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.

Here’s the headline:  Employee engagement drives loyalty and business performance at World’s Most Admired Companies.   According to the Hay Group’s latest research, top companies are particularly focused on making sure employees feel engaged by their work.

Hay also conducted supplemental research on employee engagement practices at these organizations, which found that companies at the top of the list generated stronger employee loyalty to the organization over the last two years and reported greater decreases in employee frustrations over work conditions that were not conducive to their success.

“The World’s Most Admired Companies have been particularly good at focusing on long-term strategies, showing little tolerance for executives that compromise long-term objectives for short-term gains,” said Mel Stark, vice president with the Hay Group. “Equally important, the WMAC communicate their objectives to all employees, connecting the goals and objectives of every employee to the overall business strategy, and as a result, were able to come out of the downturn with motivated and loyal employees.”  Hay Group’s study found that 90 percent of respondents from the WMAC identified their company as very effective or effective at fostering high levels of employee engagement compared to 71 percent of their peers.

These findings are supported by another study conducted by consulting firm Towers Perrin (now Towers Watson).  They conducted a Global Workforce Study, the largest study of its kind, in which they asked 90,000 employees in 18 countries,  “What can a company do to attract, retain, and engage top talent?”  They boiled it down to 5 key things:

1. Get leaders out front to talk with employees about the business environment…how the organization is responding…the long-term vision…what the organization stands for.
2. Involve employees in efforts to manage costs to help them feel like active contributors.
3. Communicate consistently and candidly about both short- and long-term objectives.
4. Listen and gather input from employees.
5. Promote development opportunities so people can see a future for themselves worth working toward.

 If you look at 1,3 and 5, you will see these are all about talking to or telling employees something about the company.  2 & 4 are all about listening and getting employees to tell you ways to manage costs, perhaps front line customer feedback on what needs to change, etc.  The researchers noted: “The challenge for senior management is to recognize the value of employees’ untapped potential and to channel it in ways that yield real improvements in business performance.” 

More engagement comes from being recognized as unique and with value.  The good news is with a more engaged team – the leader doesn’t feel they have to do this alone – it truly becomes a team effort.  And they may even come to care as much about the success of the organization as you do.

What do you need to start doing today to attract, retain and engage your top talent?  There’s no time to waste, because even in this tough job market, your highest performers always have choices.

Did you know that Yellowstone National Park sits on top of a gigantic supervolcano? Molten rock simmering beneath the earth’s surface causes the park’s bubbling geysers, boiling mud pots, and hissing thermal vents. An eruption of Yellowstone’s volcano would have cataclysmic consequences on the environment, and is capable of wiping out vast stretches of North America.

Have you ever been around a “volcanic coworker”—a person prone to angry outbursts? If so, then you know the damage such a person poses to the work environment. When they erupt, they spew out toxic emotions on everyone else and cause irreparable damage to team dynamics.

How do you defuse a coworker who appears to be on the verge of a destructive eruption?

1) Give them safe outlets to vent negative feelings.

Volcanoes erupt because of the building pressure of toxic gases trapped beneath the earth’s surface. If the gases have an escape valve, then no eruption occurs.

2) Keep them away from combustible situations.

Volcanic eruptions are fueled when fresh inflows of molten rock add volume to the caldron of magma boiling under the earth’s crust. Absent of the added inflows, a volcano lacks sufficient energy to erupt.

3) Turn down their temperature by removing stressful assignments.

Volcanoes are triggered by intense heat that can liquefy rock. Reduce the hotness, and your remove the threat of an eruption.

There is minimal wasted energy in the glow of a firefly. Incredibly, 96 percent of the energy that a firefly uses to create light is actually converted into visible light. Compare that to a typical light bulb, which converts only 10 percent into light and uselessly expends the remainder. Fireflies know how to shine without creating heat—without wasting energy on unnecessary conflict.

Leaders are the gatekeepers of conflict—monitoring the degree to which it manifests itself within team dynamics. They allow conflict when it generates light, but defuse conflict when it serves only to raise the tempers and temperatures of those involved. However, what if you, as the leader, keep falling into useless arguments and petty debates?

From a healthy tension, conflict can easily boil over into a destructive war of personalities. Here are three pieces of advice to prevent you from stumbling into wasteful conflicts.

1) Start with the heart. Clarify your goals and intentions up front. Be honest and sincere in your motivations.

2) Innocent until proven guilty. Give the other person the benefit of the doubt. It’s easy to be suspicious of their motives and ascribe rotten qualities to them in the heat of the moment. Remain composed and seek their perspective, even when it seems to make no sense.

3) Mirror, mirror on the wall. Evaluate your own motivations when you find yourself ensnared in a fiery debate. Sometimes our prejudices and predispositions make us unreasonable. Looking in the mirror makes us aware of our underlying desires and enables us to communicate in a more levelheaded way.