Facilitation of a technical decision

Connecting

Dave was invited to facilitate a 2-day meeting where a range of stakeholders would define electromagnetic compatibility between 100 different equipment types.  This sounds like a job for someone who knows about electromagnetic compatibility.  But the art of facilitation is working with people who provide the answers, and where the facilitator only provides the process.  So NOT knowing about electromagnetic compatibility was very helpful.   

Considering

Working with a key knowledge expert, Dave developed a simple approach, including reducing the time to one day only.  The process would include introductions, agreeing how the day would be used, how progress would be made, and what would happen if incompatibility was identified.  A simple agenda was sent out to about 40 people attending.

Change

On the day, everyone introduced themselves along with what they wanted to get out of the day.  There was some scepticism about what could be achieved in such a short period of time.  The facilitation helped keep the participants - those with a stake in the success of the session - with a sense of responsibility for the outcome of the event.  An overall objective was agreed by participants and with it, some simple ways of working. The facilitator created the opportunity, but the group had to want to make it a success.  

The work was split into chunks with one area in particular being focused on - it was the highest risk topics and injected importance and pace into the process.  Swift progress was made, with incompatibilities being identified.  It was agreed that these would be identified only, with no attempt to be solved.  That would come at another point.  This kept the pace up and progress was felt throughout the day.  

The facilitation kept the group on task and on focus.  Alternative agendas, distractions, arguments and irrelevancies were addressed in service of everyone benefitting from the output of the session.    

Close

At the end of the event, Dave asked the knowledge expert to summarise the output of the day and clarify follow up actions.  A final opportunity was given to everyone to share their experience of the event.  Everyone agreed a surprising amount of progress had been made on a tricky topic.  Many even said they had enjoyed the event!   

The impact of making progress on this complicated issue helped the wider engineering programme keep to time and budget.  

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