FireFly Facilitation

In my fifteen-plus years of facilitating strategic planning and team development sessions for all types of organizations, I have refined my thinking and my process in these five key areas: 

 Change #1:  Open it Up

It is more important than ever to get as much involvement as possible from the entire organization.  Strategic planning should not be the sole province of the board of directors and a handful of senior staff.  The more you can involve—and I mean truly involve—in the creation of the plan those who will be accountable for actually executing it, the more commitment (as opposed to mere compliance) you will obtain.  People like to see their “fingerprints” on something they are being charged with carrying out. 

Change #2:  Plan for Less, Get More

Do you still use a five to ten year cycle for your planning horizon?  I now recommend that my clients look only two or three years into the future to set their vision.  Change is happening much too quickly for there to be accuracy in planning beyond that.  There isn’t “visibility,” as you might hear the pundits say.  People truly can’t envision a longer future.  Twelve months ago, could you—or anyone—have predicted the world we find ourselves in today?  Set the vision two to three years out; then couple that with a very concrete, practical action plan for the next twelve months. 

Change #3:  Hone on the Range

Instead of talking about a mountain for the vision, I should really call it a mountain range.  The vision for future success is rarely a singular point in the future.  I used to spend quite a bit of time during and after a strategic planning session working with the board or a sub-committee to refine a mission and/or vision statement that would be “suitable for lamination.”  I think it is much more important that everyone in the organization be in agreement directionally and less to be in agreement literally.  I have found that the conversation sparked is more important than the actual statement we developed (which always ended up reading as though it had been created by a committee … because, in fact, it had!).

Change #4:  Begin at the End

I was trained as a strategic planning consultant to begin with a very clear picture of where you are today.  “How can you effectively plan for the future without the hard, cold reality of your current state?” some ask.  I say that most boards and staff are acutely aware of the difficulties of their current state.  My experience has shown that they are better served to think aspirationally first.  Now, in almost every case (the exception being when there are extremely divergent views of the current state), I begin with the end in mind, creating the vision for the future.  Once this picture is clearly in each person’s mind, I assure you a more targeted, accurate assessment will follow.

Change #5:  Swat the SWOT

This may be heresy in some strategic planning circles, but I have switched from the conventional SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis to the lesser-known but much more effective Force Field Analysis for assessing the current reality.  I simply facilitate the identification and discussion of those forces working for and against our success in making this vision a reality.  Too often with the SWOT (and I know you have all been there), what should have been a healthy dialog denigrated into unhealthy conflict over which box to put something in. Was it a strength or an opportunity? A weakness or a threat?  Instead, through a deeper level of conversation, we found that in fact the same factor could be both positive and negative, and thus we could focus the majority of our attention on how to address it.

By making these changes to your annual strategic planning session, you will develop a plan that gets the whole organization aiming in the same direction and catapults your results to even higher levels of success!

Myth #3:  The Lone Creative Genius. 

For example let’s take this fellow here – all alone it would appear in his lab.  Want want to take a guess as to who this inventor is?  (If you give up, look at the big lightbulb over his head for inspiration!)

 That’s right…Thomas Edison!

Many people think of him as a lone creative genius, but even he said “Genius is 1 % inspiration and 99%….(you fill in the blank)….perspiration.” 

Let’s just stop and think about that a moment.  Although in cartoons we might see something like a light bulb showing up over someone’s head or a bolt of lightning out of the blue – and boom a brilliant idea is born.  But that’s not how it works in real life.  You have to nurture a brand new idea.

He also said another great quote – that I absolutely love and think can be instructive for all of us… “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

You might have thought that Edison worked alone —- developing all those patents, but that’s not the case. 

In fact he worked with a broad creative team.   Here they are in 1876 on the site of their industrial research laboratory in Menlo Park, Pennsylvania.   He called it “the invention factory” – because they were always working on several different inventions at any one time.  Together they were more creative than Edison could have possibly been on his own. Together they found success – and over 400 patents.

Just like on your team – each one of you have a critical role to play to bring out the best in your team. 

Because all of us are smarter than any of us.

Myth #2:   We think of creativity in absolutes – you either have it or you don’t – versus a continuum.

While it’s true you might not be able to compose like Mozart or paint like Monet, don’t you think you have a little bit of creativity within you?

What about that time you moved into a new role and had to develop a process to address a particular business challenge?  And what if you customize a process you created at another company – but apply it differently at your new company? Doesn’t that fit our more expansive definition of creativity?

When I work with teams to discover their untapped creative potential, I often ask them to remember back to a time in their youth.  For me, I showed early signs of my love of facilitation when I was 8.  I loved directing plays in our garage with all the neighborhood kids (at least those that were younger and shorter than I was).  It was fun bringing together a diverse group of kids, convincing then to play together nicely, and having a successful outcome (a play that we could perform for our parents).   I didn’t need to be the star of the play – it was more fun for me to be behind the scenes, making things happen.

And so now I will ask you…when you were younger, what came easily to you?  Maybe you even got a nickname for it.  What is your own unique brand of creativity?  How could you apply that natural talent to some personal or professional challenge facing you today?

When I tell a group of people that they are creative, I have some that knowingly smile back, and some that look me at me like this…and say “Who? Me?” 

 Why is that?  I think there are 3 myths that many of us hold about creativity that keep us from tapping into the true creative potential inside us.  Here we go…

Myth #1:  Our definition of creativity

We have a tendency to think that the word “creativity” only applies to artists and musicians.  While it’s true they may be artistic, they don’t corner the market on creativity.

When I was writing my book, The Firefly Effect, I told my husband that I thought everyone had creativity within them.  Well, he’s a pretty analytical guy – so he just looked at me and said  “Do you have any data to back that up?”

I didn’t – so off to the library I went to find some.  After a very frustrating day spent reviewing very arcane research from psychology and science journals, I was worn out and not sure if I would find the evidence I was looking for.  I wasn’t even sure what creativity was any more.

That afternoon, I’m driving my teenage daughter – Maddi -  to tennis practice.  I turned to her and asked:  “Maddi, how would you define creativity?” Being a typical teenager her first response was, of course,  “That’s random!”

I said – “No, really – how would you define creativity?”

This time her response took my breath away…. “To be original.  To do something no one else would think of.”   Wow!

Thus, by our very DNA and unique life experiences, we are creative.

That makes sense, doesn’t it?  No one else is exactly like you – with your life experiences, your perspectives and your ideas.  So, don’t hold back – claim your creativity.  You deserve it!

Next post…Myth #2

There is a new focus for innovation – and it is called design thinking.  It is all about breaking down the organizational silos and making everyone in the company responsible for innovation.  One of the chief proponents is Tim Brown -  CEO and president of IDEO and author of  Change by Design 

Tim Brown is an industrial designer by training, and has won numerous design awards.  His team even appeared on a news show, demonstrating how to create a new and improved shopping cart in just 4 days.  His passion is finding ways design can be used to promote the well being of people living in emerging economies. [In fact, many innovative ideas are being created by focusing on these emerging economies].

 He says one of the keys to great ideation is great preparation.  And great preparation begins with a design brief.  Here he captures the power in his own words:

“The difference between a design brief with just the right level of constraint and one that is overly vague or overly restrictive can be the difference between a team on fire with breakthrough ideas and one that delivers a tired reworking of existing ones.”

And I have found this to be true in my work facilitating innovation sessions, though it may seem counter-intuitive.  Often, the clients I work with say they want the brainstorming session to be very broad because they want to “empower” the participants.  In fact the opposite tends to happen.   When the “creativity canvas” is too wide, it actually either leads to too many ideas that are off the mark and not actionable or too many ideas that do not address the most critical challenges. 

As Brown says above, with just the right ending to the sentence – “How might we…” – you too can catch your team on fire with creativty aimed in the right direction!