective Board Retreats
. I once was talking with an executive director of a nonprofit agency that hosted an annual board retreat. She sounded exasperated as she described the situation this way, “Every fall the board has the same discussion, asking --so what do we do at our board retreat this year?” As ...Read More