Last week, I had the privilege of running a pair of workshops on facilitation, mostly for first-year MBAs, with my wonderful MIT Sloan colleague Maura Herson and much-loved consultant Lou Bergholtz. I found myself appreciating what everyone shared about their experience with facilitation--we've all seen it done well and done badly, and together the groups generated a pretty good list of ideas about how to facilitate effectively (more on these specifics
here). We designed every workshop exercise to focus on just a few things in each round. And as I reflected on the value of
picking just a couple of things to address, I realized how easy it can be for us to forget the most valuable ideas and insights that show up for fleeting moments in the stream of our experience--we might notice, for instance, how Lou handled a particular moment in the group discussion, and say to ourselves,
Oh, I should try doing that next time.... but the moment passes, and often the idea or insight is lost forever.
So, how do you remember to actually put into practice the new ideas that arise from doing it (or seeing it done) well or badly the previous time? An influential thinker on this topic, Marilyn Darling, argues: "It's a leadership act to say,
What did we learn from last time? If a leader or members of a team do not ask that question, they're unlikely to apply past learning to creating future success." (
source.) So, here's a leadership point to ponder: Do
you ask such questions in your teams?
Now, this approach can also help you develop personally. I think that we can each cultivate personal habits for our own learning that embed this sort of development into our own behaviors. In last week's workshop, we asked our students to do just this, in a short assignment we called "memo to myself." Because we knew that we would see these same students again in August, we made copies of each student's memo, allowing us see what they were noting as lessons learned or points to ponder--and also enabling us to make sure that we all remember to make the most of the (by then, likely long-forgotten!) insights just in time for their next experience as facilitator.
In 15.990, we explored this notion in some detail in the last class session before the break, when we looked at the After Action Review as a ongoing process of culling just 2 or 3 things to do from every round of experience. I gathered some materials for a
resource page, in case you want to see more. But here's the basic point: after you've executed a step, gather your team together, and ask yourselves a set of questions that can help you figure out what to retain or change for your next step.
Improvements are most feasible when your are engaged in something that
is repeated, so that each time you do it, you can figure out what
worked and what didn't:
For example, if you're
focusing on sales that didn't succeed, rather than just listing what
didn't work or your rationalization for why you didn't get the
contract, look forward. Before the next call to a prospective client,
ask: What worked last time? What didn't work? What got you closer to
the sale? What got you further away?
From Getting Better at Getting Better—How the After Action Review Really Works: An Interview with Marilyn Darling Leverage Points Issue 61.
One version of this from firefighters bears the appropriately rugged name of "the chainsaw AAR" (
source), in which a team gathers at the end of the shift and each member gives a single quick answer to each question:
-What is one thing that went well on this shift?
-What is one thing that went bad on this shift?
-What is one thing you would do different next time?
-What is one thing you learned today?
For this to be useful, you need to capture the answers, of course, and then make sure that you use them as the basis for your action in the next shift, project, sales call, or faciliation experience. There are multiple forms of discipline entailed here: asking the questions, keeping the answers very focused, writing them down or otherwise capturing them, and then using them the next time you start the action.
Is all this effort worth it?
Well, my intrepid students are doing it, both in their teams and individually in personal notes that they post to blogs by the end of every Sunday. We'll let you know what we make of it all in mid May!
I enjoyed the conversation about what makes for a skilled manager, change agent, leader--I guess the things we talked about are key for any professional who gets things done by working with and through others.
See the
wiki page I put together to capture our discussions,
in which I combined student comments from this week with thoughts from
past classes. I see a few key clusters of ideas. In brief,
my students admire the person who:- gets the important stuff done every day
- learns continually by iterating and testing
- works with the external environment (the organization, stakeholders, etc)
- knows and manages herself or himself
- communicates well in the moment
- builds shared commitment to move from ideas to action
- cares, develops, and enables.
Click through to the wiki page to see the full set of ideas developed in class. But come back here to consider some thoughts I want to share.
Many
of the ideas are still very general. In order to focus on specific
skills that you cultivate in any project or other joint work, you will need to
translate from the general idea ("gives honest, timely feedback") to
even more specific practices—e.g., "Sets up regular meetings with
teammates to seek informal feedback"; "develops and uses a simple
feedback framework at various points throughout a team project"; "backs
up feedback points with specific examples to keep it honest." Another
example: if we think that effective managers "build buy-in for
objectives"—how does this translate into practices you need to use now?
Whose buy-in do you need for a class project, for instance? How do you know if you
have it? Perhaps your team will plan to revisit objectives every other
week; perhaps after every meeting with your hosts, if an objective of
any sort is discussed, you follow up with an email to confirm. Remember
you also need to get faculty buy-in for your objectives; how do you do
that? Together, this set of practices provides the means for you to
translate the important idea of buy-in to action.
What else?Interestingly,
in looking over the list I notice we focus a lot on the "nice" things
bosses do, and didn't linger much on the stakeholder management issues
that are cruicial for any effective manager or team. So, consider the
following proposed additions:
- Saying "no"
- Telling someone they're wrong, off course, or simply not working out
- Negotiating and renegotiating (including engaging and disengaging partners)
- Technical expertise and skills in analysis, synthesis, criticism, testing
- Building and using deep knowledge about the organization, the customers, suppliers, etc
- Designing work and projects with falsifiablility in mind
- Gating projects to force go/no-go decisions at appropriately early points
- Walking away from "sunk costs" when appropriate
- Seeking feedback from others, learning from others, asking for input, managing expectations
- Examining, framing, and presenting failures to your stakeholders
Let me know what you think!