Before you start planning the intervention, understand the context and scope of your visioning or strategic planning process. Who are the sponsors and decision-makers? What are the expectations and objectives? Who are the stakeholders and how will they be involved? What are the current strengths and weaknesses of the organization? What are the external trends and forces that affect it? Conducting a needs assessment, stakeholder analysis, and environmental scan can help you to answer these questions and tailor your intervention accordingly.
All strategy planning and design should start with an assessment of current state. Really consider your questions. Just like the effectiveness of AI depends on prompt engineering, the questions you ask during discovery and assessment influence the outcomes. #HybridRemoteExcellence
This is so true if you don't understand the context and what the blockers are then how can you engage in the conversation. Check in with the stakeholders on what they see as the end game.
Visioning and strategic planning will help an organization understand the bigger picture and make the choice to allocate resources to achieve its strategic objectives. It is important to involve the stakeholders in visioning and strategic planning interventions because they would serve as drivers and gatekeepers for the successful implementation of the interventions.
Facilitating a visioning or strategic planning intervention starts with thoroughly understanding the context. Dive deep into the organization's history, culture, external environment, and current challenges to grasp the full picture. This involves analyzing market trends, competitor behavior, and internal strengths and weaknesses. Engage with stakeholders to gather diverse perspectives. This groundwork ensures the strategic planning process is grounded in reality and aligned with the organization's capabilities and external opportunities. By setting this foundation, you create a shared understanding that informs and inspires a compelling vision and actionable strategic plan, driving the organization towards its future goals.
By using the acronomy VOCATE helps in defining the vision and its elements. V stands for View Point which focuses on what we are trying to achieve. O represents the owners that controls the process. C indicates the Customers and its pertinent to define them . A stands for the key actors that will do the work .T means transformation which answers the question on How will the work be done? and finally E represents the Environment which focuses on constraint affecting the system. A careful use of the VOCATE acronomy will help in understanding the context for visioning.
When designing a process and methods for an intervention, it's important to consider the context. A typical visioning or strategic planning intervention consists of several phases, like preparing and communicating the purpose, establishing the current state and gap analysis, or creating an action plan. There are various tools and techniques that can be used to facilitate different phases, from brainstorming and scenario planning to vision statements and logic models. Select the tools that are most appropriate for your objectives. Additionally, it's essential to ensure there's enough time and space for discussion.
When designing the intervention process, the key is to tailor it to the unique challenges and goals of the organization. This requires a blend of creativity and strategic thinking. Tools like scenario planning and vision statements should be complemented with real-world examples and practical steps, ensuring that the process not only inspires but also equips participants with actionable strategies. Remember, the success of any intervention hinges on its relevance and applicability to the participants' everyday challenges and objectives.
In addition to having the time and space for discussion, work needs to be done to create an environment where people share candidly. This may require providing a variety of ways to offer input--digital surveys, focus groups, and full team meetings. This ensures that people at various comfort levels and with varying degrees of power feel able to contribute their thoughts more freely. One tactic that I find helpful is beginning each gathering with a check-in question and holding space for every voice to speak. This models both vulnerability and democratizes the opportunity to speak up.
It is important to identify gaps from where you are now and where you plan to go and what happens if you do nothing. This part of visioning provides emotional hooks that can be taken into action planning and is important to dissolving resistance.
Facilitating a visioning or strategic planning intervention entails meticulous process design. Begin by clarifying the objectives, involving key stakeholders to ensure diverse perspectives. Craft a structured agenda with well-defined stages, fostering engagement and creativity. Incorporate brainstorming sessions, SWOT analyses, and scenario planning to stimulate strategic thinking. Utilize visual aids and collaborative tools for effective communication. Encourage open dialogue and feedback loops, refining the vision collaboratively. Allocate time for reflection and adjustment, ensuring flexibility in the process. Finally, document the outcomes and action items for a comprehensive roadmap.
When designing a process for visioning or strategic planning intervention in Organization Development (OD), it's essential to use methods that promote engagement and collaboration. For instance, a technology company employed cross-functional workshops and brainstorming sessions to involve employees from various departments in strategic planning. By utilizing techniques like SWOT analysis and scenario planning, they identified strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities, aligning their strategies with market trends and technological advancements. This inclusive approach fostered employee buy-in and agility, enabling the organization to adapt swiftly and drive sustainable growth.
Creating a productive atmosphere for your intervention requires engagement and involvement from all participants. To achieve this, set clear expectations and ground rules, in addition to using icebreakers and warm-ups to build rapport. Be sure to encourage participation and diversity of perspectives, through methods like open-ended questions or paraphrasing. Visual aids can be used to capture and organize information. Provide constructive feedback and appreciation to your participants.
Consider how to design a psychologically safe environment so that all participants feel comfortable and respected. How are participants selected?
Sending questions as pre-work and holding small group sessions before the bigger collective session will provide more engagement, allow quiet people to contribute, and cut down on group-think. I try not to let top leaders comment until everyone else has chimed in. Once top leaders speak, ideation typically grinds to a halt.
In order to establish a conducive environment for your intervention, it is imperative to garner active participation and engagement from all individuals involved. This can be accomplished by establishing explicit expectations and regulations, alongside employing icebreakers and warm-up activities to foster a sense of camaraderie. Encouraging the involvement of all participants and embracing a range of perspectives can be attained through techniques such as posing open-ended inquiries or restating ideas in one's own words. Additionally, visual aids can prove advantageous in effectively capturing and organizing information. Lastly, it is crucial to deliver constructive feedback and express gratitude to the participants.
One of the things that I love to do is create the atmosphere with the participants. We encourage to make amendments when we start and we follow the rules. It's crucial that the participants feels part of the intervention.
Una regla básica para este tipo de intervenciones es la creación de confianza absoluta y seguridad psicológica, no lograr la seguridad y confianza puede generar retrocesos impensados en los equipos y obviamente en el resultado de lo que se busca.
As a facilitator, be prepared to manage the dynamics and challenges that may arise during the intervention. These can include conflicting interests, resistance to change, lack of clarity or consensus, and limited resources. You can address these issues via active listening, empathy, and respect — acknowledge and address participant concerns. Facilitation skills such as reframing or redirecting can also help manage conflicts. Try voting, ranking, or grouping to reach collective decisions. To ensure accountability and sustainability of the intervention, employ action planning and follow-up mechanisms.
This is where the magic happens. There is no script and flow is essential to craft a way for what needs to happen, to emerge. All the tricks and tools don't matter at that point, it's attention, intention and interaction toward something new emerging that has both intelligence and sense appeal. The leading is not in direction, it's in curiosity and inquiry. It's in the questions. The best questions lead the group to the best solutions. Those questions arise from being neutral and attentive to sensing the flow and nudging it with further questions. Everyone has ownership with the answers then. Even in conflict, an open acknowledgement of the tension is appropriate, with the offer to lessen it with the process you are engaging. Breathe.
I have learned so much here from Sandra Janoff. Where there is true conflict, it's important for the facilitator to stay neutral by summarizing what each and every viewpoint is, and then asking the entire group, "What should we do now?" Count to 10, or 100 if necessary. In addition, finding areas of common ground among all stakeholders is important, and begin action planning there, rather than getting "hung up" on areas of disagreement.
One must be ready to handle the dynamics and difficulties that may occur during the intervention. These may include conflicting interests, resistance to change, lack of clarity or agreement, and limited resources. These issues can be addressed by actively listening, showing empathy, and demonstrating respect towards participants' concerns. Facilitation skills like reframing or redirecting can also assist in managing conflicts. Collective decisions can be reached by utilizing methods such as voting, ranking, or grouping. To ensure the intervention's accountability and sustainability, action planning and follow-up mechanisms should be employed.
El manejo y los recursos para gestionar la dinámica deben apuntar a la oportunidad individual y grupal de descubrimiento, haciendo énfasis en que TODOS ganan cuando pueden acceder y proporcionar información valiosa desde la vulnerabilidad y lo genuino.
Finally, evaluate the outcomes and impacts of the intervention. You can use both quantitative and qualitative methods to measure results and achievements. Useful indicators include level of satisfaction and engagement of participants, clarity of vision, and commitment of stakeholders to the vision and plan. Also, observe the implementation and progress of your action and evaluation plans, including any changes in organizational performance or effectiveness. Surveys, focus groups, and debriefs are all great tools for collecting and analyzing data.
This is where storytelling can really make the data come alive. Share context, personal stories, organizational wins that clearly tell the story of the change so staff understand the relevance. #HybridRemoteExcellence
Lo más saludable a mi parecer es la evaluación anónima y libre de la intervención, teniendo una sección muy clara de evaluación conforme a los objetivos que se quieren lograr.
In a word - Listen!!! The process outlined above is solid of course, and will likely result in the kind of information you are seeking. But only if you listen. Facilitating this kind of a strategic planning or visioning session is about, in my opinion, getting the conversation started and then keeping it moving. But the facilitator cannot carry the conversation, or interject with their thoughts, because if they do then it isn't the groups session but it's their own. I have seen facilitators in these sessions dominate the conversation so much that participants stop talking altogether. Facilitate, gather great notes and feedback, and then synthesize that for your debrief. If you do that your end product is likely to be more relevant.
Facilitating a strategic planning intervention is a complex and critical process that demands a structured approach to guide organizations in charting their course for the future. It begins with comprehensive pre-intervention preparations, including understanding the organization's current state, gathering relevant data, and identifying key stakeholders. Once prepared, a strategic facilitator engages stakeholders in a collaborative process that encourages open dialogue and idea sharing. This typically involves conducting SWOT analyses, assessing market trends, and evaluating the organization's capabilities and resources.
Understand how you will provide updates and feedback to the stakeholders throughout the process. It is important to inform throughout the process and at the end with the full findings. Also, consider how you will operationally integrate the changes into your workflow. If not the work will fall apart.
When launching a strategic planning intervention, it's important to look beyond "feel good" activities and focus more on having real (and sometimes difficult) conversations about how the team works together. Identify the specific strategies we may have had for years but haven't had any progress on. What about these strategies is holding us back, what part of the mess do we own, and how can we work better as a team to make progress? It can be uncomfortable to make this shift in planning but it's worth it! Having a solid understanding of *how* we work together is a vital ingredient in being successful is identifying *what* are are doing.
Identify the shared belief on desired future state and seek to design a process that is inclusive and allow intellectual honesty to take precedence. This is crucial to success and building consensus around what is most critical.